From John Cena To Daniel Bryan: 5 WWE Stars Who Were Once Homeless

From John Cena to AJ Lee, these WWE stars slept in cars and motels before making it big© NDTV Library

Before the entrance music, the title belts and the WrestleMania headlines, some of WWE's biggest names had nowhere to sleep but the back seat of a car. A few were chasing a dream on almost no money. Others never had a stable home to begin with. These five stars went from sleeping in cars, motels, and youth hostels to the top of the card, and most of them still talk about those years openly.

1. John Cena

John Cena's story is the best known on this list. In 1999, he moved from West Newbury, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles with an exercise physiology degree from Springfield College, hoping to build a career in fitness. It did not work out. After every job in the field fell through, and a last attempt to join the highway patrol failed too, Cena ended up homeless.

"I slept in my car for a while, which happened to be a very roomy 1991 Lincoln Town Car," he later said. To eat, he relied on a local pizza shop's challenge. "They had a deal where, if you could eat their whole pizza, you got it for free," Cena told Kevin Hart. He could have gone back to his parents, but chose not to. "I'm very fortunate for my story because it was my choice to have hard times," he said. Within a year, he had enrolled at Ultimate Pro Wrestling's school, and he went on to become one of the most decorated world champions in WWE history.

2. Daniel Bryan

Daniel Bryan, now known again as Bryan Danielson, grew up with very little money. His mother worked two jobs while going back to school, and when he moved to California to train at the Inoki Dojo in Santa Monica, he did it on a shoestring budget.

"I was living in Santa Monica and sleeping on a dojo floor, like, on a mat," Bryan said on the Why Not Now? podcast in 2018, adding that he spent stretches "sleeping in my car" as well. He never saw it as a sad chapter. "It was actually a very fun period of my life," he said. Years later, he main-evented WrestleMania 30 in 2014 and walked out as WWE World Heavyweight Champion, one of the most famous moments in the company's history.

3. Roddy Piper

Roddy Piper's road to WWE started with leaving home as a teenager. Raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he was expelled from junior high school for carrying a switchblade and fell out with his father, an officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He left home and spent his teenage years staying in youth hostels.

To get by, he picked up odd jobs at gyms and ran errands for the professional wrestlers who trained there. That was how he found his way into the business. Piper went on to become one of the most hated villains wrestling has ever seen, and in 1985 he main-evented the very first WrestleMania, teaming with Paul Orndorff against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005 and died in 2015.

4. Mick Foley

Mick Foley's version of car life came from pure stubbornness. To learn the business, he drove from New York to Dominic DeNucci's wrestling school near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and rather than pay for a place to stay, he slept in his car.

"Sometimes, I would find him in front of the school, asleep in the car, a lot of times, because he wanted to," DeNucci recalled in 2018, calling Foley one of the two best wrestlers he ever trained. The sacrifice paid off. Foley became a three-time WWF Champion, main-evented WrestleMania 2000 and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.

5. AJ Lee

AJ Lee's struggle started long before wrestling. Growing up in New Jersey, her family was evicted again and again, and when they could not afford rent, they lived in motels and, at times, in their car. Her family also dealt with poverty, addiction, and mental illness, which she wrote about in detail in her 2017 memoir, Crazy Is My Superpower.

Wrestling became her way out. She worked several jobs to pay for wrestling school, spent her savings on a WWE tryout, and was signed in 2009. AJ Lee went on to become a three-time Divas Champion and one of the most popular women of her era, before retiring in 2015. Ten years later, on September 5, 2025, she made a surprise return on SmackDown in Chicago.