John Cena recently sat down for an interview with ESPN (as transcribed by WrestleZone ) and he gave fans some insight into his future plans. He talked about how long he plans to keep wrestling and how difficult it is to balance the life of a movie star with that of a professional wrestler.
Interestingly, John Cena is definitely not the first WWE performer to have movies interfere in their wrestling career, with the most notable being Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Johnson has all but stepped away from professional wrestling completely. In fact, he didn’t even make his customary appearance at WrestleMania in 2018, which is something fans have grown to expect from The Rock.
When Cena was asked about his retirement plans, he definitely danced around the question a bit. He didn’t offer any specific timeline for his remaining career, but he did say that he won’t stick around longer than he’s able to perform at a high level.
“That’s like asking an athlete ‘Hey do you ever contemplate retirement?’ and you can ask a rookie that and you have to. Because anything that relies on your body for an end result, time is going to catch up with you. So, there’s going to be a time when I can’t keep up with the pace. I made a promise to myself many years ago, before I had found my passion of being on-screen that if I can’t keep up with the pace I have to walk away.”
It sounds like Cena wants to keep wrestling, but he specifically mentioned not wanting to “take a ticket buyer’s money and have them sit down and go ‘Oh, he’s just hanging on.’” Basically, he doesn’t want fans to feel ripped off when they see a Cena match.
WWE recently announced that Cena would be hitting the road with the company again at the end of 2018 and in the beginning of 2019, as reported by the Inquisitr . He’s scheduled for a bunch of non-televised events and a few Raw and SmackDown tapings as well.
ESPN also asked Cena about wrestling while filming movies, and Cena explained why he can’t do both at the same time.
“I have learned, and I’m trying to fight this system but I’m losing, once you’re in production for a movie they don’t allow you to wrestle,” Cena said on the matter.
. @JohnCena is all smiles at the #BumblebeeMovie premiere! pic.twitter.com/pEGsu9D3Rx
— Bumblebee (@bumblebeemovie) December 10, 2018
He talked about how even a minor injury could derail a whole project. He used a broken nose as an example, and he explained how it could increase the cost of production while putting lots of paychecks on hold.
“I can’t go to a WWE taping, have my nose put over here. It not only doesn’t look good, but they shut the movie down and there’s 150 people that are expecting a paycheck from the movie, so I just screwed them over and the budget went up,” Cena said.
John Cena even talked about how he didn’t understand this when The Rock first started leaving WWE to make movies, but he gets it now.
“This is a giant misunderstanding I had about what The Rock was doing because he does movie after movie after movie,” Cena explained.
