As John Cena prepares to bring the curtain down on his iconic wrestling career, he might well cast his mind back to the friends and foes of yesteryear.
The leader of the ‘Cenation’ calls time on his storied stay in a WWE ring in 2025 having long ago announced his intention to retire – a grand farewell tour kicking off at the 2025 Royal Rumble.
After the Rumble he’s set to appear at Elimination Chamber, WrestleMania and beyond as he rides off into the sunset, no doubt, with fanfare and glory.
But if Cena is happy with his lot in 2025, it’s fair to say it’s because he dug in deep and negotiated his fair share of tough times. Long before he was the all-conquering WWE Champion, he was the Doctor of Thuganomics, and long before that, he was The Prototype.
Yes, way back in the early 2000s, Cena – as Prototype – was honing his craft in Ohio Valley Wrestling, the NXT of its time – a division to develop and bring through new wrestling talent. He was even riding high as its world champion in 2002, his second reign beginning after he defeated Leviathan – now known to fans as wrestler turned Hollywood sensation Dave Bautista, or ‘Batista.’
In May of that year, however, along came Nova to defeat and dethrone the young prodigy Prototype on his debut to snatch the gold, a title he’d successfully against his rival on three subsequent occasions.
Five years Cena’s senior, he’d already racked up a decade’s experience in wrestling, starring in ECW and the global independent scene before landing in WWE – via OVW – where he’d go on to perform more prominently as Simon Dean.
Under the Dean moniker, the real-life Mike Bucci was an infuriatingly irritating fitness fanatic who’d berate fellow wrestlers and fans for their conditioning and appearance, all while trying to promote his own fitness regime and supplements.
Dressed largely in a purple ensemble, Dean would go on to whiz into areas on a segway he named the Dean Machine, somehow finding ways to annoy audiences even more with his sickening patter.
Bucci won numerous titles during his career but, sadly for him, gold in OVW was as good as it got under the WWE umbrella. What’s worse, he ended up taking his fair share of beatings.
If it’s safe to say he had Cena’s number during their formative years but, having surged ahead and flourished, the Boston native overtook his one-time foe and left him rooted in the early-to-mid-card levels of WWE.
Though enjoying some moderate notoriety and success, Dean’s WWE stay was chiefly one as a punch-bag for the heroes of the day – not least Batista who, years after shedding his Leviathan gimmick, and others besides – beat him in a match on SmackDown in 2005.
Dean’s WWE tenure ended in 2007 and, while there was a sporadic return to the independent scene, Bucci largely left wrestling behind, battling in barely 30 matches in the last decade.
Speaking to WWE years later, he spoke of another passion – saving people money – as a financial advisor selling mortgages.
“It’s rewarding, I change lives,” he explained. “Next to people’s families, their money is the most important thing they have. It’s my job to make sure they’re being fiscally sound and that we’re there for them.”
He clearly found a greater sense of perspective from that work, too, insisting to Fightful in 2023: “There is life after the bell, and I can’t emphasise that enough.
“Over the years, my generation of guys in the late 1990s and 2000s, I hope that’s the last generation of guys who hang on forever [in wrestling] and never realise they can do more.
“The odds are now, you’re probably going to have a shorter career [in wrestling]. You’re going to have to find a second act.
“I got into banking and finance… I serve on several boards and committees [and] I’ve been fortunate. I’ve embraced it. I miss the physicalness of wrestling sometimes, but I don’t miss a lot of the other stuff that came with it that drove me nuts.
“Pro wrestling took me around the world and shaped who I am today. I owe everything to it… [but] the skills and stuff I learned in wrestling, I took into the real world.”
So while Mike Bucci, now 52, is less than likely travelling to work on his Dean Machine these days, it seems clear he’s far from forgotten his wrestling roots.