John Cena Renounces Previous Criticisms He Had About WWE's Current Product

Heading into WrestleMania 36, John Cena sat down with Corey Graves for an incredibly insightful [...]

By Connor Casey

Heading into WrestleMania 36, John Cena sat down with Corey Graves for an incredibly insightful interview on the After The Bell podcast in April 2020. The interview included a question where the 16-time champion was asked what the current generation of WWE stars needs to do to stand out from WWE's previous eras. Cena said it needed to be defined by its top stars, but argued that none could stand out due to how divided the wrestling fanbase can be.

"It [the generation] needs what I'm not sure it can produce, and that's just a state of where everything is now. Which is weird because it kind of always corrects itself. Where in a day and age where it needs a frontman or woman, and that's what will be able to define what the era is because it takes on those personality traits of its top star. Like I've said before I don't know if, all things considered, the crowd is so mixed that if the company puts its faith behind an individual, the knee-jerk reaction of the audience — even if they liked the guy last week — is to say, 'F— you, you're not going to tell me who I like!' So the audience is also tipping the scales of this not being able to happen."

"Universal popularity will never happen because someone will see it and get onto it and be like, 'He seems to be getting popular, let's stop this right now. Or, 'She's getting popular, let's change this right now,'" he continued. "And I've seen it happen with guys that are really darlings of that underground crew make it, and then as soon as they make it,the rug is pulled out from under them."

However, in a new interview with Forbes this week, Cena walked back those original comments. He then named Drew McIntyre, Roman Reigns and Sasha Banks as marquee stars for the current generation.

"I think it's bold, it's forcing people to take chances. Forbes did an article on me back in 2020 where I had said that I don't believe that WWE will ever have a marquee star. And here we are, less than a year later, and I can blatantly say I was wrong. You wanna talk about being too close to the product? I was just too close. Having seen it, having lived it myself, I should have just realized that the company is in transition. It takes a long time —I would say it's three-and-a-half years or more — to build a certain talent because I've walked in those shoes."

"Now you have Drew McIntyre and Roman Reigns, Sasha Banks can be in that conversation, but it's not what I said it was in 2020. It's not a scattered fragment of Super Friends. WWE has just refocused, re-shifted and now is consolidating on marquee stars. They have their marquee stars, and going forward they will have their big names. As far as those names being larger than life, the enormity of their impact is up to the individuals themselves."

Trending Now: