On June 27th 2002, John Cena made his WWE debut, confronting Kurt Angle on an edition of Friday Night Smackdown. Cena would famously shout that he possessed Ruthless Aggression and socked Angle in the face with a punch. Cena would lose the match, but he put in a good showing in his WWE debut.
20 years on, WWE are celebrating John Cena month as we draw closer to the anniversary of his debut. Cena has even took time out of his schedule to film content for the WWE, including a rewatch of his own debut where he shared some nuggets with fans. Including how he would have done things differently now.
“I found out at 2:45 in the afternoon that I’d be wrestling Kurt Angle. I had one meeting with Mr. McMahon before this, and I was pushed into his office and Michael Hayes asked like, ‘What do we do with this?’, and Mr. McMahon’s first sentence to me, it was a short meeting. He said, ‘Cut his fucking hair, and then I was out of the office,”
“Here I am, in fact, shaking hands and everybody and all that and this is awesome. This is an awesome moment. Certainly, it was pretty genuine. Everyone’s like ‘Hey, maybe you did really good. Let’s put it on tape.’ But here I am, intimidated by The Undertaker, John Cena. If I am aggressive and ruthless, I wouldn’t really be intimidated by anybody, right? I might not ask to shake Kurt’s hand or any of that. You know, here I am, marveling at my own hand because The Undertaker shook my hand. If I really embodied ruthless aggression and kicked him in the nuts, you know, or bowed up to him and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to take that championship in a week or so.’ It’s such a — man, it is not a shame because it was a good learning experience. The story turned out okay, but especially now after I see the match, I see the audience and where they lose interest. You have to slow down, you have to tell a story. Just doing what I was told in performances like that almost got me fired, and I can see why because you look at the audience, nobody cares.”
John Cena on WWE’s Youtube
Of course, the visual of babyfaced John Cena kicking the WWE Champion in the nuts would have been amazing, it’s probably for the best he didn’t.
H/T to Fightful for transcription
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