After checking out the awesome three-disc John Cena retrospective, we recently got the champ on the phone to hear how he’s healing up, what his plans are for the future, and to find out the latest ride he wants to add to his already impressive muscle-car collection.

John Cena on his input into the DVD My Life:

“I just did the basic concepts. I know that the WWE traditionally does biographical DVDs on its superstars, and I really think my best stories are yet to be told or experienced, so I didn’t really want to do an extensive career record. But we put some interesting stuff in there, and it’s a different look from the usual WWE format. This was a different way of doing things.”

Cena on his cross-over appeal as compared to The Rock:

“As a matter of fact, there are movies in the works, it’s just that the cross-over appeal depends on the ticket buyer. A lot of it rests on my shoulders, but also on WWE Films to get good scripts and put together good movies. It’s definitely something I’m looking forward to continuing and I don’t know if I’m going to follow in The Rock’s footsteps of leaving WWE behind. I guess I’m loyal to a fault. I don’t see myself leaving the ring any time soon.”

Cena on opponents that fight too hard, almost crossing the line of entertainment:

“Everyone in our business has different styles. Some people are higher flyers, some more finesse guys, and there are some who just do really well at beating people up. I can’t say that I’ve met too many people that are as physical in the ring as I am. I’m not known for my finesse or my high flying, so I guess I would be one of the more rough guys to get in there with. You have to understand; when you get involved in our business… I make a lot of comparisons to what we do to football. Some defensive backs are known for their coverage and some are known as hard-hitters, it’s all part of the game. It’s something that you should know full-well before you get into the ring. I mean, accidents happen and so do injuries in our sport. Right now I’m nursing back to health with a torn pec’ that happened five weeks ago. And I still have about five more months of rehab before I can even get back in the ring, and I don’t blame anyone. I don’t point the finger at who I was in the ring with, or even at myself, it’s just one of those things that happens in our industry.”

On maximizing his image as a rapper in both wrestling and real music:

“It wasn’t even my idea. I was pretty much dressed as all of the other wrestlers. It was a pretty generic time for the WWE, so it was kind of caught in a transition. Just to pass the time, there’s a lot of waiting in our industry, so one of the things I did to pass the time was rap. Our creative department got wind of this and it basically became an exploitation of a hobby. They asked if I would like to do it on television and I said, ‘absolutely.’ It would give who I was some identity and some character, and from then on… it started as a joke and then they really let me go with it, and it was all just about how serious I wanted to take it. If I wanted to make myself look like a joke, it would be up to me, but I really felt this is my way to identify with the fans, good, bad, or indifferent, and I really ran with it.”

Cena on his input into the character:

“It’s something, no matter how established you are, you do have a lot of say in your character. I think the problem with our industry, as with any industry that showcases talent, a lot of times people are afraid to take risks. They worked so hard to make it to a certain level that I guess they get in the comfort zone. I’m never ever satisfied with just staying in one place. Even as the WWE becomes more and more successful, I’m still never satisfied. I believe there is always a place we can go, where we can grow, and a place where I personally can go to another level. So I’m constantly trying to redefine myself, whether it’s through acting or the type of character. Right now it’s easy, because I really do get to be myself. The hip-hop thing was really just one facet of my personality and three or four years of acclimating [to] the fans. I can just walk out there now and be me, and it really is a great time.”

John Cena on his father’s influence on his wrestling career:

“The old man was great. My dad, to this day, is still very involved in wrestling and actually wrestles on the local independent scene every weekend as a manager. But his father was extremely into wrestling and my father and grandfather kind of bonded through wrestling. They kind of passed the same bond down to us. My dad wasn’t really a sports oriented kind of guy, but he sure as hell did love his wrestling. That was a chance in a house of five boys, when he turned on wrestling, we were immediately drawn to the showmanship, the bravado, and the unbelievable contact. It kind of gave us boys time to spend with the old man. We used to wrestle with my dad and each other, but that was the only time five young kids could have an equal bond with their father. It was the equivalent of a kid playing catch with his dad.”

On the CNN documentary, which focused on the dark side of professional wrestling:

“I thought the CNN documentary was exactly what it was. I think anybody who titles a documentary, Death Grip… it’s going to be what it’s going to be. It was a very slanted and one-sided documentary. I’m actually going to try and get WWE.com to post my entire interview, because I sat down with CNN for about fifty-minutes discussing the state of the union and all things I feel comfortable talking about, and I only got to see fragments of the documentary. But I believe they only had me on there for one sound bite, and the sound bite was legitimately cut in half. I wasn’t really satisfied with the CNN documentary, but it was something that WWE wanted to do, and I knew it was going to be a negative spin documentary from the get-go. And I guess CNN still has some bad blood against WWE. It was what it was. But as far as our industry, I keep seeing record numbers and the WWE as a whole is making positive steps in trying to clean up its own environment.”

“It’s offering rehabilitation help to past members, who may have drug problems, whether it is recreational or performance enhancing. The current drug policy, where they test at random at least four times a year, are more stringent than the NFL’s and it was interesting to see on the documentary was the representative from the IOC drug committee say that our drug policy has many holes in it. It was funny because what he was referring to was the penalty system, rather than the testing system. Our penalty system, he feels, has a lot of gaps. Our system is very new, and the first time you’re caught it’s a thirty day suspension, second time is a sixty day suspension, and the third time you’re caught, you’re looking for new work. In the IOC, if you’re caught with anything, you’re suspended for two years and possibly stripped of your medals. It’s funny, for a person to talk about a flawed system when you have a gold medal athlete like Marion Jones come out and admit after all of these years, even with the IOC standards, she was able to get by and win gold medals using drugs. So it’s amazing when you watch the documentary, you really have to consider the source. But because it’s CNN, they can paint however they want.”

Cena on the feeling he got when walking into the Hammerstein Ballroom to fight Rob Van Dam:

“That was something that we went into great depth on the DVD. The interesting thing about the DVD is that there is very little… actually, I don’t think there is any of my testimony. Really, all of the testimony is from people who where there that day and got to experience that… They did it really well and they tried to get the view of exactly how hostile those 2500 people were. It was an interesting day in my life that I’ll never forget.”

John Cena on the next muscle car he’s hunting for:

“I’m actually trying to hunt down a Saturn Yellow, 1971 four-speed Buick GSX, Stage 1.”

John Cena on tearing his pectoral muscle and the rehab process:

“I’m on my way to rehab right after this phone call, and I can do everything else in my training regiment except anything on the right side. I’m five weeks off of the table right now. The first two weeks that you’re off the table you really just have to keep the muscles working as best you can, like isometric exercises where there’s no movement at all. We also use electronic stimulation to cut down on atrophy. From two to four weeks is when the incision cleans up and things can start going right with very minimal movement. My right pec is torn, so it’s usually the healthy side doing the work for the injured side. Basically, you’re getting the range of motion back. At four weeks you can do more and more things. I can finally hold a dumbbell in my right hand and I can do some shoulder raises, lateral raises, and front raises. I’m using a lot of AeroBand, which is a way to overload the shoulder at certain points. I still can’t do any bench press. I’ll probably be able to do chest work eight weeks out because that’s the point where the tendon is actually fused back to the bone and the surgeon as well as the rehab folks are really not worried about re-tearing that pec. So the first eight weeks are kind of pivotal. From then on it depends on how much I want to hustle to get back to being strong again. I would say it will be three months from now until I’m working out in a practice setting for wrestling.”