John Cena’s new outlook: ‘If you can be vulnerable, there’s beauty in that’

It’s hard to imagine John Cena - muscular, accomplished John Cena - feeling self-conscious. But at 49, the actor and WWE wrestling icon is getting real about the things that have dogged him as he’s gotten older. Hair loss, skin cancer and Demodex blepharitis, a chronic eyelid inflammation due to mites, have all been on the menu. (He treats the latter with FDA-approved XDEMVY.) He’s come out the other side stronger than before - and he was already very strong! - with the support of wife Shay Shariatzadeh. Now he realizes that so-called imperfection is its own kind of superpower. He talks to Us about his journey.

You’re wearing glasses!

I got these nice vintage opera glasses. … I love to read, and I started reading pages of books three times over again. I was like, I gotta get help, and when I did, I discovered there wasn’t just one problem. … I realized that I’m not as young as I used to be, and I had an entirely new disease I knew nothing about.

You’re taking your health seriously these days. Was there a moment that shifted your mindset?

I really struggled with losing my hair, and to be able to openly talk with my bride about it [did that]. She kind of held my hand. Here’s some big, tough guy who thinks he’s indestructible. … None of us are perfect. We’re all flawed. If you can be vulnerable, there’s beauty in that. … This is the new chapter: my hair transplant, me being an advocate for sunscreen because I was an idiot and didn’t put on sunscreen. I’ve had to go through some pretty tough phone calls and pretty tough procedures with that.

How has your life changed since skin cancer?

I thought I was young and bulletproof. That’s not true. And man, you hear from your friends or guardians as a young person, “Put on sunscreen!” You don’t think it’s going to affect you - it’s real and it can affect you.

You revealed in 2024 that you’d had a hair transplant, and it helped men who’d been afraid to have that conversation publicly. How are you feeling about your hair now?

I feel great and again, not perfect, but I’m taking steps at a time. My first transplant was a minimal procedure. I had a huge spot in the back, and they covered it up, but I didn’t exhaust my donor sites. Now I’m talking inside baseball, but this is all knowledge I got by talking to a professional. Imagine what can happen! That’s why I’m such a strong advocate. I see [a doctor] every six weeks. I get PRP treatment. I do red-light therapy, vitamins, finasteride topical, exosome topical - I’m all in.

You turn 50 next year. How different is it from, say, 30?

I could be way more reckless [then] because my recovery window was smaller. Things hurt less. … I need to fill various buckets [now]. I need to make sure my spirit, mind and body are in balance. My perspective of success is different at 50. We should always be focused on trying to grow. … I’m not the person I was at 30. I’m grateful for that person. Gosh, it was a great time. I’m also grateful for who I am at 49, and I look forward to 50.

How’s your fitness routine now?

I started lifting weights at 12 and haven’t stopped. The passion I have for strength and resistance training is still there. To do that, I need to do more warm-up, a bit more cardiovascular training to keep my heart healthy. Way more mobility, static stretching to keep everything moving. I look at it like an old sports car. You can still put your foot to the floor, but you’ve got to warm it up … and you’ve got to cool it down.

What do you usually eat in a day?

I’m in New York - what a wonderful place for food and a wonderful place for coffee, two things I love. So I started my day with a great flat white. I made a responsible choice with an egg-white omelet, knowing that I probably would be able to sneak away for a decent lunch. My lunch today was a flat white and two cookies. It was a corn cookie and a chocolate chip cookie. And I’m going to a nice Italian meal with my bride, because she picked out this restaurant, and she’s super excited about it. So I know the cookies were a choice for lunch. One meal is not going to nutritionally fail you. Bad decisions time and time again over the long-term, well, you’ve got to be accountable for the results. So I’m going to enjoy this restaurant. I’m not going to try to bring steamed chicken breast and be like, “Can you just put this on a plate for me?” No, I’m going to enjoy the pasta and whatever they have to offer. And I want to enjoy the company of my bride and have a wonderful night before we head back to our home. Then at home, I’m going to dial back the calories, and I’m going to make responsible choices.

You announced your retirement from wrestling in 2025, and at WWE’s Backlash event on May 9, fans serenaded you with chants of “One more match!” It seemed to genuinely touch you. How realistic is the possibility of a return?

I hate speaking in absolutes … “Never” is a strong word. It would be financial suicide for someone to court me in a position where I would have another match, and I truly mean that. So if you’re in the business of torching currency, that’s the only way to get me back in the ring. Aside from that, the reason “one more match” resonated so well for me, first of all, I got to express to the fans of how fulfilled I felt when I retired. Second of all, the interest of an audience being like, “We want to see you again!” gets me excited for the new idea of the John Cena Classic. We can do this again. I’ll be there. It’ll be fan-forward and fan-first. I won’t be so focused on, “Man, this match means everything to me. I’ve got to make sure I give all I have when the music plays and I’m under the lights.” I get to watch other performers, so I can kind of be the ambassador for the event, and I can get out there and meet with people that matter most in my life, the fans. I really can’t wait for this thing to find its legs, for us to get a city and a date and move forward. And I can’t wait for it to happen. So when I hear “one more match,” I hear [that] there’s still interest, the heart still beats. I’m trying to think in my head, How can we gear this to where I can be there, be active and be included but allow others to do the thing I can no longer do. I hope we have it with the John Cena Classic.

You made the John Cena Classic announcement at Backlash. What else can you tell us about it?

It’s still a work in progress. What I want to see is a night of exhibition matches. I always try to say to young talent, “Tell me who you are in one sentence.” The John Cena Classic is WWE’s All Star game. That’s the sentence. And then we branch out from that. I envision a world … where it’s exhibition matches, WWE superstars competing with NXT superstars. … Maybe they’re on the same team, maybe they face off at each other. … I think the bracketology is interesting. I love a world where I personally invite the talent to participate so they know how much it means to me. That means more trips to Raw, more trips to SmackDown, more trips to NXT. We have reveals of all this stuff. We tell everybody where it is when it is. … We’re going to debut a new championship. So I’d love the audience to see that. I’d love the participants to see that before. I’d love to do a card reveal where you realize the event, and these are the matchups. We’ve got to figure out the fan vote. I do not want it sabotaged. I do not want it hijacked. I know there’s a lot of burner accounts out there and there’s a lot of bots out there. Audience participation is what I want, like fair audience participation, because I’m the success story. I’m trying to encompass my journey in an evening. I was the WWE last pick. I was going to be fired. I was given a second chance, and not a main-event second chance. I started on the minor league shows. I started on the weekend shows, live events, winning over one fan at a time. This is a night where you can put down your business card and say you’re going to remember this name. And if you’re already a champ and you participate in the event, you can say that’s why I am. It’s truly just an exhibition of our best and brightest of today and tomorrow, and you never know what’s going to happen.

Is there one young superstar you think could be the next John Cena? Or do you want to leave that to the Classic?

That’s always the question: Who do you think is next? I’m the living example of no one knows. You guys were going to fire me. And here we are, moving the intellectual property forward in a way where it can give back opportunity that doesn’t rest on my shoulders. … The template is the Arnold Classic. The first Arnold Classic, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the attraction. Now that exposition has become so large and so fast, Arnold still goes. He loves it, but there’s so much more there. And if we don’t try new stuff, we won’t know where we land. And this is new for our audience. There’s a lot of questions, a lot of polarizing attitude, which is great because I’m a polarizing guy. In the huge middle block of my career, there’s a lot of folks cheering and a lot of folks booing. [Wrestling commentator] Michael Cole called it polarizing, so I like that sort of intrigue heading into this.

Some fans were scratching their heads when you announced the classic because they weren’t entirely sure what it meant. Did it surprise you that they were was a little bit of backlash?

Great point. I dropped so much information on the audience, and I didn’t … it’s not complete. There’s still more information to give. We’re gonna have a new event. We’re gonna crown a new champion, and everyone qualifies for the vote, and there’s going to be a vote. What does that mean? Well, if you want to vote for the winners, vote for the winners. That’s fine. I just want to let you know that if somebody busts their hump and wins your heart and wins your vote, you can vote for them. That’s an important piece to get out, because we’re trained that only winners qualify. So that, in itself, is a landslide of questions: “Oh, this just turned my world upside-down. I don’t even know if this is gonna work!” Neither do I, but I think it’’s bold enough to try, because in the early stages of my career, I lost a lot, but people would walk away being like, “That’s that rapping guy.” So I really won; I won their heart and I won their vote because they kept showing up. I’m literally trying to encapsulate the early stages of my journey into one night of exhibition contests. So we’ll see. I can promise you this: You will get my all for this thing, absolutely.

In addition to wrestling, you now have a very solid comedy career, with roles in movies like Blockers, Daddy’s Home and Barbie. What’s more nerve-wracking: wrestling live or comedy acting?

Oh my goodness, wrestling live. It takes your everything at more than you’re capable of. It takes like 103 percent of you. There’s no comparison. Comedy acting is fun because they only show the one that works. I got to work with one of the greatest physical storytellers of our generation, if not all time, Jackie Chan [in 2023’s Hidden Strike], and he still, at his age, does his own stunts. his own choreo, and he would always reference that famous take of him throwing the fan. In the film, it looks beautiful. He throws his fan back and he catches it. And he said, “I was working at a time in Hong Kong where they were generous enough with our budget. I threw that fan 500 times. The one you see is the one I caught.” So it looks just seamless. I love that safety net, because it allows you to swing big and take risks. Not that I don’t take risks in WWE - hell, I’m taking an enormous risk with the Classic. But man, when you’re out there live, you don’t get a do-over, and you have to be ultra present. You have to be ultra there. You have to be worried about what’s going on. You also have to be aware of the audience and every single element. It’s the most plugged in and present I’ve ever been in my life.

But you are actually very funny in comedy! When did you realize you were funny?

I think I think this setup to laugh at myself is the rise in WWE. You have this rise as this perseverant performer who’s almost Superman in his strength and his feats of grit and his will. That character can be parodied. And I think the relationship I have with comedy, one is being paired with excellent comedians. I always try to put myself in a room where I’m not the smartest person in the room. If you look at all the chances you’ve had to laugh at work that I’ve done, I guarantee there’s a really skilled comedian right next to me that helps. And not being afraid to laugh at yourself. I think once you let that go… like what I did for WWE [and] my persona… that set me up to laugh against that persona outside of WWE, whether it’s to play against my intelligence, my physical build, nuance, things I do when nobody’s watching, like there’s a basket of comedy, I just got to be bold enough to lean into it, and that has helped generate some laughs in the entertainment industry.

You’ve had so many iconic WWE personas over the years. Was there one version of yourself that was the most fun to play?

I liked the last one. I liked the last year because I tried to weave a narrative. And again, once your performance is public, how people feel about it is correct. “Ah, they messed it up,” or this and that, that’s all correct, because that’s how you feel. How I felt. I tried to encapsulate a man’s struggle or the human struggle, with the end of their life, and, gosh, I felt great about it - the crisis moment of “I’m changing it and I can’t adapt to this.” If I put myself to achieving this goal, I’ll do it. I’m going to stay alive and superhuman at any and all costs, to it really doesn’t have any value in my life. What has value? It’s the connection with people I love… I don’t care what happens to a moment of glory when I can win an Intercontinental Championship my hometown in Boston for my family, which is like that last tip of the cap before the trail to the final match, where in the final moment where you’re surrounded by your loved ones and their energy and enthusiasm, you can safely and in a fulfilled sense, close the chapter. It was a great year for me. It was great because here I am advocating to young talent to take risks, and I was taking them right until the last second of my career, and still taking them with trying to trying to plan new and exciting events.

You grew up in a house with five boys. What was the chaos level growing up?

It was chaos. Indescribable chaos, but never like fear for one’s life, even though we were fighting each other all the time and we lit fire to the forest one time. I think maybe my brother chased me with a chainsaw once? Yeah, but it was weird, because I knew he was never gonna do anything, and I could run faster than he could, so I was OK. I look back on those moments and I reflect so fondly. It taught me how to get my ass kicked. It taught me how to lose a fight. The humility of like, if you’re gonna step up and put your fists up and step toward someone, it better be serious, because you’re not going to win every fight, kiddo. And my brothers and I, we were at each other’s throats till late high school. Losing a fight as an adolescent or wearing the wrong thing to school, is tough. It’s just very humbling. My brothers, to this day, are a grounding force in like, “You’re still the kid who peed his pants. Don’t ever think you’re not. You’re still a human being.” And I love them for that. Also that movie scenario where you kick the crap out of a guy and then grab him by the hand and buy him a beer. The respect and protection and the core of our family is kind of forged in that chaos. And I love to see us all getting older now, because there are no more fights, and we’re all in such a calm state of like, “Man, we all made it, and everybody’s doing OK.” I don’t think we get to where we are now without kicking the crap out of each other as kids. So I don’t look back on that and scratch my head, of like, “What were we doing?!” I take the yield from it, and I’m grateful for it.

How does your relationship with Shay factor into this place of growth and peace that you’re in?

I think our opposites complement each other. I am the passion of our operation. She’s the brains. Not to say that I don’t have brains and she doesn’t have passion, but our weaknesses are complemented by our strengths. … It is not at all without its effort, but neither is anything that’s worth accomplishing. I often tell her she’s all the good in my life. She is the good angel on my shoulder, and she is the definition of what love is to me.

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This story was originally published June 11, 2026 at 10:00 AM.