For years John Cena was the face of the WWE, and in order to make it to the top of the card in the company you had to go through the Face That Runs The Place.
At one point Nexus were one of the hottest acts in the entire company, and they got over by going after the top dog, John Cena. During an appearance on the Talkin’ Sass podcast former WWE star Michael Tarver opened up about his run with the company, and he claimed that John Cena was relentless when it came to targeting him.
“It [the backstage heat] was never direct, it was never direct. Yeah, so a lot of people would come up to me and would like tell me, ‘Hey, there’s big plans for you. Like there’s a lot of people very impressed with you. Just keep your head up’ because everyone saw that I had heat with one person in particular. Everyone saw it and it was just, it was obvious. Like backstage, it was relentless, relentless — I don’t wanna use the word ‘bullying’ because I’m not a victim but it was just relentless and you know, I stood up for myself. There was times where he would take liberties in the ring so I would give him some knuckles in the ring and I had to defend myself. You know how it is. Somebody takes liberties, you gotta — don’t let ‘em walk all over you.
Oh everyone knows who it is, you just can’t see him. Yeah, yeah, so it was [John] Cena. I don’t have any heat with Cena now. I make jokes about it but, there was a target on my back. I don’t know why he targeted me but it is what it is but, you know, we ended up on good terms. We ended up on good terms. Yeah, I had to defend myself a lot. But, everyone was high on me and all of a sudden they all turned on me and I’m like why are — people wouldn’t shake my hand, they wouldn’t speak to me. Like all the top guys, I go shake their hands and they would just fade me in front of everybody. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what did I do?’ And I thank God for like Booker T, Mark Henry and Teddy Long. They would pull me aside a lot. Mark Henry would pull me aside a lot and be like, ‘Hey, this is what’s happening, weather the storm. You got heat, right? Just weather the storm,’ blah, blah, blah, this and that. MVP was another one that would give me really good advice. Like, ‘Okay, just weather the storm.’ Matt Hardy was really cool. I was like, ‘Alright, thank you guys, I appreciate it.’ ‘You’re only getting this kind of heat because there’s something there, so just weather the storm.’”
H/T Post Wrestling
