Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2423 - John Cena
Uploaded: 2025-12-05T18:01:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2423 - John Cena' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2423 - John Cena' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-05. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2423 - John Cena

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!
Joe Rogan, what's up?
John Cena in the fucking house.
Put these on, man.
Yeah, let's put these on, pretend we're professional.
What's up? Good to see you, man.
Thanks so much for having me.
My pleasure.
And there's no way I'm having a pro wrestler on without Tony Hinchcliffe.
Of course.
It's impossible. He's the expert.
He knows more about pro wrestling than I know about UFC.
Yeah. Sometimes I translate little things here and there.
That's cool. It's all right.
Yeah, he has to. He has to.
And he's a giant fan of yours, too.
You know, who else is a giant fan of yours is Brian Simpson.
Brian Simpson was going on last night about how intelligent you are.
It was really interesting.
You sure was me?
Yeah, man.
Well, you do speak fucking Mandarin, which is kind of crazy.
Yeah, yeah.
How long did it take you to learn that?
Man, I was doing that for quite a long time.
I've since kind of declined on the studies.
A wonderful takeaway from the study of Mandarin, just because you know a
language doesn't mean you know the culture.
So that was a fantastic experience with that.
But I studied Mandarin for like a decade.
And I would say like not even conversationally fluent.
It was a really tough hill to climb for me.
Well, it seems like a really big hill.
Just it's just different.
You know, you get used to the language and the structure.
And even if you can speak it, can you read it?
You know, the reading.
No, no, I didn't even bother to read.
And like reading all the characters, understanding everything.
Yeah.
How long did it take you to learn?
Around 10 years.
Whoa.
Yeah.
And then like, I mean, I would dream in Mandarin and like have conversations
and kick down and that.
So it became like a second language.
But, you know, I lived in China for a little bit.
I filmed a movie with Jackie Chan.
So I was there for like six or seven months.
I lived there in, man, we were in Inner Mongolia, Yinchuan province.
So like in China.
Wow.
And it was fun.
Yeah, yeah.
You were in Mongolia?
Inner Mongolia, yeah.
What's the difference?
I don't know because I've never been to Mongolia.
But Inner Mongolia was, man, I was the only person that looked like me there.
And everyone would say, look, it's big white guy.
Hun Da Bai Ren.
Hun Da Bai Ren.
That would call me.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
So what motivated you to learn that?
It seems like such a task.
Honestly, man, it was everything in my life seems to be wrestling related.
It was wrestling related.
Like WWE's reach spread everywhere.
I mean, I've been able to lucky enough to perform everywhere from like Moscow,
Philippines,
South Africa, Bangor, Maine, every place in between except China.
China was like the one place that didn't understand what we did.
So it's literally like it's a universal language because you can turn.
It's like UFC.
Like you turn the volume down, but you can see like, oh, this is two guys, best
guy wins.
I get it.
The Chinese just didn't get it.
So I figured if like one of our superstars spoke the language, maybe that would
help break down the barrier.
And we got in for your idea.
It was my idea.
But the WWE offers and I think they still offer it.
They offer a free second language program.
So like when they rolled out the initiative of like financial advice and, you
know, they'll pay for portions of your secondary education and free second
language.
This is like 2011, 2012, big talent meeting in like an auditorium.
I'm one of the old guys at the time sitting in the front being like, these kids
don't know how good they have it.
I should stand up and tell them.
I'm like, no, fuck that.
I'm actually going to lead by example and take a language.
So I signed up right then and there for Chinese because I wanted to get us into
China.
Wow.
And like I said, it worked, but it kind of only worked.
I think actually right now China is experiencing what wrestling is to them
because like there's, I've read articles that there's promotions over there
that are thriving.
So like now they get it.
Oh, so they have their own promotions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is a fairly recent thing.
I think so.
Like I just read recent articles that like pro wrestling is thriving in China
and they have their own, like their own way of doing it.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's wild.
It's wild how like expansive the pro wrestling business is that they would be
that open-minded to say like, let's, let's give second language programs to the
athletes.
Well, you know, I just, it's, it's weird.
The origins of the business are carnival related.
It is like a carnival attraction.
And then, uh, it, it was like ruthlessly territorial.
And then when it became national, it was still trying to find its way.
It's, it's almost like you see pro sports doing it.
You know, the more a sport succeeds, the more benefits they offer to their
competitors and athletes.
So, uh, you know, WWE kind of hit that stride.
Yeah.
It's just such a smart thing to do.
You know?
Yeah.
Well, you give your channel, give your talent, the opportunities to, to gain
knowledge and wisdom.
And the sad thing is, I don't know how many people did it or, or do it still,
you know?
Was there anybody other than you that you know of?
Two other people.
Who?
Uh, Claudio Castagnoli, who speaks, I think four or five languages already.
And he just wanted to take like a brush up course and a Natty Nightheart.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's it.
That's it.
Everybody else is like.
Not going to do it.
Too much work.
Yeah.
What was the not knowing the culture aspect?
So, man, I got, I got put in a bit of a hotspot with, um, uh, I, I, I made a, a
pact to myself when I was like, okay, I feel fluent.
We would do these global press tours and I just happened to be on a global
press tour.
And I'm like, you know what?
I'm going to do 70% of my media in Mandarin, like in dialogue.
And I got to say, I did it.
Like I went over there, spoke, people were taking off the translator headphones.
Like life was good.
Everything was great.
At the very end of the day, as with all these press tours, you do like a bunch
of prompter reads.
So I'm doing prompter reads for everywhere and it's like, uh, Hey, go to this
place and see this movie, go to this place and see this movie.
And no, my bad.
I didn't check the reads cause it's like an end of a 10 hour day.
You do a million of these things.
And one of them said like, Hey, uh, Taiwan, see this, this, and, and, uh, the,
the, it was all in Mandarin and the opinion described Taiwan as a country.
So be the first country to see this.
Now over there, they, they look through a different lens, like geopolitics are
murky waters, man.
And that's what, when I learned of like, I just said it left, everybody was
cool.
I did my thing.
Like I read the prompt.
It was like a Ron Burgundy moment.
Like go fuck yourself, San Diego.
It's like the most offensive thing you can say.
So I'm like, man, you know, good job, John.
You, you said the, you did 70% and people understood what you were talking
about.
And then they put that out and everybody was like, what the fuck did you just
say?
We don't, that's not how we do it over here.
And again, just cause like my takeaway, and it was a, it was a pretty tense
moment for me.
Like I had to apologize to China and then apologizing to China.
I pissed off my home country.
I'm a patriot.
I love the United States of America and everything it stands for.
But like no one, it was never enough.
Nobody was happy.
Everybody was fucked up.
And it was, it was, it was like murky waters for me personally.
And I, it was weird.
Like I'm not, I think I might've been the only guy almost to get canceled for
doing his homework.
You know, like we're trying to like learn, like learn and try to do something.
But the cool takeaway, you know, we can learn from every mistake.
My mistake was just because, you know, the language doesn't mean, you know, the
culture.
Did they even refer to it as Taiwan?
I think they referred to it as Chinese Taipei, right?
Man, what was in the, I know what I read in the thing.
So that's, again, I don't know enough depth to know that.
And now like people are like, oh man, can you, can you speak Mandarin for this?
I just won't do it.
It's a skill that I have and it's, but it's a skill that's going to remain with
me because it's, I don't understand.
I don't have the depth of field to know what to call that place in that region
of the world.
And I haven't done enough research and I don't have the wisdom and I don't have
like the, the cultural fluency, you know?
So it was a cool lesson.
It sucked because I thought I was just trying to do something good, but it was,
it was a cool lesson.
And was it really that big of a deal?
Man, I thought like I, I was filming Peacemaker season one.
And when they came out with all of this stuff, I went directly to James Gunn
and was like, hey man, if you have to fire me, I understand.
Wow.
And.
It was that serious.
Yeah.
But it wasn't even words that you wrote.
Someone else, the WWE wrote it?
That doesn't, no, no, it was, it was for the movie I was promoting.
Right.
So the movie, the people that made the movie wrote it.
So I don't know.
Like when you do these press tours, let's say if I'm doing a movie for Warner
Brothers, let's say,
let's use Peacemaker as an example.
I'm doing a global Peacemaker tour and we go into China or we go into South
America.
You meet like the PR person there and they have all the stuff you're supposed
to do and they curate your experience and they hold your hand.
You're like, okay, now we're going to go to this station.
And by the way, they just want you to do some shout outs.
So anytime I go anywhere globally now, as much as I want to thank fans for
their attention and, you know, investing in the product, I really shy away from
like speaking the language because I don't understand the cultural nuance.
You know, I just, I just want to be like, yo man, thanks for watching what we
do.
And I love the fact that you're entertained, but I want to speak to you at a
level that I understand that I'm fluent because your boots on the ground here
every day.
And I might say something that's a nice gesture, but completely fucking offend
you.
And that's, that's not good.
That's not good for anybody.
So was the teleprompter in English and you translate to Chinese?
No, everything was in Mandarin and in, uh, in Chinese, they have the characters,
which are virtually impossible for me to learn.
There's like an infinite number, but they have, they also have what's called pinyin,
which is, it's kind of spelled out in English with phonetics.
So it has the four tones.
Okay.
So if you were to put something in front of me in pinyin right now, I could
definitely read it.
And I got good at reading pinyin.
So I was like, man, I could, I could send all these messages in Mandarin and
then more people will know about this movie and more people will know about me
and more people will know about wrestling and more people will be excited.
Excited looked good on paper.
Just my follow through was a bit weak.
You know, it doesn't even seem like that was your fault.
Right.
It's probably a PR assistant assistant that's type that's probably in charge of
doing the grunt work of typing in all the different languages and the different
countries.
Like it's tedious.
From, from what I know, I know I'm going to learn a lot about you guys in this
episode, but from what I know about you, you're, you're into looking at looking
things through different lenses and different perspectives.
It also could have been somebody being like, I'm going to get this kid.
Ooh.
But here's the thing.
I, I do appreciate you saying like, it's not your fault.
That's not true.
It was my fault.
And I think that's when I can start to work on like, well, what did I learn
from this?
And I could easily blame a PR and assistant.
I could say somebody had a target on my back, all that stuff.
I fucked up.
Did you suspect th