6 Things You Should Know About John Cena

John Cena: the man, the myth, the legend of the WWE.

Over the course of his career, he’s become world champion a staggering 16 times. Because of this feat, our very own Jack Goodwillie declared, that made his title matches almost too easy to call.

And finally, after a 15-month hiatus, it looks like John Cena is back for the long haul, with the WWE recently announcing that he’ll be making appearances all the way to September’s Smackdown.

So as wrestling fans the world over rejoice, let’s look back over the past two decades and reminisce on these 6 facts about John Felix Anthony Cena — including some things you may have not known about before.

His wrestling career highlights are impressive

Undoubtedly, John Cena is one of the most accomplished professional wrestlers out there. Over the past 20 years, he’s won 21 championships, including 13 with the WWE. This means he’s got the 4th highest number of combined days as WWE champion, only being bested by fellow legends Bob Backlund, Hulk Hogan, and Bruno Sammartino.

And he did it all in jorts.

He once won a match with a major injury

Cena might be one of the most charismatic talkers in the ring, but he knows when to grit his teeth and get down to business. In fact, early on in his career, he made it through an entire match with a major injury — and won.

The year was 2007, and Cena was up against Ken Anderson (professionally known as Mr. Kennedy) when his pectoral muscle tore completely away from the bone. And he didn’t just win the match: He also made it through Randy Orton’s scripted attack afterward.

He was a college football star

In fact, Cena’s been into athletics since his youth, learning to lift weights to avoid being bullied, and even earning a degree in exercise physiology from Springfield College. He also played for the college football team, wearing jersey number 54.

Here, Captain Cena led them to their first-ever NCAA Division III tournament in 1998, and was even named an ECAC New England/Northeast Division III All-Star. However, he said he was considered “too small” to seriously pursue a professional football career.

He wants to play at the WSOP

That being said, Cena is proficient at non-athletic pursuits, as well. He actually likes to play poker on the side, first catching the “poker bug” after watching a World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournament in the early 2000s.

From there, he joined the online poker craze going on at the time. This decade is also known as the golden age of Texas Hold’em poker, a variant that many refer to as the “Cadillac of Poker”. It’s the most popular version of the game played to this day, and players needed focus, passion, and attitude to win.

Cena admitted that these attributes were part of what drew him to the game, and he ended up playing over 908 tournaments on the PokerStars US site — aside from games at home, of course. No wonder he wants to one day enter the WSOP himself!

He speaks Mandarin

Don’t underestimate John Cena: He’s an exceedingly intelligent individual. He learned Mandarin Chinese in a short period of time, so he could better reach the Asian market on behalf of the WWE. While doing so, he became fascinated with the language, and immersed himself in all forms of media to pick it up faster.

Now, he’s reached the point of near-fluency, and can even do whole speeches without scripts or cue cards. However, Cena still manages to stay humble.

“I’ve been studying Mandarin for five years and I still speak like a third-grader,” he admitted to The Straits Times in 2017.

Tic Tacs were his comfort snack

You may have heard of throwing salt over your left shoulder or knocking on wood, but John Cena probably has the sweetest and most novel superstition of all time. To calm his nerves, he’d pop some Tic Tacs 3 hours before his matches were scheduled to begin.

And this wasn’t casual consumption, either. Cena revealed that he could consume up to 3 boxes — or over 10,000 calories in sugar — in that time. Since then, though, he’s managed to wean himself off them.