John Cena says that he privately told Austin Theory everything he said in his promo on WWE RAW.
Cena returned to WWE on the March 6 episode of WWE RAW, and he delivered a memorable promo in which he stated that Theory was not ready for a WrestleMania match with him. He also called out the way WWE uses piped-in crowd noise for his matches because no one cares.
Speaking with Sam Roberts on Notsam Wrestling, Cena recalled how he privately told Theory that he didn’t believe what he does. Cena noted that he came back and appeared on WWE RAW in Boston because he felt like Theory couldn’t carry a WrestleMania program by himself yet.
“Fans can see through the BS if you don’t believe in your character,” Cena said. “It’s what I said to Austin Theory. Dude, you are young, you are athletic, you will work for this company, you’ll do interviews, you’ll do X, Y, and Z. I don’t believe what you do when you’re out there. I don’t. I said it to him personally before I said it publicly.
“In a room with Austin Theory, I said the reason I came back to Boston is because you can’t do this yourself yet. You cannot carry a WrestleMania program yourself yet, and if you fail, we waste the equity that I’m willing to give, and if in that match, I get hurt, I hold up the production, which puts 300 people out of work. Let’s do this right. Let’s get some equity here. Then you have to start thinking angles to be angles and go, well, what’s the most important thing? What are we really trying to tell? What’s our story? I don’t believe what you do. That’s what I’m going with.”
Earlier in the interview, Cena recalled the promo while he highlighted the way WWE uses piped-in noise for Theory, and he described how they worked on it together. He noted that everyone has a different process, but at the end of the day, his job is to make people care.
“Austin is great and easy to work with, and we wrote that together,” Cena said. “He was in every step of the process. There comes a point where you need some creative… sometimes people need creative solitude, so like I’m gonna go away and write my thing, then come back and run it by you and see if it’s okay. There are some guys that are like, ‘See you out there.’ I can dress for weddings or funerals, man, just tell me what color suit to wear. I don’t mind, I respect everyone’s process.”
The video version of the interview is available below:
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