From bullied, skinny and rap-obsessed to WWE legend: John Cena opens up
John Cena is looking back at the teenage years that pushed him toward fitness and wrestling — and the unexpected fixation that once made him an easy target.
On a new episode of Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, John Cena said his tough-guy image started in the opposite place: a small Massachusetts town where he got picked on for looking different and for leaning hard into early rap culture. He remembered showing up with a high-top fade and getting singled out because he was tall but rail-thin.
“I was bullied because I did what you did. I put my hair up in like a high top fade. I really fell in love with then rap music before it became hip hop,” he stated.
“I was bullied and it’s just, I didn’t, just didn’t look like everyone else and it was an easy target. I was skinny and scrawny. had grown, in height but not in stature, and just hadn’t filled out my frame yet and, I was an easy target,” he told at Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend.
O’Brien said he related to the awkward years; Cena added that discovering wrestling gave him direction and confidence — a long way from the kid who stuck out for all the wrong reasons before he ever headlined WWE or popped up in movies like The Suicide Squad and F9.
Back on the big screen
Next up for Cena is Coyote vs. Acme, a live-action /animation hybrid that pairs him with Will Forte and, yes, Wile E. Coyote. Cena plays Buddy Crane, a corporate attorney representing Acme, while Forte’s character, Kevin Avery, faces off in court with the Looney Tunes icon in the mix.
The movie is arriving with unusually strong early buzz: Rotten Tomatoes currently shows a 96% Tomatometer, and RogerEbert.com praised it as consistently clever and funny, with critics calling out the chemistry between Cena and Forte.
Its release has been a saga of its own. Warner Bros. initially shelved the completed film before indie distributor Ketchup Entertainment stepped in to give it a theatrical life, helped along by fan campaigns that kept the title in the conversation.