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What the story?
On December 21st, the Transformers spin-off – Bumblebee – will hit theaters nationwide with John Cena as one of the stars of the film. The former WWE champion spoke with ESPN about his upcoming film and explains the reason why he doesn’t wrestle inside the ring during film production.
In Case You Didn’t Know…
John Cena has arguably become one of Hollywood’s biggest leading men since his breakout role in 2015’s Trainwreck. Since then, the former WWE champion’s time inside the squared circle has noticeably diminished.
After WrestleMania season this past year, Cena’s appearances were limited with the company. He faced and defeated Triple several weeks later at The Greatest Royal Rumble and then disappeared off to Hollywood for more film and television work.
Cena returned in a tag team match with Bobby Lashley at WWE Super Show-Down in Melbourne, Australia and successfully fended off Kevin Owens and Elias. The former World champion was originally scheduled to compete in the World Cup Tournament at Crown Jewel in November, but Cena was eventually replaced by Lashley, with reports claiming that Cena informed company officials that he would not be working the Saudi Arabia event based off the controversy of the murder of Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Since then, John has been working hard filming and his next project, Bumblebee, is set to be released later this month, which stars Academy Award nominee Hailee Steinfeld.
The heart of the matter
John Cena sat down with ESPN and discussed his role in the Transformers spinoff, along with the comparisons between acting and WWE amongst other topics; however, the former World champion also makes it clear why he’s unable to compete inside the ring during filming. Wrestling Inc was able to translate John Cena’s words from the interview:
"Anything that you rely on your body for an end result, time is gonna catch up with you," Cena said. "So there is gonna come a point where I can no longer keep up with the pace. I made a promise to myself years ago, years before I ever found my passion for being on screen, when I can't keep up with the pace, I gotta walk away. I don't wanna take a ticket buyers money and have them sit down and be like, 'Eh, he's just hanging on'. I don't ever want that feeling. So, I don't think that correlates with what I'm doing now. The biggest difficulty is trying to juggle stuff because I have learned, and I'm trying to fight this system but I'm losing, once you're in production for a movie, they don't allow you to wrestle. Because I can't go to a WWE taping and have my nose put over here.
"Not only doesn't it look good, it's, 'Man, you don't look right.' So they shut the whole movie down, (there are) 150 people that are expecting a paycheck for that movie and I just screwed them out of their wage. It ups the budget of the movie, so I just put the movie behind the eight ball of possibly being a financial success."
What’s Next?
The multi-time World champion is scheduled to return to WWE in Madison Square Garden on December 26. Cena has confirmed that he will be apart of WrestleMania season next year as well.
