Aug 29, 2026, 22:00 IST
John Cena and The Rock are now viewed as WWE legends who share plenty of mutual respect. But before that relationship developed, the road to their WrestleMania 28 showdown was filled with genuine tension, with Cena admitting that the hostility between them was not entirely part of the script.For more than a year, the two traded personal shots before finally meeting in the main event in Miami. Fans understood they were watching a manufactured rivalry play out. Cena later revealed the bad blood underneath it was real enough to worry him.
Cena admits the hatred was real
Cena has explained that the promos sometimes tipped over from sports entertainment into something more personal.“During a lot of moments leading up to that fight, we crossed the line of sports entertainment, and people could tell that we really hated each other,” Cena said.The two men, by his own account, held genuinely different opinions of one another at the time. “Even though he had always been cordial to me, I did something foolish and started drumming up rumours about things I had no idea about,” Cena added.None of this was standard promotional trash talk. Cena had publicly questioned The Rock’s commitment to WWE after the former champion left to build a career in Hollywood.
Why Cena had a problem with The Rock
The Rock had walked away from the ring and become one of the biggest names in film. Cena, meanwhile, had settled into the role of WWE’s leading full-time babyface, the guy who never left.He was particularly critical of The Rock pursuing acting while still talking up his love for wrestling. In 2010, Cena said: “He’s genuinely nice guy. I’ve met him, and he’s a fantastic human being.”Then came the sting. He questioned why The Rock couldn’t return for major occasions: “Just, don’t f*** me around and tell me that you love [wrestling] when you’re just doing it to do something else.” Those comments became the fuel for everything that followed.
Nearly coming to blows
When The Rock came back in 2011, it was first as host of WrestleMania 27. That involvement quickly hardened into a rivalry with Cena, setting up their meeting a year later.Things escalated through their promo battles on Raw. At one point Cena mocked The Rock for apparently using notes on his arm to remember lines, a jab that visibly angered him, and the confrontation reportedly turned heated backstage.Both men have since admitted how close it came to boiling over. “We might fail miserably at it,” The Rock said of the risky approach they took to the rivalry. “But in this case it worked out very well and through all that edge and attitude and bite that we had and nearly coming to blows backstage and one night in the ring.” He remembers the face-off getting genuinely intense: “Literally, we were nose-to-nose, it was any second.“
Cena knew The Rock would win
For a year, Cena publicly insisted there was no way The Rock would beat him. Privately, he’d known the outcome almost from the start.“For a year straight I kept telling people that there is no way he was going to beat me, but I knew that he was going to win the moment the feud started,” Cena said.However, reports at the time suggested WWE had initially considered having Cena win at WrestleMania 28 before changing course around the event. The final decision saw The Rock emerge victorious in his home state of Florida. Former referee Mike Chioda later recalled some backstage tension around the decision, with Cena having carried WWE as its full-time star for years before being asked to lose to a returning Rock.
Cena apologised after losing
Once The Rock had pinned him, Cena did something that reshaped their relationship going forward. “The first thing I did after he beat me was apologise to his mother,” he revealed. Then he walked straight into The Rock’s locker room. “Then I went right into Dwayne’s locker room and apologised to him.”It didn’t end the feud outright. The Rock beat CM Punk for the title at the following year’s Royal Rumble, setting up a rematch at WrestleMania 29. This time Cena won.
From genuine enemies to friends
The rematch closed the book on the rivalry. Somewhere in the years after, genuine respect crept in, and eventually something like friendship, an odd outcome given how personal things had briefly become.There’s an irony worth sitting with too. Cena spent years criticising The Rock for chasing Hollywood over wrestling. He later walked almost the same path himself, building a film career while trimming back his WWE schedule.None of this made Cena versus Rock memorable purely because of the size of the matches. It was that, for a stretch, nobody quite knew where the storyline ended and the real animosity began.
