John Cena to Host the 2016 ESPY Awards

Hustle, Loyalty and Respect seem to be the perfect traits for John Cena’s next endeavor outside of the ring.

As first noted on his official Twitter account and Facebook page, Cena announced that he will be the host of the 2016 ESPY Awards, which will be held on Wednesday, July 13:

 

Honored and excited to host the 2016 @ESPYS. Wednesday, July 13 will be a date to remember, I promise that. pic.twitter.com/W86wQtgiIP

— John Cena (@JohnCena) May 19, 2016

Below are some highlights from an interview with ESPN that was released earlier this morning:

On being asked to host the ESPYs:

“They asked, and of course I said yes,” Cena said. “It goes without saying it’s a tremendous honor. The prestige of the show grows every year. It’s unbelievable. I obviously accepted, but it doesn’t go without its share of nerves. I just want to do the show justice. I’m going to do my due diligence and hopefully we can have a great show.”

You’ve never hosted an awards show before, but you do perform regularly in front of 15,000 fans at arenas around the country. How is that going to prepare you for an opening monologue where you might be joking about, for example, LeBron James and Cam Newton while they’re sitting in front of you?

It’s going to be different. It’s not really my style to go into this and just trash everybody. That’s not the way I do business. I hope that’s not the way it works out. I appreciate these athletes and I know they are heroes to many people, including myself, and it’s not like I’m going to go in there trying to be too cool for school and try to be way smarter than the room. I’m going in there as appreciative of the athletes as everyone watching the show. I’m sure you’ll see good times and humor done as good as it can be, but most of it will be bouncing off of me.

You’re kind of like the Drake of professional wrestlers in that you’ve worn basically every jersey in sports at some point during your 14-year WWE career. Do you have any teams that you are a die-hard fan of?

No, and I think that’s a great thing. I think that’s what is going to help me as an ESPYS host. I’m not geographically nailed down to rooting for one team, therefore alienating 99.9 percent of the audience. I appreciate sport for the story of sport. There is nothing that captures emotions like pure sport. It really is fascinating and, of course, what I do for a living, I look at pure sport and I look at the confrontations and the stories behind it and it helps fuel what I do. It’s actually a good thing for me to be a nonpartisan presenter, I guess. That way I won’t have any angst towards the athletes. The ESPYS are about appreciating moments in sports and not looking down on it because it’s maybe not your favorite athlete or your favorite team. I’ll be with most every fan and appreciating those moments.

You can find the full interview at this link.

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