Watch: John Cena Candidly Explains Why He Stays Out of WWE While Filming Movies

2018 has been John Cena's thinnest year as a WWE Superstar. However, Cena's absence is justified by his hustle to become a made man in Hollywood. And in a recent interview, Cena explained why it's impossible to be John Cena the wrestler and John Cena the actor at the same time.

During a sitdown with ESPN, Cena discussed why he's not allowed, and not exactly interested in trying to do two things at once.

"Anything that you rely on your body for an end result, time is gonna catch up with you," Cena said. "So there is gonna come a point where I can no longer keep up with the pace. I made a promise to myself years ago, years before I ever found my passion for being on screen, when I cant't keep up with the pace, I gotta walk away. I don't wanna take a ticket buyers money and have them sit down and be like, 'Eh, he's just hanging on'. I don't ever want that feeling. So, I don't think that correlates with what I'm doing now. The biggest difficulty is trying to juggle stuff because 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. Because I can't go to a WWE taping and have my nose put over here," he said.

An injury for Cena doesn't just keep him off of movie screens but could effectively ruin an entire film project.

"Not only doesn't it look good, it's, 'Man, you don't look right.' So they shut the whole movie down, (there are) 150 people that are expecting a paycheck for that movie and I just screwed them out of their wage. It ups the budget of the movie, so I just put the movie behind the eight ball of possibly being a financial success."

Cena has drawn cries of hypocrisy since going all-in on his Hollywood ambition. It wasn't that long ago when Cena was blasting The Rock for ditched WWE for movie roles, and in 2018, Cena is doing exactly the same thing.

"As much as I want to do everything, you can't," Cena explained. "And this is a giant misunderstanding that I had about what Dwayne was doing, about what The Rock was doing. Because he does movie after movie, after movie, after movie, and I know the feeling of wanting to go back. And I'm going back as soon as I can, but I can't go back until I'm done with this. So, I totally get it. And I kinda called him out for it and that was me being an ass, and I was totally wrong, and ignorant, and young, and stupid, and I've told him I'm sorry but I think that's something our fans don't understand," he said.

[H/T Wrestling Inc.]