WWE legend and 16-time World Champion John Cena recently appeared on an episode of the Tonight Show, where he talked about a number of topics including how he likes to compare himself to a fine vintage classic car when it comes to wrestling because he is just not as fast as he once was.
Cena said, “I’ll be 47 in April and the product is filled with superstars who are young, fast, and gifted. I’m just not as fast as I once was. I compare myself to like a fine vintage classic car. So if you want to take it out one day, you got to warm it up for about two and a half hours, then you can take it out and you can hit the last gear, but please don’t pin it to red line. I can go for about 30 minutes. Then after you drive for 30 minutes, you got to take it back in the shop and fix all the noises it was making. I’m leaking fluids from places I didn’t know I had places. So it’s pretty rough around the edges.”
He also talked about how he ended up getting signed to WWE.
“So I was living in a garage in Venice, California, and I had picked up… professional wrestling as a hobby. I did not know what I was going to do with my life. I tried to be a cop. I failed the CHP exam. I couldn’t apply my college degree. I was going to go down to be a Marine. And the weekend I was going to go down, a friend was like, hey, we’re training to be wrestlers in Orange County. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. So when I saw a ring, I was like, I will figure it out to do this as a hobby. Never anything more than that. I just wanted to live like Superman on the weekends and then I finally get my big contract with WWE. I got a call from Bruce Prichard, head of talent relations at the time. He said, ‘we want to sign you to $12,500 a year.’ And living in California, I quit my job right away, and I was balling like a newborn baby. I couldn’t have been happier. I view it as a chance to better myself, and I’m very grateful for that opportunity because it’s brought us here today.”
You can check out Cena’s comments in the video below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
