John Cena is the latest guest on Corey Graves’ After The Bell podcast and we hear some thought-provoking takes “The Man We Can’t See.”
Graves begins the interview asking what drives Cena to keep coming back after nearly accomplishing everything there is in wrestling, and John’s take is to let your bucket list wash away naturally.
“I enjoy it and I don’t have a bucket list of things to do. I think if maybe folks out there should listen to this, if you just consistently entertain a mass of people, the bucket list melts away really fast and you can take any situation and make it something special and I mean that’s kind of the approach I’ve taken to my entire career,” Cena said. “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 let me go and do my thing and that’s kind of how I look at it.'”
Cena does take great stock in noticing how the in-ring style of the business is changing and if he’s going to perform, he wants to be sure he compensates for any step he’s lost as he grows older.
“I would be ignorant not to be aware of all that so I guess I’m just trying to do the best I can with taking stock of my assets of where I am and not wanting to jip the customer,” he said.
Graves then asks Cena what he think the current landscape needs right now in WWE. Cena believes it’s that top star to personify the WWE brand with his or her’s own identity, but due to the social element of the fan base, isn’t quite sure if such is possible anymore.
“It needs what I’m not sure it can produce and that’s just a state of where everything is now, which is weird because it kind of always corrects itself. So we’re in a day and age where it needs a frontman or woman and that’s what will be able to define what the era is because it takes on those personality traits of its top star,” he said. “I’ve said it before, I don’t know if all things considered, 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 like the guy last week is to say, ‘Fuck you. You’re not going to tell me who I like.’ So the audience is also tipping the scales of this not being able to happen.
“I’ve seen it happen with guys who are really like darlings of that underground crew make it and as soon as they make it, the rug’s pulled out from under them,” he added.
“That’s where the business is and usually if it pushes too far one way, the pendulum finds a way to come back, but I really don’t know because the program is so socially active and you’re social emotions are not what they are in the arena. I know that first hand, dude. When you’re at the edge of your seat and you’re lost in a championship fight and something happens and you think maybe a title’s going to switch and it doesn’t and you stand and you catch yourself going, ‘Nah,’ and then you Tweet like ‘That was BS’ or whatever, like your keyboard emotions aren’t necessarily the same as watching it live, but the keyboard sentiment and the social sentiment which I love cause it is driving our business forward and certainly extending its reach throughout the world often can cause that chain reaction of like, ‘Hey, now we’re not going to like this guy. Right, us?’ And then everybody’s like, ‘Yeah!’ and than that person is not liked.”
“That’s it’s not a grind. That’s just all bullshit. It’s not. Man, life isn’t easy in general. You know, no matter how fortunate or unfortunate we are, life has it’s ups and downs. Like, I play dress up. That’s it and the work I have to do to play dress up is travel a lot and I have to give up certain sacrifices of what has been dictated as a normal life, but everybody consistently, the question I hear the most is like., ‘How did you do it all? How do you continue to do it all?’ I only do things that I dig and I just really dig WWE. Like, all of it.”
Cena states that WWE is well aware of its tedious schedule and has a simple answer for talent that have a struggle with handling life in the air and on the road.
“It’s the push/pull and my thing is when people get in a place where they complain about the schedule and the grind, just don’t do it. Just don’t do it and I really can never remember a distinctive bad day at work.”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can listen to the entire audio of After The Bell below:
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