By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest John Cena
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
On how much planning went into the schedule: “The whole thing was like three years. So by then [2022], I knew I had a lot of opportunities outside of WWE, and those are very difficult to balance, not just being everywhere like the first half of this year for the tour, I was flying back and forth to Budapest and Morocco, making PLE dates. I left Intuit the day I announced, Jan 6, 1 left to land in Budapest to shoot the next day. That’s a scheduling. The biggest hurdle to climb is insurance, and insurance is super pricey. Every date, the cost goes up, whether it be $500,000, $1,000,000.”
Whether the insurance costs are that high due to the threat of him being injured: “Because you’re doing a picture, and you’re being like, ‘Hey, I have Saturday off.’ That’s the thing a lot of folks don’t understand. It’s like, ‘But you have the weekends off, you can do this. Or they can shoot Tuesday through Saturday if they want. You can do every Monday…’ You’re right, but the liability of, hey, I’m doing this action movie, and then I’m gonna go do, albeit choreographed action, but with a high variable that I could get hurt. If I get hurt, I can’t come back to shoot. Or I get my nose broke, or if I get a black eye or something, we’ve already captured these moments on camera, and now I’ve got to stop and wait for the thing to heal before I can shoot another frame. So that’s something that I had to learn the hard way of like, my schedule is open. I can do it. It’s an insurance thing, and this is what it costs. So trying to get a studio to leverage that to let you go play stunt man is impossible. So you got to a lot of times you got to come out of pocket, and that’s a tough balance.”
On what winning the 17th championship meant to him: “I want to choose my words carefully. I have been apprehensive for quite some time for that, because I love Ric [Flair], super mentor to me, always been a great guy to me, and I love him. I meant what I said in the press conference at [Royal] Rumble, and this is another thing, I never wasted a second. We want you to do the press conference. How do I make these moments meaningful? I want to win 17 so I can shake the hand of the performer that wins 18. So what it meant to me, personally, was, ‘Hey, young uns, one of them is going to be you. You better get working, because I don’t want to be in the ground when 18 happens.’ I want to shake somebody’s hand. And something that’s impossible is now possible. So that’s what it means to me, hopefully, by my actions, this is possible. Holy hell, this guy wants to shake my hand when I pass it, and I can’t wait to do that.”
On his ring introduction for AJ Styles: “I just wanted to do something nice for my guy. I didn’t even show Alicia [Taylor] until I handed her the paper. You don’t get those moments unless you get the shit beat up. I wanted to do something special. I went about it the wrong way. I went into business for myself. I should have gotten permission to do that, and I would have gotten permission to do that, but I told no one about it, because I wanted to do something special, and in doing so, the people running the show felt surprised, and that’s not a position I ever want to put them in because they award me such creative liberty.”
On whether anyone had a problem with it: “We’re all trying to make these moments special, and we’re all on the same team, and it shouldn’t be me doing something outside that realm. If I tell my teammates, ‘Hey, let’s do it.’ I can keep it from AJ, I can keep it from Alicia, but if I tell my teammates who are crafting this show, maybe they make it look better. The first thing I did was thank AJ, the second thing I did was pull a few creative individuals aside and say, ‘I’m sorry. That will never happen again. I know where I f—ed up. I’m so sorry, and I went into business for myself. That’s not me. I hope you look at my body of work, and all the times I’ve asked for permission, and this is the one time I ask for forgiveness.’ It got the best of me, but I wanted to do something nice for AJ.”
On his match with AJ Styles and the overall year: “I just want to get that ball rolling. All right, ‘They’re wasting the heel turn at WrestleMania!’ And they’re like, Oh, the Randy [Orton] thing. And then the [CM] Punk, and then Cody [Rhodes], and then Logan [Paul] in Paris was even kind of dope. And then you go to Brock [Lesnar], what? What are they gonna do next? And then you get the payoff, and we look at them all in individual moments, but it’s why, until now, I have refused to give anyone any information about any of this, because I don’t want to lead the witness. The last one is going to be the last one. We have told the story, everybody knows the drill, a tournament to decide, this is going to be it. I want the last one. I want people to look at the road ahead, 2026 and beyond. I want them to take away some Superstar’s name from the 13th. But now we can reflect on the year. We get caught up in these moments, thinking that’s all you get and not realizing that this is the commercial spot before the reveal, before the big finish. We’ve just had to digest it as it has been a year storyline, and reflecting back on it, I get excited and again, I don’t feel I could have given anything else. So I’m very happy with how it’s gone so far.”
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