Cena, John (1977-…), is an American wrestler. He ranks among the most popular figures in the history of professional wrestling. Cena is a wrestler for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), an American professional wrestling organization. He has won many WWE world and United States championships. Cena is known for his strength, muscular build, and likable, hardworking image. In 2024, Cena announced that he would retire from the WWE after 2025.
John Felix Anthony Cena was born on April 23, 1977, in West Newbury, Massachusetts, north of Boston. He attended Springfield College, where he played football. After graduating in 1998, he moved to California and briefly pursued a career in bodybuilding. In 2000, Cena began training to become a pro wrestler at Ultimate Pro Wrestling (UPW), a wrestling promoter and training organization. He began wrestling with Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW), an independent professional wrestling promoter, in 2001. In both the UPW and the OVW, he played a cyborglike character called “The Prototype.” A cyborg is a being whose body also contains mechanical and electronic parts. Cena held the OVW heavyweight title for a short time.
Cena made his official WWE debut in 2002. He briefly played a sharp-tongued rapper, billed as the “Doctor of Thuganomics,” before adopting a broader, more heroic image. He won his first WWE U.S. championship in 2004 at the company’s annual WrestleMania event. In 2005, Cena won his first world championship at WrestleMania. He won the WWE Royal Rumble match, involving dozens of wrestlers, in 2008 and again in 2013. In 2012, Cena lost to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the main event of WrestleMania. He defeated the Rock in a 2013 WrestleMania rematch to win the world championship title.
Cena has recorded a rap album, You Can’t See Me (2005). He has also starred or appeared in many television shows and motion pictures, including the action films The Marine (2006), 12 Rounds (2009), The Wall (2017), F9:The Fast Saga (2021), and Fast X (2023); and in the comedies Trainwreck (2015) and Blockers (2018). He voiced the title character of a young bull in the animated movie Ferdinand (2017), of the polar bear Yoshi in the movie Dolittle (2020), and of the mutant rhinoceros Rocksteady in the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023). Cena works frequently with the charitable Make-A-Wish Foundation, through which he has met with hundreds of critically ill children.
