“I Won’t Say the Producer’s Name”: Ex-WWE Star Got Legitimately Punished for Refusing to Sell for John Cena

Pro wrestling is a place where fiction and reality often collide. With wrestlers often messing around with the line between fantasy and reality, it’s hard to figure out if someone’s on the level or not. Famous examples are those like Bray Wyatt portraying The Fiend, as well as wrestlers like The Undertaker and Kane. Now, it seems like not only fans buy into these gimmicks, but also the people within wrestling promotions themselves. One producer seemed to have taken things a bit too far when it came to one former WWE legend.

The 3-time WWE World Tag Team Champion, alongside his then tag-team partner, were not able to buy into the fact that John Cena was a real thug. What followed hurt the chances of the duo making it big at the promotion. Especially thanks to being buried by Vince McMahon and the entire creative team for a while.

‘Thug’ John Cena is not real

Before John Cena was known as John Cena, he was known for his Doctor of Thugonomics gimmick. The character was mean and from the streets, and was known for his witty and spiteful comments. Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch were a tag team who were active at the same time when John Cena started gaining notoriety. These stars were having a hard time buying into Cena’s persona. But things took a hard left turn when they were confronted by a producer.

During an interview with Wrestling News.com, Trevor Murdoch said, “I won’t say the producer’s name, but Lance and I on our first run, everything’s going well and a certain producer that was there during our vignettes tried to convince Lance and me that John Cena was a real thug.”

He further went on to say that the producer said that Cena was actually from the streets. But the tag team was convinced that The Leader of the Cenation was not really a thug. He then said, “Well, this producer got so angry that we didn’t cater to that conversation, he went into the production meeting and buried us”. What followed was that the producer convinced everyone in the creative division that the tag team was not ready and they still needed some training.

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This had caught both the stars by surprise. But what was more shocking was the way Shawn Michaels reacted after attending the meeting.

Shawn Michaels agreed with the duo

Murdoch recalled how Shawn Michaels reacted after coming out of the meeting. He said, “It was so bad that Shawn Michaels came out of said meeting and came up to us and was like, ‘What the hell did you say to him?” As the duo was wondering what had happened, HBK explained to them how the said producer ‘buried’ them in front of everyone, including Vince McMahon. Murdoch then said that they both explained the scenario to Michaels, to which he replied, “Well, that’s some horse sh*t.”

After that, he advised the duo to get it fixed. “It took us a couple of months to convince Vince that we were a good tag team and that we should be on TV.” He further said that thanks to Shawn Micheals, the duo figured out how to stand up for themselves and grow further as a tag team. Murdoch even said that the ‘backstage politics’ was something that he was not ready for.

Interestingly, Cody Rhodes also once highlighted the fact that there had been a lot of changes in the promotion compared to before, so hopefully the same doesn’t happen to newer wrestlers. Do you think every star has to face incidents like these until they make it big?

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