John Cena is admitting ambition got him in trouble once, and Vince McMahon could have absolutely blown the whole thing up.
While speaking to NPR, Cena opened up about fear still being part of his life, especially when he feels like he is not being heard. He said that trigger goes back to his early wrestling days, when he was not exactly treated like anyone’s golden boy but kept surviving every cut until people finally started listening to him.
“So it’s definitely there. As a human being, it’s definitely there, I think managed. A fear of mine or a trigger of mine is not feeling heard.”
Cena said that feeling still gets him defensive, even now. He explained that years of fighting to be taken seriously left him with a fear of not being enough, but he also made it clear he does not see fear as some shameful thing.
“Yes. Yes. Man, that puts me in defense. Whew. I just — and I’ve worked hard to create far more of a balance there, but I think it’s like I started not really as anybody’s first pick as a professional and then somehow made it to every cut. And then finally, it took years for people to kind of listen to me, even though I thought I had good ideas. And I ended up having some ideas that were good and kind of did good not only for myself, but everyone involved. So maybe there’s a fear in there that, like, ‘Oh, I’m not heard,’ or ‘I’m not enough,’ you know. But I think this is something a lot of folks struggle with, and a lot of folks think. I just think it’s OK to have fear.”
Then Cena got to the part where ambition actually led him astray. He admitted those moments still hit him with guilt and borderline shame, and one of the biggest examples involved him nearly jumping into a social network startup without telling Vince McMahon. That was a problem because Cena’s name was not just his name at that point. It was tied directly to WWE’s machine and intellectual property.
“So the answer to that is yes, and I’m faced with those all the time. I think we all are. Those are my most teachable moments, and those are the ones I reflect on with guilt, borderline shame. I think one time I tried to get involved with an entrepreneurial social network startup. And I didn’t tell my boss. And we talk about everything. This was like, ‘Man, we’re going to do this together.’ And in potentially being part of this startup, I would — my name’s John Cena, so I would essentially be leveraging intellectual property.”
Cena clarified that “the boss” was Vince McMahon, then kept it brutally honest about why he even considered the deal in the first place. It was about money. No fancy explanation, no spin.
“This is Vince McMahon. The big boss. I was just trying to get more money, simply.”
Once Vince found out, Cena says things could have gotten ugly fast. Instead, Vince calmly walked him through the fallout and made him understand how badly he had crossed the line. Cena said this was a direct violation of trust after years of building that relationship, and he knows Vince had every reason to go nuclear.
“Man, my boss found out, and to be honest, he was great. He was great. He, like, walked me through the — ‘OK, this is the choice you’ve made. Let’s walk through all the tentacles of what might happen.’ And in a moment where it was a direct violation of trust to somebody I had worked years — and he invested years in trusting me, too — so it was a moment where he could have just gone nuclear because, you know, trust takes years to build and moments to destroy. And he didn’t. He didn’t. He had patience and tolerance.”
That calm conversation apparently hit Cena like a brick. He said it took him five minutes or less to realize he had made a dumb move, and he immediately called the company back to pull out.
“It took five minutes or less to realize, like, I’m such an idiot. And I immediately called the company back and said I’m out. This isn’t for me.”
So, Cena is not pretending he has always played it perfectly. He chased money, crossed a line with Vince, and nearly damaged one of the most important relationships of his WWE career. The difference is Vince did not blow him up for it, and Cena clearly still remembers that as one of the biggest lessons of his life.
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