John Cena addresses Vince McMahon sexual assault, trafficking lawsuit

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Originally published at John Cena addresses Vince McMahon sexual assault, trafficking lawsuit

WWE star John Cena addressed sexual assault, and trafficking allegations against Vince McMahon during an appearance on a national talk radio show.

Cena was asked about the recently filed lawsuit against Vince McMahon, WWE, and John Laurinaitis when he appeared on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show on Wednesday.

The lawsuit, filed by former WWE staffer Janel Grant, goes into graphic detail describing how she suffered “physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault and trafficking” while working for the company.

Stern asked Cena how he deals with someone he loves getting into “hot water,” which in this instance is referring to sexual assault and trafficking allegations against McMahon. During a long statement about the lawsuit, Cena mentioned that he has always had a “great relationship” with McMahon and is currently focused on taking things “one day at a time.”

I don’t think it’s complicated to talk about,” Cena said after Stern claimed that the allegations against McMahon might be hard for him to address. “I think it’s complicated to listen to. That’s kind of why I don’t necessarily put a lot of time and equity into it. Again, I think there’s still a long ways to go. I can say this: I’m a big advocate of love and friendship, and honesty and communication. But in the same breath, I’m also a big advocate of accountability. I think you explained it well, if someone’s behavior lies so far outside your value system that the balance shifts of like, ‘Man I can’t operate in a world where this works,’ that’s the end result of being accountable.

Stern then jumped in and asked Cena: “But what are you going to do though?”

Right now, what I’m going to do is love the person I love, be their friend, and by that it means like, ‘Hey, I love you, you’ve got a hill to climb,’” Cena said. “There’s the saying of like, you don’t know who your friends are until s*** hits the fan or your back’s against the wall. That doesn’t make any of what’s going on any easier to swallow … It sounds so cliche, but it has to be one day at a time. But in the same token, I’ve openly said I love the guy, I’ve got a great relationship with the guy, that’s that.

Cena went on to describe the lawsuit as “super, super unfortunate,” saying that “not only does it deal with an individual I love, but an entity that I love and one that I speak highly of.”

John Cena spoke to Howard Stern this morning. For about 5 minutes as part of their hour-long conversation, they talked about the allegations of sexual misconduct against Vince McMahon. pic.twitter.com/pnKoklkHID

— Brandon Thurston (@BrandonThurston) February 21, 2024

 

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That’s gonna be a “yikes” for me, brother.

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Cena is incredibly tone deaf, and absolutely gross for taking this approach.

We get it John, you love Vince. This isn’t a friend who was stealing a loaf of bread to feed their family. This isn’t a close friend who got a speeding ticket. This isn’t even a friend of family member who got drunk, did something stupid, and got arrested.

It’s wild the hold that Vince has over people.

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A lot of words that mean nothing. It’s why Cena always gets a meh from me - total company bitch. Then, now, forever.

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Cena was more concerned about offending China over calling Taiwan a country, than he is about this.

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He’s a company man for better or worse

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Yikes… even I liked Rollins’ response to the matter more than this.

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As an outsider I just can’t understand loving Vince McMahon this much.

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John Cena was a bum in Mass before the WWE machine laughed him to high heaven. I imagine he feels grateful to Vince for his life

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Yeah, I never understood why even former wrestlers who are not affiliated with the company are so loyal to him. He never cared about them, just used them to his benefit.

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John Cena is a guy though who Vince seems to have always been behind and pushed even when the fans didn’t want him too. I can see the loyalty.

I wish John saw the bigger picture but I get why he’s loyal

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This.

In addition to what you said, these are two people that had a relationship for 20+ years and by all accounts are very close. I agree with most that Cena’s words were not great, but I’m not going to criticize anyone for not publicly bashing someone they have known for that long just because the internet wants them to.

If any of us had someone we love (using those words because Cena did) accused of such heinous acts, I have to imagine it would be a very hard thing to reconcile. I remember listening to an interview with Keshia Knight Pulliam (ie Rudy Huxtable from the Cosby Show) and it was a very similar sentiment when it came to her speaking about Bill Cosby. These are people they looked at as a father figure, they are humans just like everyone else and they need to time to process everything and I’m sure there is an element of holding out hope that its not real, or that they are false accusations. I’m sorry, but I can’t villainize Cena for this (not saying you are Alex, but some definitely are on social media).

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It’s Ryback… But who knows…

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This is a fair statement for 95% of wrestlers. John Cena isn’t one of them.

It’s a good comparison but falters a bit as Cosby’s acts occurred far away from Pulliam’s access to Cosby on set while there is intimations that it’s not unlikely Cena would know some of what Vince was allegedly up to.

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To my knowledge, Cena was not aware that Vince was raping women and sex trafficking and my comments and comparison are based on that being the case.

Now if factual information comes out that indicates otherwise, different story. Sure there is fan speculation, but I don’t care about speculation. If we are speculating, through 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon we could implicate most of the WWE and AEW roster.

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It’s a fair pushback. I guess my commentary is more about the rumour and innuendo coming out about backstage WWE culture and not so much the lawsuit. That being said, that’s on me to distinguish.

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Come on, the “aggregating” from actual news sources is appreciated. But you’re posting Ryback?

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It’s literally the first time I’ve watched one of his videos.

Noted. Haha

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Sorry, this made me chuckle.

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