John Cena has learned from some of the best to ever do it throughout his WWE career.
Undisputed WWE Champion John Cena recently took part in a panel at FAN EXPO Denver. During the panel, Cena revealed that he’s taken a lot of skills over the years from WWE Hall of Famer Eddie Guerrero.
“For those of you who aren’t WWE fans, we’re going to go ‘inside baseball’ a little bit. You’re going to have to bear with me,” John Cena said. “You saw one match with me and Eddie Guerrero. I was lucky enough to have a bunch of live event matches with Eddie Guerrero, who is one of the greatest of all time. For those of you who don’t know how WWE works, some matches are televised and some matches are not.
“Eddie was one of the people that mentored me, and one of the last individuals who was an ‘improvisor.’ I take a lot of my skills from Eddie Guerrero because he was a genius. Not only was he brilliant in his execution, but he knew when to do things. And what y’all don’t know is, he was making it all up as he went along. So he was that astute to the audience.
“The most influential thing I learned from Eddie Guerrero — and it’s something I’ll never forget — WWE went through a boom in the ‘Attitude Era.’ And then all of those guys — we fired Stone Cold, The Rock left, The Undertaker got hurt, we changed the name, the XFL failed. There was a lot of upside-down stuff.
“We started SmackDown, and it had Kurt Angle as its anchor. But we brought Eddie Guerrero and me and Edge, a bunch of the new guys, and people trying to find their way. Eddie was our champion for a certain period of time. And he used to tell me that it is the night when the fewest people show up that you have to work ten times as hard, because the presence in that area isn’t as strong. When I get a crowd like this, working the room is easy.
“If it’s just you five, I’ve got to give my whole self. Not that I don’t! But it’s on those nights where business is bad, do not ever, ever phone it in. As a matter of fact, you work 100 times harder to get those people to go out and [say], ‘You missed that show!’ and you want to go back the next time. He was a person that was able to weather the storm through those lesser-attended events and still put on these spectacular matches.
“He took being the champion very seriously, and that’s something that I’ll definitely not forget under his tutelage. And he also taught me to listen to the audience. I’m one of the loudest talkers out there. If you’re sitting close enough at a WWE show, you get the match before the match, but that’s ok. Because the tool I learned from Eddie Guerrero is to listen to the audience. Because they are the biggest piece of energy and the biggest star we have.
“And if you don’t do something when they want you to do something, [you] lose their attention. They’ll be generous, they’ll give you once or twice, but you lose them that third time, they don’t care about your match. And Eddie was always so surgical about not only doing the right thing, but doing it at the perfect time. He taught me to improvise, he taught me to listen, and he taught me to work hard.”
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What do you make of John Cena’s comments? Did you know that Cena took so much from Eddie Guerrero throughout his career? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of these quotes, please credit FAN EXPO Denver with a link to this article for the transcription.
