What Vince McMahon Really Thought Of John Cena’s WWE Rapper Gimmick
John Cena has given Vince McMahon’s true feelings on the rapper gimmick that launched Cena’s WWE career.
When John Cena debuted on the WWE main roster in the summer of 2002, he looked and sounded like a generic wrestler. Cena has told the story many times that he thought he would be fired by the end of that year, but after he rapped on a bus in Europe and Stephanie McMahon heard it, his career was saved.
Since Stephanie was part of the creative team at the time, Cena dressed up as rapper Vanilla Ice at the Halloween SmackDown party in 2002 and wowed the audience with his rapping skills. After that, Cena’s rapper gimmick started getting huge reactions since he wasn’t afraid to say edgy things. By late 2003, Cena had become a popular babyface rapper, and the fans loved him for it.
At the time of Cena’s rapper gimmick, rap music had really taken off over the previous decade, making him cool in the eyes of fans. What about his boss, Vince McMahon?
On the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Cena revealed that his former WWE boss, Vince McMahon, hated the rapper gimmick at first but later came to love it.
“Hated it and then loved it. I think I’m thinking for somebody, but I think his perspective is, when I hear somebody’s idea for a personality, ‘Man, I want to be this sports agent guy or whatever.’ Oh, I have the idea of what that is in my head, and if their projection of that idea doesn’t match my projection of that idea, I’m like ‘ah f**k, I hate it.’ But that doesn’t mean it can’t work.
“So I think maybe what happened was my perspective of the white hip-hop guy from the mean street of West Newberry and Vince’s perspective of John Cena the rapper, we probably missed. He had an idea and I had an idea. And usually he will craft it to his vision. I got to give him respect for allowing me to run with it.” (Wrestletalk)
John Cena Will Face Gunther In Final WWE Match
At WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event on December 13th in Washington, D.C., John Cena will compete in his final WWE match because he plans to retire as a wrestler.
Over the past month, a 16-man Last Time Is Now Tournament took place on Raw and SmackDown. In the tournament finals on SmackDown in Austin, former World Champion Gunther beat former US Champion LA Knight in a physical match, forcing Knight to tap out.
That means that at Saturday Night’s Main Event, Gunther will face Cena for the first time ever in what will be Cena’s last WWE match.
After his win on SmackDown, Gunther emphatically spoke into the camera and told Cena that he will finally and definitely give up.
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