Miro recently went into two of the greatest icons the professional wrestling industry has ever seen, and ones that have been the most successful in transitioning from pro wrestling fame into a Hollywood career and promising and successful ones at that.
Miro is a dominant force in AEW. The move to this company after his time in WWE as Rusev not only did wonders for his image, but it garnered for him a way to find himself further both physically and mentally.
But it was during his time in WWE that he has stated he learned a lot and from one man in particular.
via WWE /YouTube
John Cena recently celebrated 20 years in WWE. Many stars paid their respects, even AEW stars who were shown on the WWE telecast that night. John Cena was as always very humble and essentially stated that his success was a team effort and it couldn’t have happened without the fans.
Miro though, has stated that his career wouldn’t have happened the way it did without John Cena though…. On Cena he said:
“Almost everything I do in the ring is because of John Cena. We’ve seen maybe 10, 15 maybe 20 matches on TV that I had with him whether it was PPV, TV or whatnot, but what people don’t know is I probably had 1,000 matches with him not on TV…
That’s where I learned the most. I learned when I’m kicking his ass and these people are chanting something, I know he’s going to try and satisfy these people so he’s going to try and come up with something and how do I counter that. It’s a lot of the psychology you learn with him. Just taking the time…
More than 50 percent of professional wrestling I’ve learned from Cena and working with him. I can never be thankful enough of him for doing that…
I always respect John. How work ethic was always unmatchable. And now when I’m doing the acting stuff, I text him every now and again to get advice and he’s always very, very generous with his advice…”
Of course during his time in WWE, Miro, as Rusev, would also have run-ins with The Rock on Rock’s many visits back to the roster…an experience that obviously was not favorable for Miro. On The Rock he had this to say:
“It was just ‘Hey, look at me, I’m The Rock, I need to make fun of everybody.’ So it is what it is at that point…The first one was better, the one in Brooklyn. He showed up out of nowhere, we had a little talk and scuffle. I think that left a sour taste in his mouth…
Even though he beat me up a little bit, I got the better of him. Maybe he was just sour about that so he had to come back and talk bad about Lana, imagining things…
We all know Rocky just likes to talk. It’s not even offensive; it’s like that kid in your school like ‘look at this loudmouth.’ How many times can I beat him before he stops talking? …”
via talksport.com (link above)
via WWE /YouTube
It’s clear that his experiences with Dwayne Johnson weren’t exactly like the experiences others have described. Miro was taken aback by where The Rock went in that aforementioned promo in which The Rock insinuated that he and Lana had had relations, and even though Miro knew full well that that is essentially The Rock’s spiel in pro wrestling and always has been, his comments show that it obviously affected him a tad negatively.
