John Cena on The Rock’s WWE SmackDown return: ‘It was nice to see a friend’

John Cena said it was “really nice to see a friend” when The Rock returned to SmackDown two weeks ago. 

Cena and The Rock’s relationship wasn’t always friendly. In February 2009, Cena made several public comments critical of Rock for distancing himself from WWE as he ventured into Hollywood. A little over two years later, Rock interfered in the main event of WrestleMania 27 and cost Cena his match against The Miz. Rock and Cena would then go on to headline WrestleMania 28 and 29 against each other.  

Cena publicly apologized to The Rock last year for his comments, noting that he “spoke out of ignorance.” The two met for the first time since Cena’s apology backstage at the September 15 edition of SmackDown last month when Rock made an unadvertised appearance on the show. 

Cena spoke about his relationship with The Rock during an appearance on Wednesday’s edition of The Bump.

Cena said:

In between the times we’ve spent with each other, I’ve openly come to a realization that the first foray into us competing against each other probably was a professional mistake on my part. I’ve been very apologetic and open with my apology that the way I conducted business was in the realm of trying to do good business and we did great business.

It was really nice to see a friend who’s actually generous with his time. We actually conversed for a little bit and that’s the first time we’d seen each other since publicly apologizing for that and I just wanted to make sure he heard it from me face to face as well and it was really nice to see a friend.