John Cena loves pro wrestling even if the bright lights of Hollywood call him far too often at this point. The moments he spends in the ring are special to him and one famous moment apparently tugged at the 16x World Champion’s heartstrings a bit as well.
During the AEW Unrestricted podcast, Mark Henry spoke about a famous moment in WWE history where he turned heel on John Cena. This was after Henry cut an emotional, and faked, retirement speech.
“It was real that’s why it worked so well because I truly wanted to retire and not wrestle and become more of an executive, and do more coaching, and training and work in support, but they didn’t want me to do that. They wanted me to keep working as talent, so I was basically going to retire anyway, and Vince [McMahon] just talked me out of it. I knew for about four months, but I still prepared like I was retiring that night, and it was one of the more emotional moments in my life because I mourned the death of my career.”
“And that’s the way that I looked at it. That’s why I was so emotional. It was over, and when I put the boots on the steps and I walked through the ring, I said everything that I would have said at a retirement. And my kids did cry at that time when I left home. It used to hurt me being on the plane going, I’m gonna miss ballet, I’m gonna miss tap dance recitals I’m gonna miss my kids who are in a band. It was tough. It was easy to draw the emotion of the moment because it was real.”
John Cena was there, and it was still real to him. The waterworks were coming from Cena as Henry revealed what happened next, and what transpired after they left the ring to go backstage.
“I just knew that, at some point, I’m gonna have to shut the waterworks off and focus on doing business with John Cena, and John Cena was standing at ringside. And it was really impromptu. It wasn’t something that was planned. John tried to give me the title, and I just told him, ‘No, I don’t deserve to hold that. I never won that. I’m not gonna do it,’ and he just started crying because I had emotionally got to him.”
“When I looked over there and I saw him crying, I was like, oh, shoot, this is different. I knew it was different. From the time that a lot left in the tank came out of my mouth to walking in the back, when I got in the back, for the first time in my career, and it was the end of my career, all the wrestlers were in the back waiting on me. It was like walking into a concert crowd.”
“You walk off the stage and walk into the people. Everybody was there, and everybody was applauding and clapping, kind of coming up and hugging me. I was like, damn, I would’ve retire A long time ago if I knew I would have gotten everyone’s attention. That will always gonna be one moment in my career that I’ll treasure.”
John Cena is back for a Summer of Cena tour, so he might be involved in another special angle in the future. Only time will tell if he will find himself in another situation like Mark Henry’s fake retirement, a moment that lives on during highlight reels. Of course, WWE isn’t likely to show that scene too often now that Mark Henry left the company for their AEW competition. It still made for a great moment.
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