John Cena Refused To Lose WWE Title To Jake Hager

Jake Hager and Chris Jericho have a close relationship with each other now as members of the Inner Circle. There was a time when Hager, as Jack Swagger defeated Chris Jericho to become the WWE Champion. This Money In The Bank cash-in was a big moment for Hager, but it didn’t happen against Cena.

While speaking to Talk Is Jericho, Jake Hager and Jericho rehashed that old story. Jericho said he didn’t have a problem with Vince McMahon changing plans to have him drop the title to Hager. Then Jake Hager revealed that John Cena did have a problem with it.

Cena refused to drop the title to Jake Hager, but he remembers how well the plan came together, even if it was arranged rather quickly.

“I had a little inclination, but I had no idea what was going to happen. The night before, I teased it on RAW where I would almost hit Cena with the briefcase. I snuck up on him and then we had one of his brilliant promo segments. Later come find out he refused to do the job for me for the World Championship, but we won’t talk about that. That was in Phoenix. I get a call that night saying, ‘hey come to Vegas.’ Catalina and I were already planning on coming there to kind of celebrate in Vegas and whatnot. We get to the building.”

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“Of course, I get there 30 minutes earlier than I’m supposed to, so I’m waiting out in the hallway. And then I see Johnny (John Lauranitis) go in the office. Here you come [and] Edge comes, and I’m like, ‘okay, this is my turn. I’ll come in right behind you guys,’ and then the door shuts. It was about five minutes out there and who knows, you guys were probably just all in there laughing and joking like, ‘hey, this rookie’s out here sweating his ass off,’ and then I go in there. And honestly Chris, this is why I always look to you as someone I could trust, someone that actually cared is because when we sat in there, and it was laid out what was going to happen, you turn to me and very stoically, you told me, ‘you better not f*ck this up.’ And you were dead serious, and you were very sincere with it.”

“And it was one of those things, it always reminded me of my best wrestling coach. He would always yell at us. He’d always kick our ass. He was like, ‘guys, if I’m not yelling at you, I don’t care,’ and so immediately once you said that, I already looked at you very fondly. We were friends [and] had a good relationship, but from that moment on, I looked up to you. I knew that I could almost trust you. It was one of those moments of my career that I will always always remember.”

John Cena and Jake Hager have much different career paths now. Cena doesn’t even wrestle anymore due to Hollywood commitments. He held it down in WWE for a decade, but he didn’t always agree to work with just anyone along the way. For some reason, he just didn’t want to do the favor for Jack Swagger.

Thanks to Wrestling Inc for the quote