During a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Cena revealed that he knew the outcome of the match a year in advance and held himself responsible for his real-life tension with The Rock.
On the line between entertainment & realism: “This was a wonderful journey to get to this. Lots of live moments before this WrestleMania. In sports entertainment, sometimes we do tow the gray area between entertainment and realism. I think that’s a lot of the cache that WWE and sports entertainment has. Everyone who shows up knows it’s entertainment. What was special about this is a lot of the moments along the way crossed the lines of, hey, I know this is sports entertainment, but man, those guys really hate each other.”
On the match between him and Rock: “The two of us had mixed opinions of each other going into this. When you get to this moment, to plan what is really happening, what are we really trying to sell? Because you’re putting your life in somebody’s hands. This is the one thing we couldn’t wing it out there because it involves the physical wellbeing of others. When you get to this moment, after all this s*it talking for a year, you get two abrasive and strong-minded professionals in the same room, we do what’s right for the business. That one moment between Dwayne and I melding our personalities, that’s when, at least from my perspective, I started to build a friendship with Dwayne Johnson. Dwayne had always been cordial to me and helped me out. I did something foolish and I started to go into business for myself and drum up rumors about things I knew nothing about, which were great for [the match], but it’s very much a professional faux pa. He finally shows up and he goes one way, I go another, we never talk and what you see play out on screen is very genuine. If we had only just talked about our shortcomings, if I had only said I’m sorry, I think we would’ve skipped all that but you would’ve missed out on great programming.”
On apologizing to Rock’s mother: “After the show is over, the very first thing I do is apologize to Dwayne’s mother because she was the first person I saw. I apologized and said, ‘I hope you understand that I was just trying to do what was best for tonight.’ She having the wisdom and experience, she was extremely gracious and a class act like she always is. But it was importantly for me to get that weight off my backpack. Then, went right into Dwayne’s locker room and apologized to him. That was the first moment of me being like, ‘Man, this was great. If we had worked together, I don’t know how great it could have been, it could’ve been so much better.’ He was emphatic, he was gracious. I think he was riding high off of the moment because everybody loved it. You put all this equity into putting your heart out there and if they don’t get it, well, now your heart is out there and that’s the best you’ve got and they’re not into it. They were into this. That’s always kind of the healing power between two people in a WWE feud is when the audience is entertained. It kind of helps patch up whatever bad blood there is.”
On when he knew he would be losing: “I knew I was losing the year before the fight. All of those promos you see, all those speeches, every single one of them, I knew that I was gonna finish second place. Amazingly enough, getting to this stage was like a catharsis, ‘Finally, we can do this.’ It didn’t affect my trajectory. As a matter of fact, it fueled me more to try and do better work.”
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