Cody Rhodes says Vince McMahon played John Cena’s debut album at max volume on the WWE corporate jet when it first came out, turning a backstage anecdote into a snapshot of how quickly Cena won over the man who helped shape his rise.
Rhodes, speaking on the podcast What Do You Wanna Talk About with Liv Morgan, said he heard the story from his father, Dusty Rhodes. He recalled McMahon being so taken with the album that the flight became nearly impossible to talk over, with the music blasting so loudly that everyone on board had to hear it whether they wanted to or not.
The album in question was You Can’t See Me, released on May 10, 2005. Cena self-financed the project, which included The Time Is Now, Bad, Bad Man and Right Now, and it went on to reach No. 15 on the Billboard 200 before later going platinum. More than 1.3 million copies were sold.
The story also fits the arc of Cena’s early WWE run. McMahon was not always sold on the rap-style character at the start, and Cena first had more generic music that did not match the persona he was building. That changed once he started making his own music and fully committed to the word-life identity. By the time the album arrived, McMahon had apparently become one of Cena’s biggest fans.
That support mattered because Cena’s music was never just a side project. It was part of the character that helped define him, and it was performed in front of live crowds as he leaned into a persona that stood apart from the rest of the roster. Cena has often said he viewed McMahon as a mentor who helped shape his career, which makes Rhodes’ story land less like a joke and more like a marker of how complete that transformation had become. For McMahon, playing the album on the jet at full blast was a public show of approval for a performer he had once questioned, and for Cena it was another sign that the gamble had paid off.
