Cody Rhodes has opened up about his time wrestling John Cena, and “one area” the WWE icon never quite grasped.
Cody Rhodes reveals the “one area” of wrestling John Cena never quite got right.
The former WWE Champion worked with the retired wrestler extensively during his farewell tour in 2025, and he has opened up about one key aspect the 17-time world champ didn’t grasp over his legendary career.
Appearing on the Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast, he said: “John is pretty great at the magic, except for one area that is widely known to wrestling fans and wrestlers.
“John will not talk low, or in ‘carny.'”
Rhodes explained that while most WWE superstars try to communicate quietly or silently with each other in the ring, often using a made up language, that wasn’t how Cena did things.
He quipped: “John yells everything that is going to happen in the ring as loud as he can possibly yell it. He calls it for the first four rows, an interactive experience.”
Rhodes insisted Cena kept that up throughout his final bouts, including the last time they wrestled each other at SummerSlam 2025, months before he had his farewell match against GUNTHER at Saturday Night’s Main Event.
The 41-year-old star recalled: “The last match I had with him at SummerSlam, he’s about to slam me with his big finishing move, which is the Attitude Adjustment, from a table to another table.
“It’s highly dangerous. It’s going to hurt. We’re going to do it the safest way we can. But you can hear him yelling at me while I’m on his shoulders that he can’t see because my arm is over his eyes.
“I never spoke back to John, I never wanted to speak back, he’s a mentor to me. But it was one of those moments where I thought, ‘Buddy, I’m the one doing it. I don’t give a s***. Just throw me.'”
Elsewhere in the chat, Rhodes admitted he felt “trepidatious” about being involved in Cena’s heel turn, which is wrestling slang for a character becoming a ‘bad guy’, after decades as a fan favourite.
He said: “With John, if you’ve ever seen it, the moment where he hugs me and his face changes, he was so excited.
“I was more trepidatious in terms of he had never done that and it didn’t even make sense to do it at this point.
“He had never gone rogue, gone bad. So I just didn’t want to screw that massive moment up.”
Cody Rhodes reveals one wrestling skill John Cena never mastered
