John Cena Reflects on His WrestleMania 39 Match: What I Have Is What You Saw
John Cena stepped back inside a WWE ring at WrestleMania 39 last month, opening the two-night event by challenging Austin Theory for the United States Championship. The Fast X star lost the bout in just over 11 minutes thanks to a ref bump and some underhanded cheating from Theory, leaving some fans underwhelmed by the overall match. Cena was on Busted Open Radio this week to help promote Fast X and talked about the match, saying it was the best he can physically do at this point in his career. Despite pivoting into a part-time role, Cena has maintained a presence in WWE with more than 30 matches in the past five years.
"I wish I was still there every day, it's just my body can't do it anymore and I don't wanna give the consumer a bad product," Cena said (h/t Fightful). "That's another thing that I learned from those veterans. At the time, guys like Eddie (Guerrero) would just risk so much [just in the name of not] giving the consumer a bad product. I don't care how I feel, I don't care how I feel physically, I don't care what baggage I have mentally, when I'm on, they paid good money and I'm gonna go out there and give everything I have and sometimes find it when it's not there.
"I'm at a point where everything I have, in comparison to the bar that's been set... what I have is what you saw at WrestleMania 39. That's what I feel confident that I can deliver, and that's really nice for here and there, but that's not every day in WWE. Sports entertainment has raised the bar and I'm humble enough to say that's awesome, because you're supposed to leave it better than you found it," he continued.
Cena revealed elsewhere in the interview that he talked with Theory for a whopping 10 hours to iron out the story between the two. This resulted in just one face-to-face promo between the two, which fans felt resulted in Cena "burying" Theory.
"...So with me, if you put me in that conversation, I could only help the person that I was working with while I was working with him," Cena said. "The reputation I had in the sauce while I was in it was that I buried talent because I would really invest my wholeheartedness. I sat with Austin Theory for like 10 hours. Not wasted a day, invested a day, to talk about our why, like, what's our story going to be? I would do that with everyone. I live it."