A pair of independent wrestling stars received high praise from 17-time WWE World Champion John Cena during his visit to Bayley’s Lodestone Wrestling camp.
In late 2025, John Cena dropped by the Lodestone all-women’s training seminar in Orlando, Florida, which was hosted by WWE Raw’s Bayley.
With independent wrestling talent from all over the world arriving to Orlando for the camp, Cena spent eight hours imparting his wisdom, with his appearance later drawing praise from fellow WWE veteran Natalya.
Two of the stars in attendance for Lodestone were HYPERACTIVE, the team of English star Safire Reed and Ireland’s Anita Vaughan.
Speaking with BODYSLAM.NET, Reed and Vaughan opened up about the feedback they received from Cena after performing in a tag team match in front of him.
Reed said:
“For us in our tag match, (Cena) was like it’s ok to keep it simple, everything should mean something. Instead of doing a bunch of random punches for no reason, just do one really, bloody good one and show yourself, show your character through that.”
Vaughan then added:
“Connection as well. That really was the theme of Lodestone, like how important that is to make with the audience and it differs for each audience you have. And he was like, ‘well, you’re in a room here in front of just us, you can play to just us.’
“He showed us how to maximise our connection, especially in tag wrestling and the intricacies of that, and the stories you can tell with tag wrestling as opposed to single.
Reed then said:
“Always ask yourself why? Why are you doing what you’re doing right now? Or why are you doing this move? Or what are you doing this to this person? And it’s very story driven and connection driven, because when there’s a story and you can understand that’s where the emotion comes out, because people can then relate to things.”
Vaughan then recalled Cena telling she and Reed that they reminded him of WWE Hall of Famers D-Generation X:
“He was awesome, he gave us way more of his time than we ever expected. And he did it for every match, it wasn’t just us.
“We had like 10-20 minutes in the ring with him just going through our match and he remembered everything and he had notes written down, and in incredible detail.
“He was able to give us such feedback, and bless him, he gave us some lovely praise as well. It was like ‘Oh you guys are really entertaining, you remind me of DX.’ I was like ‘thank you John Cena.’”
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In the same interview, Reed discussed Cena’s unannounced arrival to Lodestone and her reaction to meeting her “childhood hero” – click here for full details.
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