Austin Theory is a fan of John Cena for more than just appreciating his in-ring work.
In a recent episode of WWE After The Bell With Corey Graves, Austin Theory spoke about being a John Cena fan as a kid, explaining how Cena was involved in some of his favorite feuds as a kid. Theory called back to Cena posting about him on Instagram, then explained how Cena helped him deal with bullying as a kid.
“[John] Cena and Randy [Orton], growing up, that was my feud, that was the feud I would watch. It was either Randy and Cena and Edge. And I even just talked to Edge this past Monday like, it’s just like one of those things where it’s like, you gotta take a second and just breathe, you know. And I remember the first time I met Cena, there was like a little altercation on the Internet where I remember I did a promo for EVOLVE and just called him out and said he should pass the torch. And then I think like the next day or the next week, he posts my picture and there was a lot of stuff going on. And I was like ‘oh wow, like he knows who I am.’
“And when I got signed to WWE, we were at the Performance Center one day and we were leaving, and we got told, ‘hey we need to stay, there’s gonna be a meeting.’ And we’re sitting there and then we got told John Cena is coming in and I was [taken back]. And Cena came in, he talked to all of us for probably about an hour and then he specifically said, ‘hey I have nothing going on today, so if anybody wants to talk individually and privately, we can.’ And I thought that was really cool and he literally stayed. I remember waiting because each person, he would talk to for, they were trying to keep it at a certain time but he talked to everybody for a while, and I just remember waiting for like, I think it was like three hours just to talk to him.
Theory went on to explain how a lot of people left the session, which he thought was weird since it was such a good networking opportunity. Theory finally got a chance to meet Cena and talked about how he was picked on as a kid, but wrestling also helped him deal with it and became a healthy outlet for him.
“I gotta tell this dude that he was just such a motivation for me in my life. And I think like when I say it, people are like, ‘oh, okay, you were a John Cena fan.’ But it’s a little deeper than that just because as a kid, I think when you watch anything, you’re super influenced by so it. So whatever somebody’s attitude is or personality or the decisions they make, it’s very influencing. And for me, it helped me a lot because me in middle school, you know a lot of people would say like, ‘oh I would never see that happening to you,’ but like I was picked on a lot. And a lot of it was because I watched wrestling. But I knew if I can make it to Monday or Friday, I would be good and I could just escape and I think that’s why like it goes back to, when I see a ring, it just gives me this calm feeling because it’s always been my getaway from everything. And just watching Cena was always that pull away from real life, and I’m like wow I can get away, I can escape. So that’s just the deep, you know, story of that.”
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