John Cena recently spoke about his involvement in the main event of WrestleMania 41, and he shares the same opinion as many wrestling fans.
Speaking to Uncrowned at Yahoo Sports during a recent interview, the retired legend said of the match that he “took a big swing at WrestleMania and we stunk up the joint. We failed.”
In the main event of night two of WrestleMania 41, Cena defeated Cody Rhodes to capture his record 17th WWE world championship. While fans witnessed history in the match, they also
sat through Cena’s odd heel turn where he was attempting to “kill wrestling” by moving at a plodding tempo and applying a lot of holds.
On top of that, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — who had been heavily involved in the angle — was nowhere to be seen, and rap star Travis Scott instead interfered.
Needless to say, fans weren’t impressed, and Cena’s heel run was soon scrapped.
But speaking to Uncrowned, he said that taking such chances is important, even if things don’t exactly pan out as intended.
He told journalist Anthony Sulla-Heffinger that he often speaks to young talent “swing big and don’t be afraid to fail.”
“A lot of them think I’m talking from a glass house of like, ‘Yeah, sure, it must be easy for you, because you, you never fail.’ And then I’ll look back, especially on that last year because the retirement tour did have a lot of eyes, and I’ll say I took a big swing at WrestleMania and we stunk up the joint. We failed,“ Cena said.
He continued, “But what did I do? I got back up, we dusted ourselves off, course-corrected the ship, and we culminated with a fantastic finishing of the story, as Cody would put it, at SummerSlam.”
Cena also said his final match against Gunther was another example of taking a risk.
“As far as the last match goes, gosh, there were a lot of easy routes we could have gone creatively, and I appreciate the bold swing at the end. So, it’s authentically me. I didn’t leave anything in the tank physically,” he said. “I gave it my all, got to work with a great opponent. I thought we had an ending that surely everybody talked about. Regardless of whether it was acclaimed or criticized, it sparked conversation and thought, which I think is really cool.”
What do you think of Cena’s assessments of WrestleMania 41 and his last match against Gunther? Let us know in the comments.
