Arn Anderson was at one time one of the best technical wrestlers that the WWE had. After ending his in-ring career, Arn Anderson became a coach and worked backstage. He assumed a number of different roles.
Arn Anderson Talks About John Cena Being Pushed Instead of Batista and Orton
Arn also worked with All Elite Wrestling for a while and was an on-screen mentor for Cody Rhodes.
Besides being a well-respected coach, he is also known very well known for his running his podcast. In his podcast, he usually speaks about things that occurred backstage. There are still a huge number of things that wrestling fans do not know about.
It is a well-known fact that Vince McMahon was the one that believed in John Cena and pushed him to the top. John Cena became one of the most popular wrestlers of all time as a result. It helped him become one of Hollywood’s top action heroes.
John was part of the OVM class of 2002. Vince had to decide who to push between John Cena, Batista, and Randy Orton. Even though John Cena was the one who was pushed, Batista and Randy Orton also had very good careers. Arn Anderson revealed that it was him that pressurized Vince to push John Cena.
"When he decided on John he just said to me one day, 'Okay Arn, I am giving Cena to you, teach him how to work, teach him the business,' just like that," Anderson said. "From that point on I guess he told whoever assigned the matches, 'Give Cena to Arn,' and I started working with him and worked with him the entire time that he was being groomed and what he became." Arn has helped many wrestlers reach the top and also is responsible for guiding them.
One of the wrestlers that he helped back in the day was Goldberg. Even though Goldberg wasn’t very proficient in the ring, he was led by Arn and Arn’s wisdom has most likely carried Goldberg thorough the years. Goldberg’s undefeated streak was very controversial backstage as well.
"Some guys already started to balk at it and I had to do some politicking with these guys and let them know it's okay," Anderson explained. "Normally you wouldn't get beat in that amount of time but hey, it's going to be everybody guys so don't be the guy that bucks up and loses their job cos everybody is going to put the guy over and in record time."