How WWE’s John Cena Became A ‘Legendary’ Drinker

WWE Hall of Famer JBL has told the story of how John Cena became one of the most “legendary” drinkers in the wrestling business.

JBL recently ranked his top five legendary drinkers, with Cena coming in at number four.

Speaking on Something To Wrestle, JBL explained his ranking and told the story of how Cena first started drinking before building up a high tolerance level.

JBL said:

“Let me tell you how he got started. We’re playing golf – a lot of times when we had Monday off, because we had the split shows, so we’d work a lot of times Friday, Saturday, Sunday, take Monday off, but then we had to work Tuesday which was SmackDown.

“We would have Monday off, so we started doing things on Monday. We started going golfing, we went to laser tags, we started doing all kinds of crazy stuff on Mondays. But it always involved booze, because we were young and having fun, and it’s one of the things we liked having as a party favor.

“So we go golfing, and John can hit a ball a mile. He’s almost world class strength Olympic lifting, John’s a freak athlete, especially in strength. He can hit a golf ball a freakin’ mile. And dead straight. He didn’t play golf that well, because he didn’t play that often, but god he could hit a golf ball.

“So we had a long drive contest, and he hit a ball and it was one of the rare times he didn’t crush it, so he lost. So he had to down a beer – that was the punishment.

“So John downs the beer. Another one, downs another beer. We bet on putts, we bet on this, down a beer, down a beer, down a beer. And John looked at me at one point and said something kinda crazy and I thought, ‘That’s kinda strange.’

“I found out later he had never drank before. So I would have never said for John to drink a beer, but out of respect, he didn’t say no.

“He did the same thing with Undertaker later with whiskey. Undertaker took him out, wanted to break him into the business and talk to him and drink some whiskey – John had never drank whiskey before.

“So go from that, to say a few years later, John’s putting everybody to bed.

“This is how cool John is. One time, John told me, ‘Hey man, I just wanna say thanks, I’ve got my bus here, got some great catering for you, some steaks and some Moonshine, all kinds of things.’

“So he takes me on a bus ride between cities, which was really cool. Me, Michael Cole and (Tony) Chimel, which, unfortunately Chimel is still alive which is a tragedy, but he is.

“We get on the bus and have all this Moonshine – by the end of it I don’t remember getting off the bus. And Cena’s putting me in the hotel and putting me to bed.

“Cena has one of the highest tolerances. He’s like Andre (The Giant) level now. He’s the guy who puts people to bed. He’s the guy that oversees, would stay up, would drink.

“He doesn’t get drunk. He just sits there and drinks, he puts guys to bed, he takes care of everybody, then he goes to bed. Then he’s the first one up always in the morning in the gym training, setting an example.

“Cena is – I’m telling you – Andre level drinking.”

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John Cena will have his final match at WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event on December 13 against the winner of an upcoming 16-man tournament.

Matches confirmed by WWE for the tournament opening round so far are Rusev vs Damian Priest, and Sheamus vs Shinsuke Nakamura.

The tournament kicks off on WWE Raw next week.