Without The Rock transitioning successfully from WWE superstardom to Hollywood, would John Cena be doing the same right now?
It’s a fair question to ask. Cena arguably got off to a slower start to his acting career, appearing in fare like “The Marine” when he was still very much a full-time WWE performer.
But his work outside pro wrestling has shifted into high gear over the last few years, to the point where you can now see Cena (pun intended) just about everywhere: in movies, as a voice talent in animated shows and commercials, and in his own hit HBO Max DC Comics series as the titular “Peacemaker,” which is gearing up for a second season.
In doing so, Cena is very much following the playbook that The Rock helped devise a few years before him. And in a recent interview with CVV Clips, he recognized that fact with gratitude.
“I owe a lot of what I’ve done in WWE and in cinema to Dwayne Johnson,” Cena said.
There was a time when it wasn’t all love, however, and that Cena appeared on WWE programming criticizing Johnson for being a part-timer while others were appearing regularly to keep the sports entertainment train chugging along. Cena himself is now very much in that position, approaching a year since his last televised match.
As Michael Scott of “The Office” might say, how the turn tables.
The irony isn’t lost on Cena, who explained that part of his past comments came because he was saying them for entertainment value, and the other part from his “ignorance” of the moviemaking business.
“When you do a movie, you are not allowed to do anything else,” Cena said. “Because if I go do Monday Night Raw and Seth Rollins puts my nose over here, that messes up the movie.
“People don’t understand, there are 150 people on a movie set who are financially dependent on that movie getting done on time. That movie moving costs everybody money and sets the movie up to fail.”
Suffice it to say, Cena has a much better understanding of the commitment and sacrifices it takes to succeed outside WWE now, and it’s nice to see him give some props to Johnson for paving the way.
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