John Cena Names Handling Of Ruthless Aggression Character As His Biggest Failure

John Cena recently named the biggest failure of his career, choosing that the way he screwed up his Ruthless Aggression character. Cena famously debuted in a match against Kurt Angle that kick-started that era for WWE. However, he’s spoken in the past about how his botching of the character after that moment nearly got him fired.

Cena recounted the matter in his conversation on The Bill Simmons Podcast. He spoke about how after the match he fell in a spot where he wasn’t doing what he should have and fell in a middle of the road character. You can see the highlights below:

On His Biggest Failure:

“Blowing the — completely disintegrating Ruthless Aggression, and it almost got me fired. So here I am, a young whippersnapper debuting in Chicago, because the Undertaker’s sick. I get to challenge Kurt Angle to a match on Smackdown in front of a soldout house at the formerly known as Rosemont Horizon. The Olympic gold medalist says, ‘What makes you think you can stand out here with anybody else? What do you have that I don’t?’ ‘Ruthless aggression!’ I slap him in the face. That’s aggressive. And then the match we went on to have is pretty ruthless.

“But then like he won, but with like a roll up pinfall. And then the aggressive, ruthless young kid goes like, ‘Man, you only got me by that much.’ And then the next thing they did was like a backstage taping with the Undertaker. Where the ruthless aggressive kid is so starry-eyed that the Undertaker is giving him advice like, ‘Hey, you did a great job.’ [He] shakes the Undertaker’s hand. That is neither ruthless nor aggressive.”

On Screwing Up the Character:

“So, this is what I mean by like being ready for opportunity. That gimmick, those two words, that personality. I could either lean into being aggressive and ruthless, and we all know what those things are. We all have an idea in our head of what is ruthless and what is aggression. Or I could do a 180, and be like the most passive aggressive — I was neither. I was neither. And I didn’t have the technical ability of my peers. And they gave me this beautiful moment on a silver platter.’

“No one told me it was an attitude. No one told me. But I didn’t take advantage of it. That was that was my biggest failure, because a year later they’re like, ‘Hey, we’re going to let you go.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah, okay. I get it. I got it.’ Like I could see the — cheers against Kurt Angle, then a little bit with Chris Jericho. And then then I’m turning heel on Billy Kidman on Saturday Night Velocity, and nobody cares. Like, I blew it. I blew it and was lucky enough to get a second chance.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Bill Simmons Podcast with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.