John Cena Confesses To Violating Vince McMahon’s Trust: “I’m Such An Idiot”
John Cena explains how a selfish choice he made jeopardized the trust he had built with Vince McMahon over many years.
In a new interview with the Wild Card podcast, The Last Real Champion was asked whether he had made any decisions that compromised his moral values for personal gain. In response, Cena recalled the incident where he put money over integrity, which almost caused him to break Vince McMahon’s trust.
John Cena Put Years of Vince McMahon’s Trust At Risk Over Money
John Cena stated that he once tried to invest in an entrepreneurial social network startup without telling his boss, Vince McMahon. When McMahon found out, instead of lashing out at him, he walked him through the choice he had made and the repercussions he would’ve had to face.
Within five minutes, Cena realized that he was being greedy and righted his wrong by calling off the deal. He felt immense regret and guilt for violating Vince McMahon’s trust, whom he considered “more than just a boss.”
So, the answer to that is yes, and I’m faced with those all the time. I think we all are. Those are my most teachable moments. And those are the ones I reflect on with guilt, borderline shame.
Because you define your values and you define how you want to live, and if an opportunity comes where you’re like, ‘Oh man, this could be really good, but it’s not who I am,’ people see through that immediately. Immediately.
And then you feel guilt of like IOUs, or paper IOUs are cool, but the currency you have is your integrity. It’s who you are. And, you know, ‘everything and everybody’s got a price’ is a real comment. You just got to be accountable. That weighs heavy. It’s heavy.
Uh, I think one time I tried to get involved with an entrepreneurial social network startup, and I didn’t tell my boss. And we talk about everything. This was like, man, we’re going to do this together.
And in potentially being part of this startup, my name’s John Cena, so I would essentially be leveraging intellectual property. And I love and trust my boss. He’s far more than my boss. The big boss. Vince McMahon, yeah.
I was just trying to get more money. Simply. I have my own philosophy on social network, so I’m very limited in my use by design. So it’s not something I’m interested in. Not too fond of limited-access stuff.
And this was a curated idea that seemed nice. But I looked at the projections, and man, my boss found out. And to be honest, he was great. He was great. He walked me through the, ‘Okay, this is the choice you’ve made.
Let’s walk through all the tentacles of what might happen.’ And in a moment where it was a direct violation of trust to somebody I had worked years with, and he invested years in trusting me too.
So it was a moment where he could have just gone nuclear. Because, man, trust takes years to build and moments to destroy. And he didn’t. He didn’t. He had patience and tolerance, and I think possibly, as an entrepreneur himself, maybe he tried to put himself in my shoes and walked me through it.
It took five minutes or less to realize, like, I’m such an idiot. And I immediately called the company back and said, ‘I’m out. This isn’t for me.’ I really do like that perspective also. We can’t see it all. The term blind spots, I think, is incredible. And everyone has a different perspective.”
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