John Cena Was Living in His Car and Surviving on Free Pizza Before Breaking into WWE

Before his runaway success in Hollywood and the WWE, John Cena was struggling, relying on free pizza every night while sleeping in his 1991 Lincoln Continental.

In a recent guest spot on Kevin Hart’s Hart to Heart, the 46-year-old actor admitted to the comedian that his “whole existence is an accident.”

“My whole existence is based on a series of fortunate events that kind of lined up with each other,” Cena said. “I did not know that wrestling was even a career option.”

And despite moving to Los Angeles in the late 1990's to pursue a career in fitness with a college degree in hand, the Fast X star failed to make the grade. 

“I didn’t move out to LA to pursue entertainment,” Cena said. ”[I] came out here to apply my degree in exercise physiology and kinesiology and really failed. ... I couldn’t get any sort of validation for that piece of paper that I paid for.”

Cena shared that when he couldn’t gain traction doing what he loved, he even tried to become a cop.

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“I took the California Highway Patrol exam — failed,” Cena said. “Every avenue of fitness, failed. Closed door, closed door.”

After Hart joked that Cena’s story was “getting sad,” and the two got another pour of the wine they were drinking, the former champion wrestler resumed his story, and admitted that he used to eat a whole pizza every night, at the pizza place next door to where he was a bouncer — because it was free if you could finish it.

He added, about sleeping in his car at the time: “A Lincoln Continental is a big car.”

Yet he eventually found his way to wrestling, making his WWE debut in 2001, and going on to become one of the most successful to ever reign in the ring.

But if Cena had given up on Hollywood, he told Hart he knew he had a place to go.

“I’m very fortunate for my story because it was my choice to have hard times,” he said. “My father always said, ‘You’re my son. I love you. You’re always welcome back home.’ If I could get to West Newbury, Massachusetts, I would be fed. I would have a roof over my head. I would be able to regroup."