WWE legend and 17-time World Champion John Cena appeared on The Pat McAfee Show to discuss various topics, including what he loves about his retirement tour.
Cena said, “What I love about the the whole year now — this is something we can reflect on. The whole year was an intentional year-long story. Some moments folks liked, some moments they hated, some moments wished to pan out different. But that’s like a microcosm of someone’s existence. As we go through 23 years of John Cena in the WWE, ‘Man, I wish some moments were different.’ ‘I wish you had this opponent more because of the magic you had.’ ‘Why did they ever book you in this angle?’ Why did you ever do this?’ It’s it is a microcosm for what I’ve done. I love the fact that at least through it all, again a small microcosm of my reality, fans loved it and hated it just like me. ‘Let’s go Cena,’ ‘Cena sucks.’ This last year has been like a compacted version of ‘Let’s go Cena,’ ‘Cena sucks.’ And then the realization of like, it it’s almost not me. It’s like all of us. We’re all just kind of getting all of our emotions out.”
On the “what could have beens”:
“I never put a lot of focus on man what could have been. If somebody chooses to to bail, or we no longer have this option, that’s fine. The easiest indicator of this — and this happens all the time — is injury. And injury is easy, because it’s inarguable. ‘Hey, this person is on the trajectory to be the man.’ Blown out knee. We’re going to have to have them forfeit their spot, somebody’s gonna have to jump in. Nobody complains about that. What if somebody’s burnt out? What if somebody just can’t go? What if somebody’s decided that like, ‘Yo, I don’t have the passion for it anymore?’ Would I rather keep that person on my team or just take a rest. Let’s put somebody with passion and purpose in there and see what happens. But I’m not going to sweat like, ‘Oh, but we could have done great stuff!’ You take the time you need to get right in your own brackets. And if you never come back into our gravity? Thanks for all you did for us, but let’s move forward, man. Let’s move forward.”
On the pivots he faced during his retirement tour:
“I love the fact that like there’s been so many pivots. AJ [Styles], that was a pivot. Brock was a pivot. Post-Wrestlemania, all that stuff, pivot. Because of the pivot, I got Randy, I got Punk. I got to work with Logan in a singles match. Because of the pivot, I got Dom. I got AJ, I got Ron Cena, I got Sami Zan. I got Cody at SummerSlam. Like because of pivots, I got all these great moments. Never once was I like, ‘But it could have been this.’”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
