Matt Hardy and co-host Jon Alba discussed the career of veteran WWE Superstar John Cena in the most recent episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy. The following are some highlights from the interview:
Hardy discussed John Cena’s WWE debut and the evolution of the Ruthless Aggression Era:
“There was a lot of buzz and it really stood out that John could be something special. Just considering the situation, you’re thrust right into the main event mix, you’re working against Kurt Angle, you have a ton of pressure on your right from the jump and he went out and killed it. It was a great introduction. There were times during that period, during that era where, you know, whenever they made it into The Ruthless Aggression Era, so to say. Vince was looking for someone to like to step up and step on people and he wanted someone to become the top guy and be the person that sells tickets and be the person who’s the world champion.
“He was looking for another new hot attraction and act. You could tell that he (John) was very special, you know, you’d never necessarily know off one performance how someone’s going to end up or how they’re going to do in the big scheme of things, but he definitely seemed like he had the potential to be a top star because he went out and like I said, being thrust into a match with Kurt Angle right out of the jump, he went out, held his own, did a hell of a job, did a hell of a promo and it was a great foundation to start your career.”
On his working relationship with Cena:
“He had a ton of potential. I enjoyed working with him. He had a great attitude, very respectful. One thing I can’t stress enough about whenever he broke into the business, especially once he started on the main roster, WWE. But I had fun wrestling with him. There were a lot of things we kind of shared and had things in common, we both liked rap music and that’s something we had discovered at this time as well. And he was just overall just a cool fun guy, so, yeah, I enjoyed working with him and I thought this guy is going to be special because he’s very gifted and very talented.
“Once again, he was very respectful in the aspect of he was like, okay, well, you’re the veteran, you just tell me what you want me to do. And he would contribute like, I do this, I do that, what if we did this, but, yeah, he was just very easy to work with at that time. Very laid back, very easy going and just an extremely hard worker. And one thing I can say about John more than anything else is that he’s very disciplined and you can tell that obviously by his physique, the way he eats, the way he trains, his intensity as well and he’s also very discipline as far as applying himself to bettering himself when it came to his craft as well and you could see that right from the jump.”
On which version of Matt Hardy would we see if he was feuding with Cena?:
“It would be fun to do BROKEN Matt with Cena. He was one of the ones whenever I sent a preview of The Final DELETION to Jericho, they were in Japan, right, this is a very famous story. He showed it to John Cena. John said, oh, my god, this is the greatest shit I’ve ever seen in my life and they started setting up like different time periods, they were at this venue all day, they said like, one o’clock, 2:30, 4pm, 5:30, these are the showing times, you have to be here on time and if you show up two seconds late, you don’t come in the room and they showed it all throughout the day, the WWE guys and John Cena watched every single viewing of it. That’s one of the first things, he was so happy, like whenever I showed back up and he’s like, oh, my god, I hope you get to do BROKEN Matt here, I hope you could do BROKEN Matt, I love that.”
For those who missed it, click here to read about a story Matt Hardy shared regarding Ric Flair getting Shawn Michaels drunk.
You can listen to the complete show below:
(H/T link back to Joshie Lopez and WrestlingHeadlines.com for the transcription)
