Celebrity3 min(s) read
Published 18:01 15 Aug 2021 GMT
John Cena has opened up about a dark period in his life that ultimately inspired his love of strength and self-defense.
The 44-year-old wrestler and actor is renowned worldwide for his impressive physical strength and charismatic persona. But what a lot of people, including his fans, don't know about Cena is that he was a victim of bullying as a child.
Cena told People: "My passion for strength was out of self-defense. I used to get picked on a lot because I was different in the way I dressed and expressed myself.
"As you're an adolescent, social cliques form and I didn't fall into any one of those. So I got tired of getting beaten up and I asked my dad for a weight set and he got me one at 13."
He added: "I started working out and I haven't stopped since. My quest for strength probably lasted, I don't know, until my mid-30s. And now I'm on a quest for wellness, which is hopefully so I can continue physical fitness for the next, 30, 40, 50 years of my life."
Cena's passion for physical fitness and strength training continued to grow and after leaving high school, he went on to study exercise science and kinesiology at Springfield College in Western Mass.
He recalled: "[After college] I headed out to Los Angeles, not because of the entertainment allure, but because that's where the hub of fitness equipment, fitness manufacturing, fitness distribution, everything that applied to my degree was there.
"I got in working at Gold's Gym and that was the best I could do. I worked in the protein shop. I worked on the floor. I knew every member and a bunch of the members would talk about wrestling and WWE specifically.
"This is right when two companies were jockeying for supremacy, the company owned by Turner and the company owned by Vince McMahon. One of my friends in a casual conversation was like, 'Hey, we're training down in Orange County to be wrestlers. Do you want to join?'"
Joining in with his peers, Cena decided to give wrestling a go.
He said: "It wasn't like, 'Yeah, this is my chance to make it big in the WWE,' it was like, 'Yo, this would be a sick ass hobby, so when I worked my ass off during the week, I can go be a personality on the weekends, I'll try it.
"I paid the promoter a bunch of money to get in the ring and learn how to fall down and the rest is history. So if we had never had that conversation, I'd never found a ring, and I'd never been talking to you right now."
