John Cena joins Joe Rogan, revealing his Mandarin misstep in 2011—calling Taiwan a "country" during a Chinese press tour—sparked geopolitical backlash, forcing a public apology. WWE’s global push led him to study Mandarin for six months in Inner Mongolia, though he admits cultural fluency remains elusive. His wrestling career began after friends urged him to pursue it despite early skepticism from Vince McMahon, who later embraced his "white hip-hop guy" persona. Cena credits adaptability—like his viral raps or acting roles—to seizing opportunities, not fearing failure, and warns against privilege without effort. Comparing his journey to iShowSpeed’s fearless content creation, Rogan and Cena highlight how grit and curiosity shape success beyond rigid expectations. [Automatically generated summary]
Honestly, man, everything in my life seems to be wrestling related.
It was wrestling related.
Like WWE's reach spread everywhere.
I mean, I've been able to lucky enough to perform everywhere from like Moscow, Philippines, South Africa, Bangor, Maine, every place in between, except China.
China was like the one place that didn't understand what we did.
So it's literally like it's a universal language because you can turn, it's like UFC.
Like you turn the volume down, but you can see like, oh, this is two guys, best guy wins.
I get it.
The Chinese just didn't get it.
So I figured if like one of our superstars spoke the language, maybe that would help break down the barrier.
And we got into.
Is that your idea?
It was my idea, but the WWE offers, and I think they still offer it.
They offer a free second language program.
So like when they rolled out the initiative of like financial advice and, you know, they'll pay for portions of your secondary education and free second language.
This is like 2011, 2012, big talent meeting and like an auditorium.
I'm one of the old guys of the time sitting in the front being like, these kids don't know how good they have it.
I should stand up and tell them to be like, no, fuck that.
I'm actually going to lead by example and take a language.
So I signed up right then, then and there for Chinese because I wanted to get us into China.
It's wild how like expansive the pro wrestling business is that they would be that open-minded to say like let's let's give second language programs to the athletes.
Man, what was in the, I know what I read in the thing.
That's again, I don't know enough depth to know that.
And now, like, people are like, oh, man, can you speak Mandarin for this?
I just won't do it.
It's a skill that I have, but it's a skill that's going to remain with me because I don't have the depth of field to know what to call that place in that region of the world.
And I haven't done enough research and I don't have the wisdom and I don't have like the cultural fluency, you know?
So it was a cool lesson.
It sucked because I thought I was just trying to do something good, but it was a cool lesson.
Man, I thought, like, I was filming Peacemaker season one, and when they came out with all of this stuff, I went directly to James Gunn and was like, hey, man, if you have to fire me, I understand.
Like when you do these press tours, let's say if I'm doing a movie for Warner Brothers, let's say, let's use Peacemaker as an example.
I'm doing a global Peacemaker tour and we go into China or we go into South America.
You meet like the PR person there and they have all the stuff you're supposed to do and they curate your experience and they hold your hand and you're like, okay, now we're going to go to this station.
And by the way, they just want you to do some shout outs.
So anytime I go anywhere globally now, as much as I want to thank fans for their attention and investing in the product, I really shy away from speaking the language because I don't understand the cultural nuance.
I just want to be like, yo, man, thanks for watching what we do.
And I love the fact that you're entertained, but I want to speak to you at a level that I understand that I'm fluent because your boots on the ground here every day.
And I might say something that's a nice gesture, but completely fucking offend you.
So if you were to put something in front of me in pinyin right now, I could definitely read it.
And I got good at reading pinyin.
So I was like, man, I could send all these messages in Mandarin and more people will know about this movie and more people will know about me and more people will know about wrestling and more people will be excited.
It's probably a PR's assistant assistant that's typed that's probably in charge of doing the grunt work of typing in all the different languages and the different countries.
From what I know, I know I'm going to learn a lot about you guys in this episode, but from what I know about you, you're into looking at things through different lenses and different perspectives.
It also could have been somebody being like, I'm going to get this kid.
Ooh.
But here's the thing.
I do appreciate you saying, like, it's not your fault.
That's not true.
It was my fault.
And I think that's when I can start to work on like, well, what did I learn from this?
And I could easily blame a PR, an assistant.
I could say somebody had a target on my back, all that stuff.
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Well, you know, if you don't know the history, Tony at one point in time was offered a job with the WWE before he really made it.
I'd be like, that would be your ultimate dream job.
Like, to make it as a comedian and somehow be involved in the UFC the way I, or excuse me, in WWE, the way I'm involved in the UFC, like very similarly.
I'd moved out to California, not to be famous or anything.
My degree was in Kinese.
And I wanted to, like, that was the center of the fitness universe in 99, 2000.
So like all equipment manufacturers were there.
I'm like, man, I'll go get a job with Hammer Strength or a Cybex or like maybe Golds or like put that piece of paper on the wall to like get a good paying job.
It did not work.
So I ended up like front desk, cleaning toilets, selling protein bars in that order.
Crazy thing is he got addicted to pills while he was doing that because he had surgery while he was doing that and got addicted to pills while he's making a fucking documentary on people being addicted to pills.
That's how potent pills are.
A guy making a documentary about addiction.
He just thinks, well, I'm just taking these because I got hip surgery and I'm in fucking agony.
The left one was brutal because they take a slice out of your patella tendon and then they could take a chunk out of your shin bone and a chunk out of your kneecap.
And then they use those to screw this new tendon that they created into the shin bone and into your thigh bone.
That was rough.
That one was painful as fuck.
And it took a long time before it felt normal.
It took a long time before I could go down on one knee again.
And it's also, it's like you feel better before you are better, unfortunately, because the way the tendon works, so when they replace a tendon with a cadaver, it's not like you have this guy's tendon in your body.
What it is like is that tendon is a scaffolding.
And then your body reproliferates that with your own cells.
So over the course of six months, my body had filled in all of what used to be a cadaver with my own cells.
So you'll feel like it's better before it's better.
So a lot of MMA fighters, they start training too quickly and they blow it out again because it's still soft.
And I think that there's a lot maybe to do with the pain conversation there, of like just flat out getting your ass kicked and then being able to dust yourself off and be like, I'll get you next time.
You know, like, it's also knowing, like, why did he beat me?
What can I do to beat him next time?
You know, like, if you don't have that in your life, also, if you don't know what it feels like to get your ass kicked, you get a little mouthy.
I mean, how many mouthy people do we know that have never been fucked up?
And I think that's why.
Like, there's real consequences if it actually comes down.
You start yelling and you get mouthy.
If it actually comes down to it, and we've all seen many of these videos on the internet where someone just don't, they don't know what the fuck they're asking for or what they're getting into.
And there are days where I'm short of patience, but when it gets to that weird spot of like, yo, someone's going to get hit in the face, I always try to like lean on diplomacy.
Like, it's like a pro football player, pro hockey player, UFC.
I think the beautiful advantage that we have is that it's we can we can make choices on what we do.
So when you're in UFC and they close the door, it's kind of fucking best person wins.
You know, you got it.
It's it's survival.
When we're in WWE and we both step in the ring and they ring the bell, we're working together.
We're working together to put on the best show for the audience.
And in that process, you can calculate the risks you want to take.
And I think that's what allows somebody to be able to perform for 23 years.
You know, I don't know.
I know that age-old stat that everybody says about like the average NFL career is what, two and a half years or three and a half years.
I don't know what the stat is on average UFC career.
Like how long, what's your window to be functionally profitable in UFC?
But I know because our risks are calculated and we're working together rather than against each other, the math is way higher for you to have like a 10, 15, 20 year career in WWE.
But that also is 10 more years of falling down, 15 more years of falling down.
So it's weird.
Like you can choreograph the risk, but you have to do it time and time again.
And the schedule in WWE just changed.
Like to do 70 matches a year now in WWE is like, man, you're a workhorse.
I've gotten to work with a lot of stand-ups and WWE is kind of changing.
I would say it's on the progression of a stand-up making it to just like a stadium tour.
But man, when I performed, my sweet spot, we ran very parallel lives.
Like you, I've worked every city, Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom to Madison Square Garden, like to the Saitama Super Arena to AT ⁇ T Stadium to Bangor, Maine, or to Valparaiso, Indiana.
Like you, you go to all of these places and it's like Friday you're in one place, Saturday you're in another place, Sunday you're in another place, Monday you're in another place, Tuesday you're in another place, one day to drop your shit, one day to catch your flight out, do it again.
Like it's, it's, it's kind of, we, we're kind of like touring stand-ups in that regard.
And you're responsible for your own trans, like, and I'm speaking from my day.
I don't know how it is now because I got one left and then I'm done.
But you were responsible for your own transportation, booking your own hotels.
Like you, you were, they were just like, hey, we're starting here.
We're in here.
Good luck.
Which is awesome because you create, people are really independent when they, when they go through that fire and you weed out the people who don't want to be there.
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Yeah, because it's just the sheer work, the sheer workload.
And it's also, it's really hard to have any kind of a normal relationship because you're just constantly not home.
You're constantly gone.
Like even your friends, like you, you really, as a touring comic, the best thing that I ever did is start taking friends with me on the road instead of just working with like random guys that I didn't know in different towns.
Those are fun sometimes.
Sometimes.
Like, you know, two out of 10 times you meet a new friend.
Eight out of 10 times, you're with some annoying alcoholic who fucking sucks and they're annoying and then they want to take you someplace and you get in trouble.
And it's people who are in your sphere, at least through my perspective and my journey.
Man, if you were in my gravity from like 2002 to like 2019, I wasn't a part of a team.
You did it my way.
Like bus leaves at 10.
If you're there at 1001, you are fucking left.
Like we're doing this and we're training here and then we're doing this.
But so the end product is good.
So like the dream job of like, man, I never, the six-year-old kid holding the paper belt can be an adult holding the real belt and get shekels for doing that.
And I don't ever want to, I don't want to put that in jeopardy.
So you fuckers are going to have to get in line and we're just going to have to go.
Like, you know, I was absent a lot in relationships because if it wasn't on my terms, it didn't exist.
You know, because here you got, you catch lightning out of a jar.
I'm a kid from West Newberry who's, you know, come from a family of five and there's always more broke, but man, we were a good level of broke.
And then now, like, hey, if you just work hard at this thing, you can kind of not ever be that again.
All right, fuck this.
I'm doing this thing all the time.
But that comes with, hey, I'm getting married or like my grandfather died or I got a birthday coming up or like, hey, man, you missed another Thanksgiving.
You're damn right I did because I'm doing the thing.
It's interesting because it must weed out so many talented people.
There's probably a lot of talented people that you've seen over the years that just didn't have that drive to constantly improve and succeed and really be thinking about what they're doing all the time.
I think the statement of man, so many talented people didn't make it.
They may be an acrobat.
They may be a fast talker.
But that's not the only attribute that makes one special.
You may be a great joke writer, but man, if you don't master stage presence, I mean, you may be a great joke writer with stage presence, but if you can't lug the tour, you're not talented for it.
So when someone with great athletic ability decides that it's not for them, because eventually that is one thing about WWE, for all the arguments of like backstage politico, everybody understands the sound of money and no one refuses it.
Like, I fucking hate this guy, but I got to give him another match.
It may not be, but I now have to give him a 10-year contract.
But when they go out there, if the noise is there, even if the they's fucking hate you, you get another match.
And I think I'm thinking for somebody, but I think from his perspective is like when I hear somebody's idea for a personality, man, I want to be this sports agent guy or whatever.
Oh, yo, I have the idea of what that is in my head.
And if their projection of that idea doesn't match my projection of that idea, I'm like, ah, fuck, I hate it.
But that doesn't mean it can't work.
So I think what maybe would happen was my perspective of the white hip-hop guy from the mean street of West Newberry and Vince's perspective of John Cena, the rapper, we probably missed.
Like he had an idea and I had an idea.
And usually he will craft it to his vision.
I got to give him respect for allowing me to kind of run with it, you know?
Like, that's the one time they get the whole group together is overseas because you don't want to be herding cats like in Amsterdam or something.
Everybody rides on the bus.
You go from town to town.
So like to pass the time, the boys just do whatever.
And they were freestyling on the back of the bus.
And I normally just fucking kept to myself because I was raised in the environment of like, keep your ears open, keep your mouth shut, don't do anything unless spoken to.
So I did that, but I also didn't make any connections with people who were putting their lives on the line for me.
You know, some of the guys you really beat the shit out of in the rings are like your best friends.
So I didn't have any of those connections.
And I heard these guys rapping.
And I just remember playing roller coaster tycoon on my laptop, full matching up, putting it away.
I'm like, I'm going to the back of the bus.
And just waited my turn and then filleted like 12 guys.
It's like, this stuff is so simple, but it's the if you take out the crowd in that situation and just put those three guys, it is really fucked up what we do.
But when you add the audience in the back and all of their faces and what's going on, that's what makes bro.
Yeah, I have a degree in pro wrestling, but my master's is in healdum.
Like, it's like the bad, I just love a bad guy.
And even ever since that bad guy turned, I feel like, and I feel like most bad guy fans do, now newly connected with the Back to the Return of the Good Guy Cena.
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So I think that's, and I've been lucky enough to kind of take this perspective of not knowing everything and realizing that even with 23 years of fluency, I'm not the smartest guy in the room.
I don't know the technology they have and what they can do.
Now, granted, a black LED board, I could probably come up with that.
But what I like to do is lean on my resources.
Like, hey, let's go to production and see what production is thinking.
And I don't want to tell them what to do because I want to hear their ideas first.
And production was like, what if we just went basic?
I don't have enough depth of field to touch all the bases, but I will go to every department and say, okay, entrance is a big part of what we do.
What do we do for lighting?
What do we do for production?
Go to camera.
Like, how do you guys want to shoot it?
And then it trickles down when you talk to the talent you're working with.
How do we portray this message?
And then, of course, it starts at the top with creatively, I want to make you a bad guy.
So we're going to do that.
Okay, sure, we're going to do that.
How do you want to do that?
But it's, I think it's getting, we have a lot of talented people and just allowing them to do their job and let you know, like, oh, I was kind of thinking this.
And then tell them, like, yeah, that's a good idea.
To show you the contrast, his opponent that night came out to, I think it was 40 people on red, white, and blue derby bikes all dressed like American people.
I mean, even the thing we did with Shane when Shane was playing, when Shane was playing Trump, when Trump and I were supposedly feuding online, Trump had said something about me online.
And then Trump's talking shit, like as Shane's talking shit, and then the music plays and I show up behind him.
Watch a soccer game overseas or football, as they would say.
The fans, it's like a group think of energy that's fucking nuts.
Like, audiences want it.
It doesn't matter where you're at.
Like, what man, when comics just go out and light up a stage and they have that fucking stage presence and they just slay a set, the fucking audience is rolling in the aisles.
Like, you let them in, and they can help make a joke that might not hit the night before slay.
Like, it's all about the moment.
It's all about being there and reading the people.
And the fun thing about WWE is you can go out there with an idea.
And I can only imagine this as kind of like stand-up, where if you got your set and you tell the first joke to crickets, you may try another joke.
And up to that day, that moment, like, even that thing that we were just telling you about, me bringing him coming out, that being a reveal, him bringing up Diaz was coordinated literally, I think, 15 minutes before.
Literally, me with a big piece of paper going, hey, Joe, what if we did this?
He confirms it.
So I go to Hair and Makeup where they're finishing up Shane as Trump, which in itself is just hysterical.
I pitch it to him.
He loves it.
I go to Diaz.
I say, Rogan's going to bring you up.
And the thing happens quick.
Whereas with almost, you know, every form of entertainment that we're used to other than wrestling and like kind of, you know, Kill Tony in this instance, everything's so pre-planned that if we over pre-planned it, we wouldn't have had the topical RFK endorsement because it was like news that day.
Yeah, but a lot of the time, sometimes, man, sometimes we'll be in it.
So I've been through like three generations of knowledge and learning, 23 years in the business operating at a high level.
I have seen thousands.
And like it is the man, if you're a stud in Pewee Football League, then you go to this junior high school and then you're the number one player in college and then you're the number one number one player in high school and number one player in college eke out a spot in the NFL and then a year later you're gone because the funnel just gets so thin like WWE has like 200 personnel in their NXT development program right now Maybe 10 will make it.
And of those 10, like really, honestly, maybe one will make it.
And what the hope is, is over a six-year period of those classes of 200 that get matriculated probably every four months.
So we're talking 6,000 people.
I'm hoping one makes it.
Wow.
In five or six years, I need one.
Because my top guy right now, my Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes and the Charlotte Flairs and Becky Lynches of the world, like they'll, they'll last half a decade to draw.
Maybe if we're lucky, maybe we'll get it more.
They can, you know, maybe parlay it into a decade or two.
But that's an anomaly.
You got to play the legit math of like, after five years, I better have somebody in the on-deck circle.
So out of like five, six thousand, I just need one.
But it's still, everybody's biting their fingernails of like, we don't have the person yet.
I was doing stand-up in one arena, and the WWE happened to be in the other arena in Salt Lake City just a few weeks ago.
And I'm like, ah, darn.
But I look it up and it's a 5 p.m. taping of WWE.
So I hit up my friends at WWE.
I go, I'm coming in.
I'm bringing my openers, right?
Anyway, Dominic Mysterio's in a triple threat match.
And his whole thing is he's wrestling royalty.
He's Rey Mysterio's son, but he claims that he might be Eddie Guerrero's son because his father's one of the ultimate good guys of all time.
So basically, he takes on the traits of Eddie Guerrero, whose whole thing was cheating and lying and stealing, breaking the rules in original ways all the time.
And he's doing a triple threat match, which means there's three guys at once, right?
But if someone beats anybody, you could lose your belt.
And his intercontinental championship thinks intercontinental, right?
Is on the line and he gets thrown outside the ring.
And I'm having fun, right?
I go, Dominic, cheat, do something, right?
And he's kind of on the other side of the thing.
And he lifts up his head and looks at me and goes like that.
He gives a big wink and then he goes back down again.
So that the business model has kind of changed where media content is king now.
So from what I understand from TKO, and I know their executives will correct me, but from my perspective, we have scaled back on the live event only offerings, which helps, you know, lick the wounds.
It's weird.
Like you don't bump enough or you don't bump as much, but you kind of need to get in there and bump to get your callus and to get your wind and timing.
So it's kind of, you get your signals crossed.
But anyhow, the content that is provided is always available for media or 99%, where it used to be the opposite.
We used to do like four live shows, one TV taping.
So you'd have four live shows under your match.
You know, you'd do like Lafayette, Little Rock, Pensacola, and then TV in Orlando.
You know, and that would be the end of the run.
And then you'd do it again of like Bangor, Portsmouth, Providence, TV in Boston.
You know, like, and then you'd go for another week and go somewhere else.
But it's different now.
It's like every piece is televised for the media, which is great because we get a lot out to our fans across the world.
But like I learned, I learned how to fail in those non-televised events.
I could take big swings because it's like, man, if I'm on the middle of a card in Valparaiso and I kind of fuck up in a gymnasium with 3,500 people, they might tell me to fuck off, but there's also the last match that's going to send them home happy.
So let's try this new weird thing.
And that's where like me being invisible starts.
You know, it's just like, ah, I'll fucking try it.
Who cares?
Because it's an environment where you don't want to fail.
And now it's, there's way more advantage on getting our content out there, but production is super slick.
It's like really precise.
Everyone's really good.
And I don't know how many people go out there and just like dumb.
Like that was an example of swinging big.
I'm going to fake ring the bell.
Will people even get that?
Who cares?
Let's try it.
Like he's, he's the only one of those guys who will, or very few of those guys will stand on an idea like that.
Where the other guys are like, no, I want to have a good choreographed performance because I want my stuff to look good because it's on television and going around the world.
You know, I loved the non-televised events, but there's just, there's not, there's not, it's not a good business model.
You can have, you can, it's like you work out your set, but you can't do it on small clubs before you go to an arena.
It's like you would work out your set at home and then you just play the Intuit Dome or you play Barclays Center.
Like you don't have a small room to be like, all right, I landed.
Oh man, I gotta rework that one.
You don't ever have that.
You just have this, you put it together in your head, you think it's okay, and then you're out there.
So I don't know.
I'm not saying it can't work.
I think it can because analytics show that it does work and we have a lot of people watching now.
But from my perspective, I really enjoyed the carefree nature of just going out and being ready for anything and it being okay if I fucked up and I failed, if I told some bad jokes.
I could come back and be like, that didn't work.
That didn't work.
And then you have a partner to be like, oh, and this didn't work, but this slade, why don't you do this again?
And I can move forward and wholeheartedly apologize to those I've hurt along the way.
And they don't need to forgive me.
That's on their terms.
I can't control that.
But man, the sleep is a little more sound at night knowing like in learning this lesson or having this opportunity, fuck, dude, I kind of trampled on your shit and I'm so sorry.
Like I had such a shitty relationship with my dad.
And just recently we've mended fences and he's 80.
So I'm glad I've done this because I mean, we don't last forever.
He's going, we're all going in the dirt soon, you know?
But I just wanted him to be something else.
I always wanted that motherfucker to change.
I wanted him to be something else.
And finally, I got out of my own way.
The hard thing is meeting that guy where he's at.
The hard thing is allowing him to be who he is.
Take the weight off my backpack and say like, yo, I might have needed you to be this in my life, but because you weren't, man, because of your absence in being the dad that I had in my mind, I got all these fucking cool male mentors who gave me a key to the gym at 15 and said, you better fucking be here in the morning.
And like, dude, I still can feel a key in my hand from Dave Nock, the dean of students at Cushing Academy, who bet on me.
He was like, man, if you get your grades from C's to A's and you play two varsity sports, this place costs in 94.
This place costs 35 grand a year.
We will give you aid and you will have a place to learn.
And that allowed me to become an adult.
It allowed me to the opportunity of being in a diverse group of students who, man, there's like royalty that goes to that school.
And then there's fucking poor kids.
My roommate was a basketball player from Compton.
And then we got kids with generational wealth who they're naming buildings after.
But when it's just like 450 kids in a social experiment, money goes away and you just, you, you just kick it.
So I learned to be friends with everybody, but I wouldn't have learned that in West Newbury where it's 99.9% white, 1,200 people in the small town, no stoplights.
You either leave or you never leave.
Like just little things like that.
You know what I'm saying?
Like little, like, man, I should do this.
And deciding to meet my dad where he's at and be like, dude, whatever I thought you were, you're not.
You're just you.
And I love you for you.
And man, when we sit, there's some shit that he'll say that's all fucked up.
You know, he said some shit yesterday that like, I don't think John's last opponent should be there.
And people listen to him because he's a wrestling fan.
He's like in the kind of like their weird subculture zeitgeist.
And I want to call my dad and be like, what the fuck are you doing?
And part of that is being able to process all that, but the opportunity I get from that.
I've learned about my father's story.
I've learned about what he wants to do with his life, why he does what he does, maybe what he wanted to do, dreams he didn't have, so I can gain wisdom from there.
But it's just, that's the hard part is like getting out of your own fucking way to do the thing you really want to do.
The easy thing to do is to hold a grudge against my dad.
What I really wanted to do was tell my dad I love him and sit down with him and be like, yo, let's fucking break bread.
Talk about whatever you want.
And now we do that.
And it's great.
But that's like, that's a small example of the easy thing to do is sit on the couch and say, fuck it.
The tough thing to do is like life is handing me a moment right now.
And dude, I don't bat a thousand.
I mean, it's more like Major League Baseball.
I'm hoping 300 gets me in the Hall of Fame.
Like, if I can capitalize on 30% of the moments that life gives me and squander the other 70%, I believe I will go into the ground being like, man, I earned life.
You know, and I don't need to be the most decorated person, but it's weird because in not even trying, I have a resume that people will now measure up against like, well, that's, you got to win X amount to pass the hurdle.
So it's weird.
Like I didn't, I didn't even try to do any of that.
All I tried to do is like, you'll just get me out there.
And when you look at what I've done and you've, you've followed a bit, like it was weird.
I was in the main event of WrestleMania this year.
And to talk to people, they were like, oh, man, that's crazy.
The last main event of WrestleMania I was in was 2012.
So you'd think that like, oh, John Cena, this guy, everything handed to him, he's always at the top.
That was my first main event WrestleMania appearance as an attraction in like 13 years.
And in that span, I worked new wrestlers.
I worked for lower level titles.
I sat ringside and crushed three beers and then got fucking squashed by The Undertaker as a fan.
Vince opened WWE Studios and with the idea of if we make these guys movie stars, more people come to the arena.
Now, as a young 20-something on the road, people chant your name every night.
I'm like, more people in the arena?
That sounds fucking great.
And his first movie was supposed to be with Steve Austin, and it fell through.
They were about to shoot in two weeks.
So movie pre-production is way longer than that.
But he was like, you're going to Australia to film this movie, The Marine.
And it was tough.
It was tough.
I went from arrive in a town at noon, work out, get a good meal in, crush the show, have some beers on the ride to the next town, fall asleep, do it all again.
And it's like this whirlwind of electricity to, okay, you're in hair and makeup at six o'clock.
We're doing an explosion today.
So the lights are going to be weird.
And we probably will get to you around 5.30 p.m.
You just said it's 6 in the morning.
Yeah.
So what the fuck do you want me to do from here until 5.30?
Just hang out.
And I couldn't, like as a young 20-something, I wanted to be in the electricity.
I couldn't handle the nature of the business.
And therefore, my passion wasn't in it.
I wasn't fully invested in it.
I am fucking here with you guys right now.
We are talking about this.
My mind isn't elsewhere on other shit.
I want this to be what I want to give you all I got.
So I'm here with you.
I was never there in those movies.
I was always back in, fuck, maybe if I had the feud with this guy or if I could have done this.
I was never there.
And you could see it in the performance.
So I kind of got run out of the movie business.
I did so many shitty movies in like 2009, 10.
May my best friend agent, Dan Boehm, at the time, I was like, man, we're never doing movies again, right?
And, you know, as an agent, he's supposed to be the guy to pick you up.
He looks at me dead.
He goes, nope, we will find another way, though.
He was honest.
We are run out of town, but we'll find another way.
So we did.
We did, hosted some live shows, hosted some game shows, did little appearances here and there.
And then Judd Appetow and Amy Schumer gave me a chance on, God, Trainwreck.
And it was a very small part.
But again, like, just get out in the arena and do your best.
And I was in a fucking room with comics, like funny people.
I don't belong there.
But they created an environment where I wasn't judged.
They only showed the good jokes.
They didn't show the fucking 20 takes or I tried to tell jokes that sucked.
The only ones that made the final cut were the ones that made people laugh.
So they provided an opportunity for failure.
And at that point, I've been playing the same character.
This is 2014, 15.
I've been playing the same character on TV for 15 fucking years.
And now I'm like, yo, I get to do something different.
I can do this for 12 hours.
You want me to sit?
I'll go fucking read a book.
I don't care.
I'm in.
So I accepted the patient process of movies.
And then after that, I got a little bit of noise in Trainwreck.
And then Judd sent word to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who were filming up the road in Long Island.
Like, if you got a spot, you should hire the kid.
And then they made me a drug dealer and their thing.
And then like things started to roll downhill, but it was very, very small parts at a time.
And here I am.
That was 2015.
Here I am a decade later.
And I'm still trying to advance to fluency.
By no means am I like, I'm the 17-time champ of the acting community.
Those are the motherfuckers I was looking at when I was naked.
But it's basically the pivot happened when I was like, yo, if you just invest in this, the hustle and patience you put into wrestling, at least you know you gave it your all.
You know, be coachable, be professional, be reliable, be interested, and see where the chips fly and fucking say yes.
So, again, an environment, and no one does it alone.
The people I was around, Tina and Amy are the same way.
Like, only show the funny shit, but try whatever you want.
Like, fail.
It's okay.
And just because you're around people who do comedy for a living, all we need is three seconds, and we'll be patient enough to give you what you need to give us that three seconds.
You know, and now with less live events, it's still, you want to be on television.
It's like, okay, I need to somehow leverage my relevance with this to what it's going to do to film that.
In WWE, if you're not, I'm going to retire on the 13th.
They will be moved on by the Royal Rumble.
And that is real facts.
I will be forgotten.
That is not a plea to sympathy of like, always remember me by the Royal Rumble and the Roads WrestleMania.
Nobody gives a fuck because they're focusing on what the show is.
That's like three weeks after I retire.
Three weeks after I retire, nobody's going to give a fuck.
And that's not, I'm not saying like what I did was meaningless.
I've lived the moments.
They're great.
People move on.
So when if I'm a talent who's on TV and finally got one of those spots and edged my way in, do I, is this the right time to leverage taking myself off of TV to do four months on something that isn't going to come out for another 18 months?
And then I got to go back to TV hoping people still care, that my ring work is still polished, that I still have my finger on the pulse.
Like it's, it is, we can get in our own way sometimes.
I was thinking, I was talking to my buddy the other day, Peter Shore, the owner of the comedy store.
And I was telling him about how just a few weeks ago, because now that I have a place that I like and a car that I like and a job and everything, everything's finally, it appears how I have always considered what the dream is.
That I was saying to my buddy the other day, who I came up with, who I really started with, and I'm talking about like 14, 16-hour days at the comedy store.
I'd answer the phone at 11 a.m. because back then they didn't even have a website.
Hello, you want tickets tonight?
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Work all night, put on the t-shirt at 8 p.m., tear tickets and check IDs until 2:30 in the morning.
So I would hit overtime by like Wednesday or Thursday, but they couldn't pay overtime because the comedy store in 2007 was half to quarter empty.
Anyway, so they would cut my hours and I was paying $400 a month to sleep on my buddy's couch in his living room.
And he had a bedroom and my other buddy, Maddie, had a bedroom.
But Sandy was like, you know, he was like, the apartment was registered in his name.
And I mean, terrible couch, terrible setup.
I'd have to go through one of their bedrooms to go to the bathroom.
So if you have to pee in the middle of the night, you're kind of tiptoeing through.
You don't want to make noise.
You don't know what you're going to see, whatever.
And I was talking to Matt a month or so ago, and I go, I think I still owe Sandy a little bit of rent money because I just simply didn't have it back then.
Isn't that crazy?
He goes, you do.
He mentioned it last time because we were talking about how successful you are.
I mean, if you were a Trust Fund kid and you had plenty of money and your parents gave you $100,000 a year to go out and pursue your dreams and they paid for your apartment.
I wasn't throwing, I was throwing a rock at the tree the other day for the first time in forever, and I'm coming up about 15 feet shorter than ever before.
You see the videos where he was sprinting with Ashton Forbes, you know, that super jacked guy that does that morning routine that everybody made fun of?
Because he has this like morning routine where he dunks his face in water and then someone hands him his gold watch and he puts it on.
Or will sprinting against a gold medalist, getting in the cage with a fighter, getting in the ring with a champion, going to that guy's house and besting him at his own thing.
It is a real, a real big opportunity for you to have me on here because the WWE folks that you have had, I think I'm still, I only got one date left, but I still think I'm the active one.
I hope this experience has been good for you guys.
And I think your philosophy is contagious, and I think it's really good for people to hear.
And I think there's a lot of young people out there that are really going to benefit from a lot of the things you said because I think it's rock solid.