John Cena’s Incredible Gesture To NXT Talents Revealed

Known for being an inspiration in and out of the ring as well as his wrestling abilities, it seems John Cena went above and beyond for those early in their WWE career.

Whilst his career may now be more heavily in Hollywood than it is inside the squared circle, John Cena still gets the respect he deserves for his time in professional wrestling, including being the cover star of the latest 2K game. He’ll also be back in action at WrestleMania 39, when he challenges Austin Theory for the United States Championship.

However, Theory has been quick to acknowledge that Cena played a part in both his and many other stars when they were part of the black and gold brand back in the day.

In a discussion with Chris Van Vliet, Austin Theory spoke of the time John Cena came along to the Performance Center to talk to the talent, when many of them hadn’t even made their televised debut at the time.

Man, the first conversation came about, and it’s funny because I brought up that photo that he posted on his Instagram. It was at the Performance Center one day and we were all leaving. We got told, ‘Hey, just everybody stay. We’re gonna have a little meeting before everybody leaves’, and out comes John Cena. He took the time out of his day to come down there and talk to everybody that’s aspiring to be on the main roster. A lot of us weren’t even on NXT TV then. So this was the very beginning for me.

Austin Theory went on to discuss how he then got to spend some time talking one-on-one with Cena.

He told us ‘I’ll answer any questions you guys have but if there’s anybody that wants to talk to me personally, I’ll stay here all day. I’ll go into this office room and you guys one by one can come in there.’ I remember waiting like three hours to talk to him and I just went in there, I remember the first thing I showed him was the picture of me as a kid where I couldn’t afford the actual shirt and wristbands, so I made my off brand stuff. I was eight years old and I showed him the picture and was like ‘Man, this is probably crazy but check it out.’ He was like ‘That’s not crazy, that was awesome.’

We got to sit there, I really just asked everything I could because this is the source, this is the man that held it down for well over a decade. It was a lot for me to take in at the time, you know, because he was spitting knowledge but I’m still, woah, this is John Cena. I’m just trying to take everything in. That moment specifically I’ll never forget.

Also in the interview, Austin Theory discussed Vince McMahon taking away his first name, and how he got it back.

With thanks to WrestlingNews.co and Fightful for the transcription.