During his lengthy WWE career The Undertaker was known as the leader of the locker room, and the man that kept things ticking over backstage.
This unofficial role along with this incredible tenure and on-screen performances made the star one of the most respected figures in the entire company. For proof of his influence, The Deadman was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame by Vince McMahon himself., This was despite the former Chairman previously being against wrestlers even thanking him at the ceremony.
So naturally as The Undertaker’s in-ring career began to wind down, someone had to step in and fill the void.
John Cena Assumed Role Within WWE Locker Room From The Undertaker
Speaking on his podcast, The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, the now AEW star explained that it was John Cena who stepped up. Hardy said that while Cena wasn’t initially much of a socialiser, he moved into the space that The Undertaker vacated to keep morale amongst his fellow stars high.
“In the beginning he wasn’t, he wasn’t like a big party [guy]. I mean later on like once he started being looked upon as like a, becoming John Cena, as a top guy and like once Undertaker wasn’t doing all the shows and international trips, John would make sure to like you I pull up a chair and he’d hold court and I’d love to be there. And we’d sit back and we would drink and tell wrestling stories and talk about the business and life and just have a good time, like a lot of brotherhood, which is a very, very important thing in pro-wrestling, and was especially at that point.
So once that happened, you know, John was definitely in there. And he’s like, alright, well, let’s, you know, let’s have a couple of drinks, guys. Let’s start some wrestling. Do whatever. So he was, he was good once he got to that thing. And I think that was just him emulating Undertaker, you know, just watching what a top guy who’d done, who was like the leader of a locker room who was there to kind of like help try and encourage morale.”
Fast forward to 2023 and John Cena is now the part-time star as he makes a run at a career in Hollywood. Despite this, Cena has still wrestled at least one match every year since debuting back in 2002. He was most recently in action on the December 30th, 2022 episode of SmackDown where he teamed with Kevin Owens to defeat Roman Reigns and Sami Zayn.
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