John Cena weighs in on CandyAssGate

“You have two very alpha, driven people. You get two, there can only be one.” That’s John Cena’s theory on The Fast And The Furious Feud, otherwise known as the Candy Ass Controversy of 2016, otherwise known as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson vs. Vin Diesel. This is common knowledge: nobody can out-alpha an alpha, so two True Alphas are destined to keep attempting to dominate the other unsuccessfully until the moon explodes (isn’t that the plot of one of the Fast movies?)

Speaking on the Armchair Expert podcast (via People), Cena acknowledged that “there’s certainly rumors about” Johnson and Diesel being “a tough pairing.” “Rumors” is a circumspect way of saying they publicly talked a lot of shit and threw a lot of shade at each other over the last decade or so. Johnson kicked off CandyAssGate by, well, calling an anonymous Fast co-star a candy ass. That co-star obviously turned out to be Diesel, and the two ended up engaging in something of a war of words via social media and the press. It culminated in Diesel urging Johnson to come back to the franchise, Johnson flatly refusing (and accusing Diesel of being a male manipulator), and then actually coming back for Fast X.

Fact of the matter is, after the major Black Adam flop and an unsuccessful attempt to take the reins of the DC Universe, Johnson apparently saw the need to get back to basics. That’s why he’s back with the WWE, returned to the Fast franchise, and back to conspicuously not endorsing political candidates. “Last summer Vin and I put all the past behind us,” Johnson posted on social media in June 2023. “We’ll lead with brotherhood and resolve—and always take care of the franchise, characters & FANS that we love.” He’s now going to star in a new Hobbs-centric Fast spin-off “that will serve as a fresh, new chapter & set up for FASTX: Part II,” as Johnson explained it. (But he recently obtained the copyright to “candy ass,” so Diesel better be on his best behavior.)

And so, the two alphas return to warily circling each other. This is not a problem for Cena, a fellow WWE veteran and Fast co-star, because he knows how to handle alphas. Coming from wrestling with “generational vets,” he learned how to “know the room and just kind of adapt to what’s going on,” he said on Armchair Expert. With the Fast franchise, “I’m being invited into someone’s home, into someone’s family. And regardless of how they look physically in comparison 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,” he said. “I’m not trying to get the sandbox. That’s not my thing. I’m grateful for what you’ve given me, I just want to be the best firetruck I can.”