Dolph Ziggler enjoyed beating up John Cena just as much as everyone else.
In December 2012, Ziggler was WWE's Money in the Bank holder and had entered into a feud with John Cena. They faced off in a ladder match at TLC that month with the briefcase hanging in the balance. Thanks to a helping hand from AJ Lee, Ziggler was able to retain his championship contract and would successfully cash it in on Alberto Del Rio in April of 2013.
Appearing on the latest episode of WWE's The Bump, Ziggler was asked what working with Cena did for his career. He said the following:
"It was amazing. Whoever doesn't like beating up John Cena is a liar because it's one of the greatest things you could ever do. This match in particular, normally I'm a guy who sometimes is snubbed like I was for the RK-Bro tournament, but in this day and age when John Cena is one of the biggest stars, not just in wrestling, but in the entire world and you get to be across from him in the ring in the main event of a PPV with my contract and briefcase already on the line, so I'm giving ti everything here. When you have someone who's at the top of their game and you're across from them and you're someone who doesn't always win and gets snubbed and is just fighting to be there and I believe it was in the North-East, maybe New York, 99% of that crowd cheering for me because they hate John Cena as much as I hate him, it was so fun punching his face in. I believe he hits a hurricanrana in that match which is pretty amazing."
The night after TLC 2012, Ziggler and Cena faced off yet again on Raw. This time, however, Dolph got some assistance from the main roster debuting Big E. They would remain aligned until July 2013, when AJ and Big E turned on the former World Champion.
Big E has gone on to have an incredibly successful career, both as a singles competitor and as a member of New Day. He is currently the reigning WWE Champion.
Ziggler spoke about his first impressions of Big E and whether or not he knew he'd be a star, saying that he was great from the moment he stepped in.
"I feel like I'm someone who's been around the business enough to where you can see someone that first day and you can see their movements, you can see how they think, how they act and even then if the timing isn't right, if there's an injury, if something happens that just doesn't click perfectly, even if you're knocking it out of the park, do you know how hard it is to become World Champion in this business no matter how good you are? It's hard to do even for the best of the best so when I first saw him I went, 'Alright, this guy looks like he's in the zone, he wants -- I've seen him work out. I knew he was breaking records lifting weights. He's gonna stand here and watch my back and then he gets to learn from one of the best going and then hopefully he applies that and then he becomes great down the line.' He was great from the moment he stepped in as a hard-working kid and now as the flagship guy on this brand," Ziggler said.
Dolph and Big E are both members of the Monday Night Raw roster. Ziggler has been teaming with Robert Roode, calling themselves the Dirty Dawgs. They were recently omitted as entrants in the RK-Bro-nament.
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