Kurt Angle Taught A Lesson To John Cena During One Of Their Matches, Says Arn Anderson

The biggest wrestling story this year is John Cena’s retirement at the end of the year. The Cenation Leader announced last year that he’ll tie up his wrestling boots in 2025 and is currently on his final run.

Arn Anderson was a recent guest on Busted Open Radio, and he was asked to share his thoughts on John Cena’s career and retirement. Arn recalled a story from Cena’s early career in WWE, where he had a match with Kurt Angle. Cena was still new to the business, and Vince McMahon had asked Anderson to oversee his training.

John Cena made a mistake in the match, which Angle didn’t like, and was punished for it. Here’s what Arn Anderson said about it.

Arn Anderson Recalls Kurt Angle Punishing John Cena In One Of Their Matches

Mike Kalasnik from Fort Mill, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When John Cena first started out in WWE, he debuted as a heel. During one of his matches with Kurt Angle, Cena left the ring when he saw a floating hand in the audience and thought he would use it to taunt Angle.

He went there and folded the fingers to give Angle a middle finger. The Olympic Gold Medalist didn’t appreciate this gesture from Cena, and as soon as he returned to the ring, the former hit him with a belly-to-belly suplex and then continued beating him. Here’s what Arn said:

“Vince pulled me in the office and went, ‘We got a new kid that we pulled up. We think he’s got a very bright future, Arn, teach him how to work.’ I did in fact have his matches, and John was very, very green. He was green in his thought process.

One night, he was working with Kurt Angle, some guy out in the audience had one of those hands, and John spotted it. He just leaves Kurt, rolls out of the ring, goes about 10 rows deep, takes the hand, and folds it into a finger. He goes back over the rail. Right there’s Kurt. Kurt hit him with the Belly-to-Belly on the floor and threw him in the ring and stomped his brains out.” (H/T WrestlePurists)

After finishing the match, Arn Anderson caught up with John Cena and reminded him that he can’t disrespect a veteran like Angle by leaving him in the middle of the ring like this. He said:

“When he came back through the curtain, I went, ‘Learn anything tonight?’ And he had this look [wide-eyed] on his face, ‘Oh yeah,’ because he had just got the dog sh*t kicked out of him by somebody that could do it and not have any repercussions from it. I just said, ‘You gotta respect the guy. You don’t leave a guy, even in the ring. You don’t leave a guy and walk over and start screaming at the fans with your back to that guy.’”

Arn loves John Cena. Here’s a story about a valuable lesson he taught John early in his career!#bustedopen247 #prowrestlingnation247 pic.twitter.com/MmqAgXkmN0

— SiriusXM Busted Open (@BustedOpenRadio) October 22, 2025

Unfortunately, this sort of behavior was common in the locker room back in the day. Lots of rookie stars were beaten by veteran wrestlers in the ring to give them a lesson. As Anderson said, Kurt Angle was an established name in the business. He could do things like this to John Cena and would walk away free without any repercussions.

Angle was one of Cena’s early opponents on the main roster. They worked with each other multiple times and traded victories with each other. A lot of fans wanted Angle to come out of retirement to face Cena, but the legend made it clear that it won’t happen.