Shadowing Practice: John Cena on Being Initially Hated for His Persona and Turning Heel - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The Joe Rogan experience.
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One thing about WWE, for all the arguments of like backstage Politico,
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everybody understands the sound of money and no one refuses it.
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Like, I fucking hate this guy, but I got to give him another match.
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It may not be, but I now have to give him a 10 year contract.
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But when they go out there, if the noise is there, even if the theys fucking hate you, you get another match I mean I am proof positive of
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that meritocracy at work yeah like everybody fucking hated me why
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they hate you I was just real different like I I was just really different in what way
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so I didn't rock I didn't ruffle any feathers
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when I kind of entered the business kept quiet did my stuff
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but I also didn't connect with the audience and and
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and I don't know maybe you guys see this in stand -up
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or not but then I got like a personality of like the white rap guy, like the white hip -hop guy.
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You know about that?
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Yeah.
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But like I fucking went all in, you know, urban gear.
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And I'm a hip -hop head, so it's like, oh, man, this is my sweet spot.
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This is the avenue.
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This isn't all of my personality, but this is one level that I can show that I think everyone will get.
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So if you go to Madison Square Garden, you get it.
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But if we go to Wheeling, West Virginia, you'll also get it and you may like it in some places
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and hate it in some places
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but everyone will get it i will not be selling apathy but doing
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that i never followed dress code i was saying disrespectful about
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my peers like i kind of did it my own way
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so i was i was kind of ruffling some feathers backstage
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or just i was taking big swings
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because i was going to get fired anyway the alternative was lose my job
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so i was like it i'm going down swinging yeah
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and then the people behind the curtain like ah the kid's
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disrespectful to the business he doesn't care about the business all the
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while i just want to keep my job you know
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so the they's behind the curtain weren't really invested
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but they were also humble enough to be like there's noise out there got to give them another match
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and one match at a time times 23 years of compounding
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interest we're here what did What did Vince think about your hip -hop persona?
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He hated it and then loved it.
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He hated it and then loved it.
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And I think I'm thinking for somebody, but I think from his perspective is, like when I hear somebody's idea for a personality,
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man, I want to be this sports agent guy or whatever, oh, yo, I have the idea of what that is in my head.
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And if their projection of that idea doesn't match my projection of that idea, I'm like, ah, fuck, I hate it.
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But that doesn't mean it can't work.
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So I think what maybe would happen was my perspective of
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the white hip -hop guy from the mean street of Wes Newberry and Vince's perspective of John Cena, the rapper, we probably missed.
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Like, he had an idea and I had an idea.
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And usually he will craft it to his vision.
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I got to give him respect for allowing me to kind of run with it, you know?
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Well, it's probably that fear of being fired that, like, keeps you on the edge, too.
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Dude, that was it of, like, the NVIDIA guy of, like, I don't want to fail.
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Yeah.
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I got the sit -down of, like, hey, we're going to cut you because it's not working.
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Like, you're out there for your matches.
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You hear the same thing.
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It's not working.
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And there's no argument there.
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I'm like, fucking all right.
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I got to touch the sun.
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I got to make it.
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I got to play for the Yankees.
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I got my one at bat.
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I'm Moonlight Graham.
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And then they heard me rap in the back of the bus
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and was like, man, Stephanie and he heard me rappin' the back of the bus.
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It was like, yo, you wanna do that on TV?
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I'm like, lose my job or fuckin' rap?
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Yeah, let's go, let's do this.
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So it was Stephanie's idea?
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And it was a fuckin' accident, dude.
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It was an accident.
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It was my final overseas tour for the WWE, and the boys just spend time, like that's the one time they get the whole group together,
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is overseas, cause you don't wanna be herdin' cats like in Amsterdam or something.
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Everybody rides on the bus, you go from town to town, so like to pass the time, the boys just do whatever, and they were freestyling on the back of the bus
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and I normally just fucking kept to myself because I was raised in
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the environment of like keep your ears open keep your mouth shut don't do anything less spoken to
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so I did that
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but I also didn't make any connections with people who were putting their lives on the line for me
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you know some of the guys you really beat the shit out of in the rings are like your best friends
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so I didn't have any of those connections
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and I heard these guys rapping
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and I just remember playing rollercoaster tycoon on my laptop fold
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that shit up putting it away
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and be like I'm going to the back of the bus
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and just waited my turn and then filleted like 12 guys yeah
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and Stephanie was like how the fuck did you remember all
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that I'm like no no it's freestyle you just make it up
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and she's like well make up something about me
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and we were boarding a plane
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and I literally like utilize the plane the people getting on
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the plane what she was wearing what she was eating she's like would you do this on TV
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And that's where we got a chance.
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Wow.
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That's crazy.
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It wasn't like off to the moon.
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Like I got a shitty chance on a small spot and that worked.
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So then I got moved to like the dog shit Saturday night program that nobody watches.
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But the cool thing is no one's watching.
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So like I can do whatever I wanted.
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So I started saying more racy shit and dressing more outlandish and having more personality and like claiming ownership of the show.
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I call myself Mr. Saturday Night.
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And it's the shitty show.
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You don't want to be Mr. Saturday Night, but I did.
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And then that got another match and got another match.
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And one by one, it kind of brought me here.
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Wow.
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Just a fucking happy accident, man.
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That's crazy.
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All the way to.
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And even when the bells were like, hey, the whole thing's a fucking accident.
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You want to start training?
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Fuck, yeah, sure, all right, great.
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You want to start rapping?
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Yeah, fuck it, sure.
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Let's see what happens.
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That's amazing.
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It's a happy accident.
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And for it to go all the way to last year's massive heel turn, he went heel, dude.
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That was this year, by the way.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, that was this year.
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Yeah, it's been a year.
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It's been a year.
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Yeah, that was.
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That was a mania.
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And man, literally, perhaps, other than maybe Hogan, right, the greatest heel turn in wrestling history.
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When a good, good, good, good, good, crowd -pleasing guy goes bad, bad, and dark, you had moments, the things you were saying, the way you were saying them,
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epic, iconic, iconic heel turn.
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Cold, dark, working with the Rock, he was in cahoots, that's the good guy Cody Rhodes.
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You can see the people's faces, that's the fun thing.
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It's like, the stuff is so simple, but it's the, if you take out the crowd in that situation and just put those three guys, it is really fucked up what we do.
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But when you add the audience in the back and all of their faces and what's going on, that's what makes me do magic.
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Bro, even your face, you got like a mean guy face all of a sudden.
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It's like you look like a different person.
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It's interesting.
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I was having a bad day.
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Well, this is also when you'd already done a bunch of acting.
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Oh, yes.
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This is this year.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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This is February this year, yeah.
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How much of the creative control do you have over the aspects of that heel turn?
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Like for example, one thing that I thought was the coolest.
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My idea.
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I was in the front row of WrestleMania behind the Spanish announce table, so I'm directly across from the entrance,
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you know, the giant WrestleMania football stadium in Las Vegas, and there was no music, and it was a black background normally he's the most color
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with the most iconic loud wild music no music black background
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and in white letters it just said cena and you just walked out with
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literally the statement was i'm not here to entertain you people basically is what it felt like
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and i loved it i mean this is the main event of mania you are
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so entertained i mean i want to entertain me fuck I
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fucked up yeah I have a degree in pro wrestling
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but my masters is in healed them like it's like the bad I just love a bad guy
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and even ever since that bad guy turn I feel like
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and I feel like most bad guy fans do now newly
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connected with the back to the return of the good guy
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Cena yeah there it is oh I mean it's it was
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literally just I used to come out like a Tasmanian devil yeah it's just reversed it all
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and it seems like nothing
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but it's iconic just cold as ice everyone else for four hours coming out with colorful music
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and pyro and all this stuff and there's the guy
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that normally did it the best in the biggest just really not giving a fuck in WrestleMania
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if you're gonna do it like you'd give your best entrance for wrestlemania
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and this was i guess we were going for the shittiest one
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but it just rang the opposite and simple and true
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so like for example those things those details that's you mostly
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pitching to the creative team like like for example like the even just the white letters the black entrance is
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that how does that kind of come together
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so i think that's um i've
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and i've been lucky enough to kind of take this perspective of not knowing everything
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and realizing that even even with 23 years of fluency I'm not the smartest guy in the room.
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I don't know the technology they have and what they can do.
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Now granted a black LED board I could probably come up with
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that but what I what I like to do is lean on my resources like hey let's go to production
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and see what production is thinking
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and I don't want to tell them what to do because I want to hear their ideas first.
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and production was like what
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if we just went basic i'm like how basic can you go yeah what
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if we just blacked everything out yeah
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but i know from what you guys have said you also like to light the no no what
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if we just black everything out you guys would do
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that oh that sucks yeah let's do that yeah
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so it's not it's not me with all of these things
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i don't i don't have enough depth of field to touch all the bases
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but i will go to every department yeah
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and say like okay entrance is a big part of what
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we do what do we do for lighting what do we
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do for production go to camera like how do you guys want to shoot it
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and then it trickles down
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when you talk to the talent you're working with how do we portray this message uh
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and then of course it starts at the top with creatively i want to make you a bad guy
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so we're going to do that okay sure we're going to do
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that how do you want to do that
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but it's i think it's getting we have a lot of talented people
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and just allowing them to do their job and let you know like oh i was kind of thinking this
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And then tell him, yeah, that's a good idea.
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Let's do that.
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Yeah.
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You know?
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That's amazing.
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Because I don't know what I miss if I'm making all the demands.
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To show you the contrast, his opponent that night came out to, I think it was 40 people on red, white, and blue dirt bikes.
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All dressed like American people.
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Nitro Circus.
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He comes out elevated from inside of the stage wearing this super gaudy mask that he has to take off.
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Fireworks, fireworks, fire, sparks, smoke, all of these different things and he just comes out blank -faced.
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I just got my bunk sock on the back.
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Just ran on.
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There you go.
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It's so funny hearing Tony talk about this because for people who don't know,
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the way Tony runs Kill Tony is basically a version of a WWE event.
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I mean, it really is.
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Like, when he does the arena shows, he has everything set up like a WWE event.
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Yeah.
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I mean, even the thing we did with Shane
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when shane was playing when shane was playing trump when trump
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and i were supposedly feuding online trump had said something about me online
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and then uh trump's talking like as shane's talking
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and then the music plays
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and i show up behind him it's pure pro wrestling oh yeah it's pure pro wrestling
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and msg's on their feet shocked you know you're surprising this crowd
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that thinks they're just there for a comedy show
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and well there's the panel i guess that's what we're gonna have tonight But the surprises, the ups, the downs, and then he brings up Joey Diaz.
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So it's like, boom, boom, kind of like that big finish at Mania that I was talking about.
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Yeah.
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Superstar bringing up a superstar, you know, music, music, smoke, fire.
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Yes.
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All these little things.
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The more you make it important, the more important it becomes.
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Yeah.
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What he's saying is, like, when Trump was there, this was as Trump was running for president, Trump thought that I was endorsing RFK, so he got mad at me.
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So I said I am here to endorse someone and I brought out Joey Diaz Which is great
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Reveal but you get a different reveal and it's like everybody went nuts
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and but it's like the audience They're into it like they're into pro wrestling.
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They want all the heel turns.
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They want all the chaos They want all the the pageantry
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and the fire and the explosions
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and all the shit man You get any live audience They're into all
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that like watch a college football game watch right watch a soccer game overseas or of football, as they would say.
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The fans, it's like a group think of energy that's fuckin' nuts.
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Audiences want it.
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It doesn't matter where you're at.
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Man, when comics just go out and light up a stage
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and they have that fuckin' stage presence and they just slay a set, the fuckin' audience is rollin' in the aisles.
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You let them in.
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And they can help make a joke that might not hit the night before, slay.
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Like, it's all about the moment.
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It's all about being there and reading the people.
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And the fun thing about WWE is you can go out there with an idea.
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And I can only imagine this as kind of like stand -up, where if you got your set and you tell the first joke to crickets, you may try another joke.
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And if that's crickets, you've got to fucking pivot.
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So we go out and do something, and, oh, man, they're into it.
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Great.
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All right, we have them.
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We just got to maintain their attention until we get to act three essentially, but if you hear fucking crickets, you're like, all right, we're switching it up, fucking pivot right now.
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And that's the beauty, that's one of the things that I love the most is the, it's not just me and the other person out there.
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Like, the audience is the act.
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That moment only means something.
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If you put a blue screen behind the people, it is super fucked up.
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Like, what the fuck are they doing and why does that mean anything?
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But when you let the level of the audience
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and everybody's on their feet, they go, no! like it's fucking everything it's everything that's why tony's
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so interested in the coordination of it all
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and the setting in the sabotage and all the chaos that's involved in all
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that these are these are human emotions that are universal Everyone understands betrayal, jealousy, anger, disappointment, failure, excitement.
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Like, these are universal things that you don't, if we don't speak the same language, you still have felt these things.
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And you could watch that, no one spoke in that clip.
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But you could watch that in anywhere in the world, and be like, that kid just got fucked over.
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Right.
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Oh, what's gonna happen next?
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Like, that's the beautiful appeal of it.
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You know, it's, we don't hit too far above our weight class.
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Like we try to send large scale universal messages based on true real human emotion that we all know.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 273 sentences and 3007 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:32. The speaker talks fast, about 194 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| heel noun | /hil/ | The rear part of the foot, where it joins the leg. |
| entrance noun | /ˈɛn.tɹəns/ | The action of entering, or going in. |
| iconic adjective | /aɪˈkɑnɪk/ | Relating to, or having the characteristics of, an icon. |
| universal adjective | /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/ | Of or pertaining to the universe. |
| overseas adverb | /ˌoʊvɚˈsiːz/ | Abroad. |
| entertain verb | /ˌɛntəˈteɪn/ | To amuse (someone); to engage the attention of agreeably. |
| reveal verb | /ɹɪˈviːl/ | To uncover; to show and display that which was hidden. |
| connect verb | /kəˈnɛkt/ | To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object. |
| swing verb | /ˈswɪŋ/ | To rotate about an off-centre fixed point. |
| boom verb | /bum/ | To make a loud, hollow, resonant sound. |
| chaos noun | /ˈkeɪˌɑs/ | The unordered state of matter in classical accounts of cosmogony. |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| rap verb | /ɹæp/ | To strike something sharply with one's knuckles; knock. |
| curtain noun | /ˈkɜɹt(ə)n/ | A piece of cloth covering a window, bed, etc. to offer privacy and keep out light. |
| superstar noun | /ˈsuː.pəˌstɑː/ | Someone who has accumulated a vast amount of fame; a high-level celebrity. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| bring up verb | To mention. | |
| stand up verb | To rise from a lying or sitting position. | |
| bring out verb | To elicit, evoke, or emphasize (a particular quality). | |
| come out with verb | To say (something) unexpectedly. | |
| come together verb | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | To assemble; to congregate; to combine. |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if you're gonna do it like you'd give |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | it's been · i've been · have said |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | weren't really invested · being fired · was raised |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who were · people who don · Diaz Which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 69 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: feather /ˈfɛðə/, apathy /ˈæ.pə.θi/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, projection /pɹəˈd͡ʒɛkʃən/, contrast /kənˈt(ʃ)ɹæst/, shock /ʃɔk/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, disrespectful /dɪs.ɹɪˈspɛkt.fəl/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, disappointment /ˌdɪsəˈpɔɪntmənt/, supposedly /səˈpoʊ̯.zɪd.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like heel, entrance, iconic.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.