John Cena Can Confirm There Are ‘Certainly Rumors’ About Vin Diesel and the Rock’s ‘Fast and Furious’ Beef
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John Cena offered the tiniest glimmer of insight into the long-running feud between Vin Diesel and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson that shook the Fast and Furious franchise.
During an interview on the Armchair Expert podcast, host Dax Shepard asked Cena about joining the long-running franchise on its ninth installment and navigating its well-established pecking order. That was basically a way of getting to the real matter at hand — Diesel v. Johnson — with Shepard asking about the rumors that the two made for a “rough pairing.”
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Cena, without hesitation, delivered a perfectly seasoned non-response — confirming the speculation, not the subject. “There’s certainly rumors about that, I can’t deny that,” he said of something basically the whole world knows to be true (because the two men involved have talked about it in interviews and posted about it on social media).
Cena then added: “You have two very alpha, driven people. You get two, there can only be one.” (It also should be noted that Cena was never in a full Fast and Furious movie with both Johnson and Diesel; Johnson’s last full film in the main series was 2017’s The Fate of the Furious, while Cena joined for the next one, 2021’s F9.)
As for how Cena chose to navigate the well-established Fast and Furious world, he noted that he’d been in similar situations his whole career in wrestling. “I got dropped into a locker room with generational vets — what’d your dad do? ‘Wrestle.’ What’d your granddad do? ‘Wrestle.’ I’ve been in that environment, know the room, and just kind of adapt to what’s going on.”
Returning to the Fast and Furious, Cena said: “I’m being invited into someone’s home, into someone’s family. And regardless of how they look physically, compared to another human being, this is one IP that has had nine installments and it’s an action movie — that’s rarefied air. At the very least, there has to be respect for that… I also know, I’m a guest. I’m not trying to get the sandbox. I’m grateful for what you’ve given me. I just want to be the best fire truck I can.”
Johnson was a key part of four Fast and Furious movies (numbers five through eight), while also starring in the spin-off Hobbs & Shaw with Jason Statham. It was while filming The Fate of the Furious in 2016 that tensions between him and Diesel reportedly boiled over, prompting Johnson to slam anonymous co-stars on Instagram.
In a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Johnson said, “Vin and I had a few discussions, including an important face-to-face in my trailer. And what I came to realize is that we have a fundamental difference in philosophies on how we approach moviemaking and collaborating. It took me some time, but I’m grateful for that clarity. Whether we work together again or not.”
But while Johnson once insisted there was “no chance” he’d return to the main Fast & Furious franchise, he apparently could only hold out so long. At the end of last year’s Fast X, Johnson’s character Hobbs made a cameo in the post-credits sequence, suggesting he’ll have some role in the final Fast and Furious movie, set to hit theaters next year.
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