John Cena on his father: “There’s some sh*t he’ll say that’s all f*cked up”
While appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast, John Cena discussed his relationship with his father John Cena Senior…
“I had such a shitty relationship with my dad, and just recently we’ve mended fences. He’s 80, so I’m glad I’ve done this, because we don’t last forever. He’s going, we’re all going in the dirt soon, you know? But I just wanted him to be something else. I always wanted that motherf*cker to change. I wanted him to be something else. And finally, I got out of my own way.
The hard thing is meeting that guy where he’s at. The hard thing is allowing him to be who he is, taking the weight off my backpack and saying, ‘Yo, I might have needed you to be this in my life, but because you weren’t — because of your absence in being the dad I had in my mind — I got all these cool male mentors.'”
Guys who gave me a key to the gym at 15 and said, ‘You better be here in the morning.’ Dude, I can still feel a key in my hand from Dave Nock. The dean of students at Coaching Academy who bet on me — he said, ‘Man, if you get your grades from C’s to A’s and you play two varsity sports, this place costs, in ’94, 35 grand a year. We will give you aid, and you will have a place to learn.’ And that allowed me to become an adult.
It gave me the opportunity to be in a diverse group of students. Man, there’s royalty that goes to that school, and there’s poor kids. My roommate was a basketball player from Compton. Then you’ve got kids with generational wealth, their names on buildings. But when it’s just 450 kids in a social experiment, money goes away and you just kick it. So I learned to be friends with everybody.
I wouldn’t have learned that in West Newbury, where it’s 99.9% white, 1,200 people, no stoplights. You either leave or you never leave. Little things like that. You know what I’m saying? Little things that make you go, ‘Man, I should do this.’
And deciding to meet my dad where he’s at, like, ‘Dude, whatever I thought you were, you’re not. You’re just you, and I love you for you.’
And man, when we sit, there’s some sh*t he’ll say that’s all f*cked up. He said something sh*t like, “I don’t think John’s last opponent should be…‘ And people listen to him because he’s a wrestling fan — he’s kind of in the weird subculture zeitgeist. And I want to call my dad and be like, ‘What the f*ck are you doing?’
But then I’m like, no — he’s doing what he does. This is him. This is the dad I love. This is the John Cena I love. This is the guy I can sit down with. And part of that is being able to process all of it. But the opportunity I get from that of learning about my father’s story.”