John Cena appeared on Corey Graves’ After The Bell podcast (interview was recorded several weeks ago) and here are the highlights courtesy of Reddit user dogryan100:
John: “I tell Vince all the time, I’ve been first, I’ve been last, I’ve been in the middle. Tell me where to go, tell me what you’re looking for, and then go let me do my thing.”
WWE is where he feels the most comfortable and home, even after being in the movie business for some years.
Part of the driving force that keeps him going is the constant change, from the attitude era, ruthless agression, PG era, and the “Anti-hero era” which John says he kind of helped birth.
Says there aren’t enough wrestlers that look at the business as a whole when deciding what they want to do and too many only think what they want to do themselves.
To help define the current era when looking back on today in the future, there needs to be one front man or woman, and John feels that there isn’t one.
“The crowd is so mixed, that if the company puts its faith behind an individual, the knee-jerk reaction of the audience, even if they liked the guy last week, is to say f*** you, you’re not gonna tell me who I like.”
Both agree that Seth Rollins is the perfect example of the above.
John talks about how different the in-arena reactions are to the keyboard reactions. Says that in the arena, in the heat of the moment in a championship match, you can get everyone on the edge of their seats and super excited, but when you read the internet afterwards everyone says it sucks. Corey says its like how the Lets go Cena/Cena sucks is usually a 50/50 split chant but if you only read the internet its 99% Cena sucks.
John says that wrestling itself and staying at the top isn’t a grind, “That’s bullshit.” Says that what he does is play dressup, and the work he has to do to play dressup is travel a lot and has to give up some sacrifices from what is a normal life.
John says that if you are complaining about the schedule, just don’t do it.
Back in 2008 John had bombed in movie roles so bad that he and his agent agreed that they weren’t going to be offered any more roles, but it wasn’t until the film Trainwreck when things started to kick up.
One time however many years back, Corey was in an “Extra” role for a WWE show, when it catering at a distance John and Corey made eye contact for a moment. Colt Cabana ribbed Corey by saying that stare meant that John hates Corey, and it was a long running joke for some years.
When John finds out that he’s facing someone new for the first time, and the person asks “Hey John what do you want to do”, John says “I don’t know, we’ll figure it out.” a lot of the time they see it as apathy, that he doesn’t care. Admits that when he is out there in the ring he calls matches super loudly for everyone to hear, but the reason he does that is because he is “Hyper present”, because he is there to entertain everybody who paid money. And if he plans a labyrinth in the back and it doesn’t work, you have to switch.
“I’d rather be heard “Hit me motherf***er” than saying nothing and have crickets.”
He learned the “call it in the ring” style from basically every big name in the attitude era that he worked with.
One time John & Eddie Guerrero were performing in South Africa on a tennis court. Eddie just said “I’ll see you out there.” They went 25 minutes, after the match John asked “Eddie I heard this out there, why did you tell me to do that” and his eyes lit up, and Eddie went into the details of saying this is what you do, this is what you don’t do, this is why I did this, did you hear when they were like this and I (Eddie) said shut up and don’t do anything that’s because we missed it. “That’s how I learned to wrestle.”
“Here’s a message to all the talent out there: Be brave enough to fail. Go out there with an open mind and open ears and entertain your audience.”
John says that one of his favorite matches of all time is Hogan vs Rock. “They’re just staring at each other. But it’s mayhem.” The biggest part was the crowd reaction, they were going bananas.
Says that wrestlers need to work on getting that crowd reaction more, because the crowd in a way is what makes the show. If you are channel surfing and see one show with a bored crowd or a show with a crowing going crazy, which will you watch? Says a good example was when they were in England for Raw when a marriage proposal happened live in the crowd. John reacted to it live, grabbed a mic, and talk about it.
Jokes that he feels he is so deep in wrestling psychology that whenever he goes up to a kid and says “Hey here’s the secret” the he basically starts talking about quantum mechanics and the kid gets confused.
To performers, says when they say “We don’t know what we want from you tonight”, don’t just sit there annoyed, figure something out. That’s how rap Cena was born, the US Open Challenge. When they don’t know what they want, they’re giving you the freedom to create something.
John says when they say “We are giving you 15 minutes, and I dunno.” That’s actually his favorite because it means the world opens up in what he can do.
