By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
John Cena appeared on The Howard Stern Show on Wednesday and was asked how he is handling his relationship with Vince McMahon following the allegations made in the Janel Grant lawsuit. “I don’t think it’s complicated to talk about, I think it’s complicated to listen to,” Cena said. “And that’s kinda why I don’t necessarily put a lot of time and effort into it. There’s still a long ways to go.
“I can say this, I’m a big advocate of love and friendship and honesty and communication, but in the same breath, I’m also a big advocate of accountability. I think you [Stern] explained it well, if someone’s behavior lies so far outside your value system that the balance shifts of like ‘I can’t operate in a world where this works,’ that’s the end result of being accountable.
“So, um, right now what I’m going to do is love the person I love, be their friend, and by that it means like, ‘Hey, I love you, you got a hill to climb.’ And, you know, there’s the saying of like, hey, you don’t know who your friends are until the shit hits the fan or your back’s against the wall. That doesn’t make any of what’s going on any easier to swallow.
“But just telling somebody like, hey, I love you, man, this is going to be a hill to climb, we’re going to see what happens, and that’s that. It sounds so cliche, but it has to be one day at a time, but at the same token, like I’ve openly said, I love the guy. I’ve got a great relationship with the guy, so that’s that…
“I think my construct is I’m going to operate with honesty and communication. I think those are strong leads to handling any problem or any achievement. But the whole thing is super, super unfortunate. That’s really the thing that sucks, because not only does it deal with an individual I love, it deals with an entity that I love, one that I speak highly of.
“I want everyone to have the experience that I had. If you’re an employee at Disneyland, you want everyone to go to Disney and think it’s the greatest place on earth. And when someone doesn’t or when you find out that there may or may not have been things going on there that this place that I was speaking so great about, well, in some aspects needs a lot of work.
“That’s more than just how do I feel about this person. Now I shift to ‘am I doing all I can to make it better?’ I speak from the advice of work as hard as you can and promote as hard as you can, is there anything I can do? So not only do I tell my friend I love him, I also switch to the entity and say, ‘How can I help?'”
Powell’s POV: Cena started by saying that it’s not complicated to speak about and then went on to contradict that line with a mess of a statement. I don’t begrudge Cena for choosing to maintain a friendship with McMahon. That’s his prerogative. But his answers focused on loving McMahon and wanting to help WWE while failing to acknowledge the heinous nature of the allegations made against his friend and the company. Cena stating that WWE “in some aspects needs a lot of work” was quite the understatement.
Looks like Cena might not be back for quite awhile after this..
I’d say it’s gotta be so hard to know and be close to someone like that for a quarter of a century and then have this all come out, but then you look and see what Randy Orton said and he probably said it best out of everybody. Not that Triple H or Cena set the bar particularly high. But Orton showed there’s a way to acknowledge the long time relationship with Vince while admonishing what he did