Samoa Joe is currently wrecking shop on WWE Raw, and just main evented that brand’s most recent pay-per-view with a title match against Brock Lesnar. John Cena is freshly back from a hiatus spent filming his latest movie and television show, and his next world title reign will be a record-breaking 17th.
The two men trained together in California at UPW way, way back circa the year 2000, but their careers diverged drastically when Cena got signed to WWE developmental and Joe spent the next decade and a half becoming one of the most lauded wrestlers of his generation, the face of Ring of Honor for years, and a TNA Grand Slam champion.
In a recent interview with 102.5 The Bone, which I’m really hoping has at least one show called The Bone Zone, Joe talked about how he and Cena wrestled a tryout match for some WWE officials way, way back in the day. Joe made Cena look like a million bucks, but Jim Ross made it clear the company was only interested in one of the two men. (Transcript via Wrestling Inc.)
“Actually, John Cena’s match with me, the one that kind of got him hired with WWE, I remember they were there to look at John, obviously. He looked great, he was like the blue-chipper, and John was a good friend of mine, so I had no problem whatsoever helping him kind of highlight and do his thing. Hey man, he was a hard worker, man. He got it done, so after the match, I remember Jim Ross, head of Talent Relations at the time, I went up to him and I was like, ‘is there any interest over here?’ ‘Ah, no, son. I don’t think you’re quite going to work out here.’ Two years in, but it was cool because I was like, ‘well, if I can’t go there, I’m going to focus on all this other stuff. Where else can you make money? Oh, Japan!’ So I focused on Japan, I got a contract over there, and the rest is history.”
We know the rest of the story, of course. It’s a shame it took WWE so long to get over their weird hangups about body types, but at least it all ended with Samoa Joe getting to fight Brock Lesnar. Everyone won in the end!
