John Cena is the latest wrestler to give his take about The Undertaker making headlines during an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience about how he thinks today’s wrestlers are ‘soft’ compared to past generations.
The former WWE Champion did so during an interview with Forbes.
Cena started out by noting that he’s viewed the WWE as a product outside of himself for a long time and that’s why he was so interested in the business side of it. Thus, he’s seen it evolve and how sports entertainment has been ruined.
“I could look at the economics of it and make an argument that between myself—and the large amount of folks that carried on the roster beyond the Attitude Era into the Ruthless Aggression Era and the Reality Era—the fans of the Attitude Era certainly looked at our product as not what they’re used to, and it wasn’t. So I may have a bit of disagreement with Undertaker’s word choice because I don’t think it’s soft, I think it’s different.”
He recalled a time where Steve Austin came back during the height of the PG era, and he was just befuddled because back in the Attitude Era, if you got stuck in a promo then he could curse, throw up some middle fingers, and ask for a beer. However, he couldn’t do that in the PG era. Cena thinks Austin could adapt to the new environment because Austin is a great performer.
“What do I think of the WWE product right now? I love it. I think it’s bold, it’s forcing people to take chances.”
He recalled how Forbes did an article on him last year where he said that he doesn’t believe that WWE will ever have a marquee star. He believes that he was wrong to say that as he was too close to the product.
“Having seen it, having lived it myself, I should have just realized that the company is in transition. It takes a long time—I would say it’s three-and-a-half years or more—to build a certain talent because I’ve walked in those shoes. Now you have Drew McIntyre and Roman Reigns, Sasha Banks can be in that conversation, but it’s not what I said it was in 2020. It’s not a scattered fragment of Super Friends. WWE has just refocused, re-shifted and now is consolidating on marquee stars.
They have their marquee stars and going forward they will have their big names. As far as those names being larger than life, the enormity of their impact is up to the individuals themselves.”
Cena also talked about missing WrestleMania and more. Check out the full interview here.
