Superstitious much? John Cena has a pretty stellar record as a pro-wrestler, but that doesn’t mean he opts not to rely on some odd rituals before entering the ring.
During a recent appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Cena, 42, opened up about his “nervous superstition” involving Tic Tacs, which he feels boosts his chances of a win. As the Massachusetts native explained, he has been known to ingest “pretty much 10,000 calories in straight sugar” by eating hundreds of the breath mints prior to a big match.
“My thing was always Tic Tacs,” he told Kelly Clarkson, noting that the minty habit was “always” in full swing before the cameras were on.
In fact, the Trainwreck star recalled that his Tic Tac dependency got so bad, he was eventually forced to dial it back. “I’ve had to wean myself off of them,” he told the American Idol alum, 37. “I was up to like three boxes a day, and it’s right in the 20 minutes before broadcast.”
“That’s like a child,” Clarkson exclaimed as she let out a gasp.
In order to eat 10,000 calories worth of Tic Tacs, which are approximately two calories a piece, Cena would have had to down more than 132 boxes of the mints prior to a match, Today Food approximates.
The Blockers star, who undoubtedly had very fresh breath in the ring thanks to his Tic Tac superstition, noted that other aspects of personal hygiene were also important while competing. “You’re in a small, confined space,” he explained. “The ring is 20 feet by 20 feet, and you’re with a group of guys, so you always want to try to smell your best.”
And as Cena noted, he and his coworkers weren’t above calling someone out when they needed a little freshening up. “Everybody’s given a few mulligans in the B.O. and the breath category, but we also have a nice form of policing ourselves,” he said. “If somebody has a few more mulligans than they should we kind of give them the old, ‘Hey man, it’s our office out there.’”
As far as food obsessions go, the WWE superstar’s tasty infatuations extend well beyond Tic Tacs. In September 2018, Cena professed his love for Lao Gan Ma chili sauce, a spicy Chinese condiment. “I’m currently shooting a movie and I’m on a break and having a meal. I cannot use my mobile phone during filming so I’m now filming this (video) because they gave me Lao Gan Ma,” he told his fans in Mandarin via the Weibo app, at the time. “I am not familiar with Lao Gan Ma, but the Chinese say this is an excellent chili sauce. So now I use Lao Gan Ma every day on my broccoli.”
The athlete later added of the sauce: “[It’s] really, really good. I really like it.”
