Tag: chris masters

Chris Masters reveals career heartbreak post-WWE exit

Posted on by Rosanne Raphael

Chris Masters wishes more people got to see the matches he’s been having since exiting WWE.

A new episode of Insight premiered today with Chris Van Vliet interviewing Masters. During the conversation, Van Vliet asked the former WWE wrestler about any regrets he has with his career.

“Hindsight is always 20/20, but there’s a lot of things I can look back on now that I see much clearer now than I did back then. But wrestling, it’s tough,” Masters said. “There’s so much to it and you only learn, really, gradually with time, you know, to master all of it, whether it be the politics or the in-ring stuff or your character and your presentation, all that stuff.

“So there’s a lot of stuff that I would have probably done differently or that I wish I had known back then, but I know that I know now, right? And the part that breaks my heart is, like over the last 10 years, I’ve been, I’m so comfortable in the ring. It’s my place of comfort. And I just know that I’ve had, you know, some of the best matches of my career. And the fact that those aren’t happening on a bigger platform, that breaks my heart sometimes. Because it’s like, it’d be nice for people to be [able to] appreciate my work and see what I can do now and the fact that I can go out here and do everything pretty darn well.”

Masters added that he’s grateful to still be able to wrestle in front of good fans every week on the indies, where he’s having a lot of fun. He previously wrestled for the NWA as well and had two reigns as NWA National Champion.

In the same interview, Masters addressed how close he came to winning gold in WWE and how issues he had with John Cena might have affected that.

Masters had two separate stints with WWE, the first of which ended in 2007 before he was brought back from 2009-2011. He was best known for his “Master Lock Challenge,” a recurring segment where he invited competitors to break out of his full nelson submission hold, which was portrayed to be impossible.

Chris Masters says he and John Cena ‘never mixed too well’ in WWE

Posted on by Joseph Currier

Chris Masters and John Cena never got along well when they were both coming up together in WWE.

Appearing on a new episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Masters addressed whether he ever came close to winning a WWE championship. There were plans for him to win the Tag Team titles and Intercontinental Championship that never came to fruition. Masters feels like Vince McMahon was even giving him some consideration for a World Championship run. That never happened either, and Masters thinks the differences between him and Cena could have played a part in McMahon’s decision.

“Oh, all of them,” Masters responded when asked if he ever came close to winning a title. “There was a point, I mean, Carlito and me were supposed to win them at that WrestleMania [22], but it literally got switched like the day before. We were penciled in to win it, but then Carlito, they wanted him to turn baby. And the Spirit Squad, they kind of wanted to get the belts on them somehow to give them some steam. And so that was that.

“And then the Intercontinental title, I was actually supposed to win that, but it was the same point where they had given me an intervention for my prescription painkiller abuse at the time. And they even told me, I remember having the meeting with Johnny [Laurinaitis], because there was a four-way match that night. It was in Vegas for the Intercontinental title that I was slated to win, but then they have caught wind that I had the issues I had and I had a little intervention. Basically told me, ‘You’re going to rehab.’ And so, I screwed that.”

Masters said he thinks McMahon was feeling out a lot of options at one point in the 2000s to see if they had World Champion potential. Though he doesn’t know for sure if Cena was against him getting a World title push, Masters suspects that he was.

“Tag belts, I had no control over, that just happened. [Intercontinental], I effed up. And then, there was a point there, cause you can even watch back to those old Raws where Vince was playing with the idea of making me the youngest champion. But he was feeling out a lot of guys at that point. And I’m pretty sure Cena gave me probably the thumbs down at some point. So I don’t know, maybe,” Masters said.

“We never mixed too well, for whatever reason, you know what I mean? I don’t know. Massachusetts guy, California guy, I don’t know. Just kind of oil and water. But I don’t take away anything from the fact that he’s this generation’s [Hulk] Hogan. And he definitely worked harder than anybody probably would have in that spot, especially for that long.”

Reflecting further on the time he was sent to rehab, Masters said he was initially bitter about it but is happy about the ways the wrestling industry has changed for the better.

“The business is such a cleaner place than it was when I entered,” he said. “It’s nice to not walk into a locker room and have somebody who has issues like that going on or passing out in the locker room. And it’s just a cleaner business now.”

Masters and Cena both trained together at UPW in California when they started out their wrestling careers. Masters still competes on the indies and was formerly part of the NWA roster.

In December of 2025, Cena retired from the ring with a loss to Gunther. He remains under contract with WWE as an ambassador as he transitions into post-wrestling life.