Oba Femi reveals WWE advice he received from John Cena
Before John Cena retired from WWE, he shared some advice with Oba Femi that the former NXT Champion hopes to use in his main roster career.
Femi was featured on the same show where Cena had his retirement match in December 2025. It was Cena’s idea to spotlight some of WWE’s brightest young stars on that Saturday Night’s Main Event card. He also made a couple of visits to the Performance Center prior to retirement and had conversations with the talent in NXT.
On No Contest Wrestling, Femi said Cena was already familiar with his work when they met. Cena had good things to say about Femi and also gave him some constructive criticism. The one thing that stood out was that Femi should make sure he is interacting with the crowd and getting the fans to focus on him.
“He’s very big on ‘look at me’ moments,” Femi said. “I don’t know if you’ve heard the story with he and at the time Cesaro, where he told Cesaro to go get the [beach] ball that was being thrown around in the audience and pop the ball. But he’s very big on crowd interaction and ‘look at me’ moments.
“So he was telling me, he told me that he understands that NXT is a very fast-paced style of wrestling because that’s what Shawn [Michaels] wants. But at the same time, he encouraged me to, when the opponent is down, I should always take my time to interact with the crowd and do something that will be memorable to them so they can always remember me. So that’s one of the things that John said to me that stuck. That was a pretty big one, amongst many other things, but that was the big takeaway.”
Femi was hoping to have a match against Cena, but it wasn’t meant to be. He praised Cena for being very humble and still being one of the boys despite his Hollywood stardom.
“It’s very symbolic that John’s end is my beginning, and that fact I kind of enjoy,” Femi said.
“I really wanted to work with John. I was really hoping and praying that like, ‘Don’t go, don’t go too fast.’ But he did. He did. I was really hoping to work with him, especially when a lot of people were putting fire under the idea of me being the one to retire him and stuff like that. So I was really hoping that would happen, but it didn’t.”
Femi, a two-time NXT Champion, is now on the main roster and competed in the 2026 men’s Royal Rumble match. He has not officially been assigned to a brand yet.
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.