Samoa Joe Recalls John Cena In Chicken Eating Competition Early In Their Careers

Boys will be boys and they will also eat a lot of chicken when hungry as Samoa Joe tells an interesting story about John Cena and Frankie Kazarian.

When they were young men just getting started in pro wrestling, John Cena and Samoa were training to wrestle at Ultimate Pro Wrestling in California. This was nearly 25 years ago. There are photos and even videos of the two wrestling legends training together.

In the photo below, Joe is on the right while Cena is in the middle.

While John Cena became one of the greatest WWE superstars ever over the last 20+ years, Samoa Joe was a Ring of Honor and TNA/Impact World Champion before he went to WWE in 2015. Once there, he had some success in the company, but he never became a WWE World Champion.

A lot of fans wanted to see a high-profile feud between Cena and Joe just based on their history together. While they did have some matches at live events and tag team match on television as well as competing at Survivor Series in a tag team match, there was never a Samoa Joe-John Cena singles match on WWE TV. That’s definitely a missed opportunity.

During an interview on the Doughboys podcast, Samoa Joe recalled a time early in their careers when John Cena and Frankie Kazarian got into a chicken-eating competition while Joe’s dad made them the food late at night.

“This goes back to when I started. It was John Cena and Frankie Kazarian. We were at my house, we just got done doing a wrestling show, it was probably midnight and we were crashing at my pad because we had another show the next day. My pops, great host, no matter what time of night. It’s midnight and my dad starts cooking. He cooks a pan of chicken breast and all this stuff. There’s about five of us.”

“The guys start eating and there are two sheet trays, completely full, with grilled chicken breast. I had one or two. John and Frankie start going one to one on grilled chicken. They get through two trays. I was amazed my dad whipped up two trays. ‘What are you doing, pop?’ They get through two trays of chicken.”

“They’re now face-to-face and just trying to shovel it in like, ‘I’m not giving up before you give up.’ Finally, they finished all the chicken in the house, there was nothing left to eat, and they called it a draw. They probably both ate six pounds of chicken, if not more.” (H/T Fightful)

The training video below features John Cena, Samoa Joe, Frankie Kazarian, Christopher Daniels, and others. The video quality isn’t great, but it’s a neat thing for wrestling fans to check out.