Add as a preferred source on Google John Cena has never worried about the crowd hearing the instructions he gives his opponents mid-match. According to Cody Rhodes, that wasn’t a shortcoming on the veteran’s part — it was part of the experience for the fans seated around the ring.
Rhodes appeared in the opening segment of the July 21 episode of Good Hang with Amy Poehler, which featured Cena as the main guest. During the conversation, the former WWE Champion described the former wrestler as a friend, a former opponent, and, above all, a mentor.
“John does not talk low or ‘in carny.’ John yells everything that’s going to happen in the ring as loud as he possibly can. He calls it, for the first four rows, an interactive experience.”
Rhodes pointed to his match against Cena at SummerSlam 2025, when the two competed in a Street Fight for the Undisputed WWE Championship.
“And then there’s the last match I had with him at SummerSlam. He’s about to slam me with his big finishing move, which is the Attitude Adjustment, from one table to another table. So it’s highly dangerous, it’s going to hurt, and we’re going to do it the safest way we can. But you can hear him yelling at me while I’m on his shoulders that he can’t see because my arm is over his eyes. I never spoke back to John, I never wanted to speak back. He’s a mentor to me, but it was one of those moments where I thought, ‘Buddy, I’m the one doing this. I don’t give a shit. Just throw me.'”
The match took place on August 3, 2025, at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Cena hit several Attitude Adjustments during the bout, including one through the announce table, but Rhodes won after reversing an attempt at the move through another table and hitting the Cross Rhodes.
In the same interview, Cena explained that he prefers to work as an improvisational performer, even though he plans out the story in detail and repeatedly rehearses the most dangerous sequences of the third act. For him, “the audience is the act, not observing the act.”