How John Cena Became the Last Great Crossover Wrestling Star

New York Times

18-04-2025

John Cena knew his time was up.
For more than 20 years, Cena was a symbol of excellence and inevitability in professional wrestling. Cast as the ultimate good-guy character in World Wrestling Entertainment, he was Superman in jorts — a 16-time world champion and perhaps the last of the monocultural, crossover stars, following the likes of Hulk Hogan, 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin and the Rock.
But even in the world of sports entertainment, Superman doesn't live forever. And Cena remembered a promise he had made to the audience: When I get a step slow, I'm out.
'And I'm a step slow,' he said.
The realization kicked in a couple of years ago. Cena was down 15 pounds from his ideal in-ring weight. He couldn't lift as much. He no longer looked like Mark Wahlberg ate Mark Wahlberg. It was time.
'It is not from lack of trying. I'm just [expletive] old,' said Cena, who turns 48 this month. 'I've never been the best wrestler out there — I know who I am and my capabilities. So, when I can feel myself getting a little slower, it's time to go.'
Cena says this inside a trailer on a movie set one snowy Sunday morning in early April near Cierne, a small Slovakian village near the border of Poland and the Czech Republic. He is roughly 6,000 miles away from Las Vegas, where on Sunday he will face Cody Rhodes in the main event at WrestleMania, Cena's 17th and final time participating in W.W.E.'s flagship spectacle. A victory would make him the most decorated champion in the history of professional wrestling. But a set like this has become Cena's work space as much as the squared circle over the years. He's here filming 'Matchbox,' the latest toy-brand-comes-to-life franchise with blockbuster ambitions, and Cena is the top-billed star. He makes sense in that role because even for people who don't know an Attitude Adjustment from a People's Elbow, Cena has become a household name.
He's been in action franchises (as Vin Diesel's brother in the 'Fast and Furious' movies), sex comedies (a buff boyfriend who is awful at dirty talk in 'Trainwreck') and world-conquering blockbusters (Mermaid Ken in 'Barbie'). He's a top-selling rap artist (that's him on the mic for his enduring entrance music) and has made memorable appearances on 'Saturday Night Live.'
Almost 20 years after his first foray into acting, Cena has carved out an identity as someone with a rare gift for combining action and comedy with a bit of self-deprecation. If you need someone to steal the show at the Oscars by presenting an award while wearing nothing but an envelope and Birkenstocks, Cena is your man.
'His superpower is that he defies what he looks like. He defies his aesthetic,' said the actor Idris Elba, who co-starred with him in 'The Suicide Squad' and will reunite with him in the film 'Heads of State' later this year. 'He's more than bankable. John is a star.'
Added the filmmaker James Gunn, 'I think the only people who are missing John's talent as an actor are the ones who haven't seen his work.'
Cena also possesses another quality essential to stardom: People love him. He's a hero to children, who buy mountains of his merchandise. There are countless viral moments that can bring tears to the eyes of even the most hardened cynics, like when he went to visit Misha, a teen with Down syndrome who fled Ukraine after his home was destroyed in the Russian invasion — and whose mother motivated him on their journey to safety by telling him that they were on their way to find Cena. He also holds the record with the Make-A-Wish Foundation with more than 650 wishes granted, the most requested celebrity Wish granter in history.
'People crave connection, and he provides that,' said Leslie Motter, CEO of Make-A-Wish America. 'They crave seeing a good guy win, and he's a good guy. '
Now, as Cena is set to retire from professional wrestling at the end of the year, there's a twist in his goodbye tour: He's the bad guy. In the weeks since his character kicked Rhodes in the groin to cement his heel turn, women have cried and TV cameras find children in Cena shirts crestfallen and confused.
There were two options for how the retirement run could play out. The first would be for Cena to go the route of a past-its-prime band and play all the hits and send everyone home happy and drunk on nostalgia. The other option, said Paul 'Triple H' Levesque, W.W.E.'s chief content officer, was more intriguing but more of a gamble: What if Cena went to the dark side?
'I think part of him would think that playing the greatest hits would have been phoning it in. That would have been easy,' Levesque said. 'My mind went to how we could make this exciting, memorable and different. I came back to the idea that he should turn heel. When we first had the conversation with John about it, he was immediately intrigued by it.'
Cena is protective when it comes to talking about his last dance in the ring, declining to get into the specifics. He is a storyteller, and he won't go there, especially when he hasn't even gotten to the best part yet.
'I don't want to spoil making it real for the guy in the third row,' he said. 'Any reflection I give on a moment or any of that might be interpreted as stripping away the magic. But a lot of folks are talking about it, so I'm very happy.'
Stardom was not a given for Cena, the second of five boys, when he was growing up in West Newbury, Mass. It was the last thing on his mind when he moved to Southern California after college to pursue bodybuilding. His first West Coast 'home' was a 1991 Lincoln Continental; he slept in the parking lot of the Gold's Gym where he worked in Venice Beach, Calif. But the optimistic outlook he would become known for was already present. 'I was doing what I wanted to do. I got to shower at the gym and work out at the same place Arnold trained,' he said. 'It was everything I wanted. So I wasn't stuck living in my car. I was grateful for living in my car.'
His wrestling success grew out of a series of 'crazy accidents' as he called them. His memorable 2002 TV debut happened only because the W.W.E. Hall of Famer the Undertaker got sick and someone else was needed to fill a segment. When Cena's momentum stalled out early on and he was on the verge of being released by W.W.E., his bosses saw him freestyle rapping on a plane and decided that should be his new gimmick. It immediately caught fire, and his rise to the top was underway.
Cena became The Guy during W.W.E.'s effort to be more of a TV-PG product at a time when enthusiasm toward the genre was dropping following an era when sex, profanity and shocking violence brought pro wrestling to new heights. He became a new standard-bearer in the ring.
'He's the Michael Jordan of wrestling,' said Kurt Angle, a W.W.E. Hall of Famer and 1996 Olympic gold medalist who faced Cena in his TV debut. 'He committed himself to wrestling entirely — and he drowned himself in it.'
Some loved his squeaky-clean character. Others hated him because they felt like he was forced on them. A divide became clear: children and women embraced him while many men and, especially, hardcore wrestling fans, rejected him. In the 2000s and 2010s, W.W.E. arenas were regularly filled with dueling chants — Let's go Cena! Cena sucks!
Levesque, a 14-time champion himself, saw the polarizing reaction as a good thing when they worked together in the main event of WrestleMania 22. 'You're the Yankees and the Red Sox, but on one team,' he recalled saying to him. 'This crowd hates you and this crowd loves you. But the truth is, it's sold out, so who cares? There's box office if you win or lose.'
There was plenty of box office, even though it came at the expense of many relationships. Cena divorced his first wife in 2012 after three years of marriage; his high-profile engagement to Nikki Bella, a fellow W.W.E. star, ended a month before their planned wedding in 2018.
'Early on in my career, when I wasn't a good husband, I wouldn't say no to anything because I was tunnel-visioned on the plan,' he said. 'I was a [bad] son. I was a bad brother. I was not a good husband. But I was a great wrestler, and I was a great employee for W.W.E. because that was the plan.'
The man behind much of that plan for Cena was Vince McMahon, the biggest promoter in professional wrestling history and the former CEO and chairman of W.W.E. McMahon left W.W.E. and its parent company, TKO Group Holdings, in 2024 after he was accused of sex trafficking and other acts of sexual misconduct. (He has denied the allegations.) When asked about what it's like to be at the end of his career in the ring without McMahon around for it, Cena said he is a big believer in accountability but that McMahon still means a lot to him.
'I don't care who hears it: I love Vince,' Cena said. 'I'm not downplaying anything that needs to be decided or allegations of any kind, but when I love somebody, I love them wholeheartedly.' He added, 'I know people are going to be angry about that, but they can't put their value on my relationship with somebody I love.'
Cena's devotion to W.W.E. is why he grudgingly agreed to try out acting in the forgettable action movies produced by the company, like 'The Marine' and '12 Rounds.' They both bombed. 'I failed, even if my heart wasn't in it,' Cena said, looking back on those roles. It seemed like his window for being in movies was closed for good.
He was wrong. He just needed time — and he had to be funny.
If Cena has a signature role, it's that of Peacemaker, a cocky, all-American antihero who is part of the DC Comics universe. One of Peacemaker's most memorable moments is a scene in 'The Suicide Squad' when the character explains in vulgar detail what he would do if (just go with it) a beach covered in penises stood between him and his mission. The line was improvised by Cena and it took every ounce of restraint in Idris Elba's being to keep himself from cracking up and blowing the scene.
'Honestly, he was like two different people. His improvisations would come out of nowhere. He would keep going, and I was fascinated by it,' Elba said over Zoom. 'He's a man of mystery. What we all think and see he is in his performance, whether it's wrestling or acting, is very different from who he is in real life.'
Over the course of two hours, the real-life Cena was polite and present, never breaking eye contact or looking at his phone. GQ once noted that his handshake is 'capable of engulfing a lesser handshake like a black hole.' That is accurate. His trailer features items you would expect (a bowl of protein bars, tubs of protein powder) and one you might not (a 2023 neuroscience book by the tech entrepreneur Max Bennett that theorizes on the evolution of human intelligence).
'Never thought I would have something like this in my hand, and I'm not on the level to read this,' he said. 'But I'm curious.'
He credits his curiosity for acting to the people who took chances on him after his flops. Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer and Tina Fey all saw him as more than just a wrestler. He flexed his comedy muscles alongside Schumer in 'Trainwreck' and Fey in 'Sisters' before handling a lead role in 'Blockers' (2018).
Gunn saw something more while filming 'The Suicide Squad,' which inspired the spinoff 'Peacemaker' series on Max. (Season 2 premieres in August.) Gunn was giving Cena a note about what Peacemaker should feel as he's on the verge of killing his teammate, when he saw the actor 'thinking on film' and becoming vulnerable in a way that told him that Cena was more than just a comedic savant.
'A lot of actors, including a lot of wrestlers-turned-actors, are incapable of it. But in that moment, you could see Peacemaker's broken heart as he was about to stupidly choose to kill someone he liked because of his ideals,' Gunn said. 'That moment of sadness was the seed for two seasons of television.'
During down time on set, Cena has time to reflect on his current crossroads.
'I'm really trying to appreciate everything — every second on the canvas, every moment I can hug my wife, sitting in the trailer with my heater blasting since it's snowing in Slovakia.'
If his time is almost up in the ring, then his time is now in Hollywood (or so he hopes). So, with that in mind, the question was asked: Do you think people see you now? He laughed and spoke for two minutes to set up the reply. It felt like the beginnings of a speech he would give in the ring on an episode of 'Monday Night RAW.' Then, he delivered his final answer in a rapid succession of statements.
'I don't care if anyone remembers me. I don't care if anyone sees me. I don't care if anyone knows me.'
A brief pause.
'But I do hope there is an understanding out there that I never shortchanged anybody, through wrong decisions or right decisions. I have given all I have. If I had to do it again, I don't know if I could squeeze another drop of effort.'
And finally:
'I don't think I could have given any more.'
That's usually the moment his theme song would hit and roars would erupt from the crowd. But today it was just the barely-there sound of snow falling in the Slovakian countryside.