How John Cena became the last great crossover wrestling star
- The San Juan Daily Star
- May 5
- 5 min read
By Timothy Bella
John Cena knew his time was up.
For more than 20 years, Cena was a symbol of excellence and inevitability in professional wrestling. Cast as the ultimate good-guy character in World Wrestling Entertainment, he was Superman in jorts — a 16-time world champion and perhaps the last of the monocultural, crossover stars, following the likes of Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and the Rock.
But even in the world of sports entertainment, Superman doesn’t live forever. And Cena remembered a promise he had made to the audience: When I get a step slow, I’m out.
“And I’m a step slow,” he said.
The realization kicked in a couple of years ago. Cena was down 15 pounds from his ideal in-ring weight. He couldn’t lift as much. It was time.
“It is not from lack of trying. I’m just [expletive] old,” said Cena, who turns 48 this month. “I’ve never been the best wrestler out there — I know who I am and my capabilities. So, when I can feel myself getting a little slower, it’s time to go.”
Cena says this inside a trailer on a movie set one snowy Sunday morning in early April near Cierne, a small Slovakian village near the border of Poland and the Czech Republic. He is roughly 6,000 miles away from Las Vegas, where Sunday he will face Cody Rhodes in the main event at WrestleMania, Cena’s 17th and final time participating in WWE’s flagship spectacle. A victory would make him the most decorated champion in the history of professional wrestling.
But a set like this has become Cena’s workspace as much as the squared circle over the years. He’s here filming “Matchbox,” the latest toy-brand-comes-to-life franchise with blockbuster ambitions, and Cena is the top-billed star.
Cena has become a household name in action franchises (as Vin Diesel’s brother in the “Fast and Furious” movies), sex comedies (a buff boyfriend who is awful at dirty talk in “Trainwreck”) and world-conquering blockbusters (Mermaid Ken in “Barbie”). He’s a top-selling rap artist (that’s him on the mic for his enduring entrance music) and has made memorable appearances on “Saturday Night Live.”
Almost 20 years after his first foray into acting, Cena has carved out an identity as someone with a rare gift for combining action and comedy with a bit of self-deprecation.
“His superpower is that he defies what he looks like. He defies his aesthetic,” said actor Idris Elba, who co-starred with him in “The Suicide Squad” and will reunite with him in the film “Heads of State” later this year. “He’s more than bankable. John is a star.”
Added filmmaker James Gunn: “I think the only people who are missing John’s talent as an actor are the ones who haven’t seen his work.”
Cena also possesses another quality essential to stardom: People love him. He’s a hero to children, who buy mountains of his merchandise.
Now, as Cena is set to retire from professional wrestling at the end of the year, there’s a twist in his goodbye tour: He’s the bad guy. In the weeks since his character kicked Rhodes in the groin to cement his heel turn, women have cried and TV cameras find children in Cena shirts crestfallen and confused.
There were two options for how the retirement run could play out. The first would be for Cena to go the route of a past-its-prime band and play all the hits and send everyone home happy and drunk on nostalgia. The other option, said Paul “Triple H” Levesque, WWE’s chief content officer, was more intriguing but more of a gamble: What if Cena went to the dark side?
Cena’s wrestling success grew out of a series of “crazy accidents,” as he called them. His memorable 2002 TV debut happened because the WWE Hall of Famer the Undertaker got sick and someone else was needed to fill a segment. When Cena was on the verge of being released by WWE, his bosses saw him freestyle rapping on a plane and decided that should be his new gimmick. His rise to the top was underway.
Some loved his squeaky-clean character. Others hated him because they felt like he was forced on them. A divide became clear: Children and women embraced him while many men and, especially, hardcore wrestling fans, rejected him.
Levesque, a 14-time champion, saw the polarizing reaction as a good thing when they worked together in the main event of WrestleMania 22. “You’re the Yankees and the Red Sox, but on one team,” he recalled saying to him. “This crowd hates you and this crowd loves you. But the truth is it’s sold out, so who cares? There’s box office if you win or lose.”
There was plenty of box office, even though it came at the expense of many relationships. Cena divorced his first wife in 2012 after three years of marriage; his high-profile engagement to Nikki Bella, a fellow WWE star, ended a month before their planned wedding in 2018.
“Early on in my career, when I wasn’t a good husband, I wouldn’t say no to anything because I was tunnel-visioned on the plan,” he said. “I was a [bad] son. I was a bad brother. I was not a good husband. But I was a great wrestler, and I was a great employee for WWE because that was the plan.”
During downtime on set, Cena has time to reflect on his current crossroads.
“I’m really trying to appreciate everything — every second on the canvas, every moment I can hug my wife, sitting in the trailer with my heater blasting since it’s snowing in Slovakia.”
If his time is up in the ring, then his time is now in Hollywood (or so he hopes). So, with that in mind, the question was asked: Do you think people see you now? He delivered his answer in a rapid succession of statements.
“I don’t care if anyone remembers me. I don’t care if anyone sees me. I don’t care if anyone knows me.”
A brief pause.
“But I do hope there is an understanding out there that I never shortchanged anybody, through wrong decisions or right decisions. I have given all I have. If I had to do it again, I don’t know if I could squeeze another drop of effort.”
And finally:
“I don’t think I could have given any more.”
That’s usually the moment his theme song would hit and roars would erupt from the crowd. But today, it was just the barely-there sound of snow falling in the Slovakian countryside.
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