Janai Kai Recalls Experience At Bayley’s Lodestone Camp, John Cena Taking Notes On Every Match & Giving Feedback

A detailed recount from Janai Kai.

It was in late 2025 that WWE wrestler Bayley brought out 22 female independent wrestlers for a weekend camp that she branded as ‘Lodestone.’

There were a multitude of WWE talents that came through to assist Bayley and give advice to the independent talent. One of the 22 wrestlers was former MLW World Women’s Featherweight Champion Janai Kai.

While speaking to BODYSLAM, she recounted her experience at the camp and shared that none of the attendees knew which WWE talents would be showing up.

“Well, to be around the group of women, it was just great. That was just another thing that I needed for myself because going back to just knowing that there’s so many of us in the game, so many women in wrestling, it’s like, we’re all gonna end up somewhere. But it’s also, like, sometimes we have that feeling like, ‘Oh, she’s so good but I need to be better’ or, ‘I need to be at the same level as her,’ and we kind of start doubting ourselves and we look at other people and start comparing. But when we were here, it was like, no, we’re here to help each other. We’re not against each other. We’re here to help each other, and one thing I very much learned and this was repeated a lot during the seminar was collaboration over competition. We’re here in this together, we’re here to collaborate. When we’re wrestling, we’re here to make each other look like superstars. We’re not here to compete, we’re not here to look better than the other, and when it comes to even little projects or social media, we’re here to push each other, to put ourselves out there. That was like the number one thing that always stuck with my head that was repeated throughout the seminar. Collaboration over competition, and it was just great overall to see the different superstars pop up during the seminar because we absolutely did not know who was going to be showing up. Not at all. Bayley did not tell us. So it was pure reactions from the start from day one when even Charlotte (Flair) came in… You’re gonna see it in the documentary because they did film a documentary during all the three or four days that we were there. But, it was just an amazing experience and I’m very grateful and blessed yet again because there were so many submissions for this, and about 22 of us were picked. But, this even inspired Bayley even more. There’s gonna be more to it. This was not the (only) Lodestone seminar. She definitely told us that this inspired her to do other things, other projects. So, definitely stay tuned for that.”

One of the individuals who showed up to assist Bayley was 17-time WWE World Champion John Cena. Kai said Cena was there for hours, and the attendees had to do matches in front of him.

She shared that Cena took notes on every match and provided feedback. He proceeded to give compliments to the talents, and Kai added that what Cena said to her had boosted her confidence.

“Gosh, so, he spent hours with us, which is insane to me because just knowing who he is, I didn’t really expect it. I know he’s an amazing person but, he definitely showed that when we were there. He wanted to be there. So we had to do our matches in front of him, and this was on the final day. So, we already had a little bit of pressure. Now we got a lot more pressure. So we did our matches in front of him and afterwards, he spoke to us as a group, and even said that he can talk about wrestling forever. He was going in on everything about wrestling to us, and he was taking questions and everything, and it came to a point where one person asked if there was any feedback and he showed us his notebook full of notes, from each of our matches. He took notes of all of our matches, and he was like, ‘How about if I spend time with each of you and give you your feedback?’ That was literally his idea, which was not even planned. That’s what he wanted to do, and of course we were all like, ‘Yes! Please! We would love that.’ So we had time to spend, like, kind of one-on-one but it was literally with each person that was in the match. So he spent time with me and the other girls that were in our match because I had a tag match for it. But he would talk individually about each of us as far as there’s anything in particular. But it was just great to hear him and just see his perspective on things and he even said he’s also always loving to learn as well, even though he’s John Cena. He still loves to learn but, he gave us his input and everything and he gave a few compliments, even to me, that I just — I keep the compliments that he said in my head. I don’t share it to everybody because I just like to keep it to myself as far as what he said. But, all I have to say is that it was amazing to hear and that is sticking with me forever, and so that actually has boosted my confidence and everything too as far as what he told me, but, yeah, it was just great to see. That was another person that we did not expect to walk in the room so, yeah, it was just great to see him and meet him.”

Another story from the camp was told by Dani Mo. To read more from her, head over to this link.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit BODYSLAM with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.