Chris Masters Recalls John Cena Locking Him In The STFU For The First Time

Chris Masters claims John Cena locked him in a shoot STFU.

During the November 28, 2005 edition of WWE Raw, John Cena unveiled his new STFU submission finishing move in a No Holds Barred Submission Triple Threat match against Chris Masters and Kurt Angle to retain the WWE Championship.

Appearing on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Chris Masters shared what it was like to be the first recipient of the manoeuvre. Masters claimed that John Cena legitimately applied the hold, though he made it clear that he does not believe Cena did so intentionally.

“It was a shoot STFU. I mean, I’m not saying that Cena was purposely doing it to shoot on me. I used to think sometimes with Cena, he’d get so fired up in the moment that he wouldn’t even know his own strength type of thing. My face starts turning red. I start trying to freaking get it a little bit looser. I’m pretty sure that I heard later on that he was working with Kurt [Angle] and Kurt had to kind of tell him to loosen it up a little bit.”

-Chris Masters

Whilst the STFU remained a core part of John Cena’s arsenal until his retirement in late 2025, he renamed the move the STF at the advent of the PG Era, in a similar move to his FU finisher becoming the Attitude Adjustment.

Elsewhere during the interview, Chris Masters opened up about feeling that he applied The Master Lock too roughly on some opponents during his time with WWE. You can read more about that here.

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