John Cena's Broken Nose and the Pro Wrestler's 'The Show Must Go on' Mindset

John Cena battling on during the main event of Monday's Raw with a bloodied, broken nose is the kind of gutsy, hard-to-fathom act that we've come to expect from the superheroes of the squared circle.

Pro wrestlers try to control the violence that occurs in the ring the best they can, making things look far worse than they actually feel, but sometimes muscles tear from bone, limbs go numb, blood starts to slide down one's smile. It's at a moment like that where an average person would faint whereas a wrestler thinks only of finishing the show.

Cena provided an unsettling example of that mentality Monday night in Oklahoma City. He faced off against WWE champ Seth Rollins in the show's closing contest.

A flying knee from Rollins landed harder than it would normally. There was no need to sell the move. There was no need for any kind of acting or exaggerated reaction to the blow. Rollins' knee broke Cena's nose.

With his bent, mangled schnoz crushed against his face, blood dotting the canvas, Cena just charged on.

The match unfolded just as it would have had his face not resembled a punch-drunk boxer fresh from taking a beating. He took a powerbomb in the corner and applied his trademark STF submission hold. In pro wrestling, a world often scoffed at for being "fake," there are no excuses; stories go to their climax, damaged body or not.

There's been a considerable amount of buzz about Cena finishing that bout with a painful injury.

Media outlets that wouldn't normally touch on WWE picked up the story. WWE itself has tried to generate interest in the incident, posting a black-and-white photo gallery of Cena's nose in all its grotesque glory on its official website:

What Cena did against Rollins is not a new narrative, though. Cena himself has fought through worse.

Cena Soldiers On

In October of 2007, the then-WWE champ took on loudmouth Mr. Kennedy. An injury threatened to derail the match not long after the opening bell rang.

While executing a hip toss, as everyday a move as there is in the mat game, Cena tore his pectoral muscle.

As WWE doctor Ferdinand Rios later told WWE.com, Cena had "a complete tear of his pectoralus major muscle." The injury would force the powerhouse to vacate the world title and miss months worth of action. It didn't, however, prevent him from finishing the match.

You can see Cena wince mid-bout and attempt to shake it off, as if he'd suffered no more than a knock on the funny bone. 

The injury hampered his offense from that point on. His being hurt limited his punches to lefts. And when he slapped on the STF, he grimaced as he tried to wrap his arm around his foe's neck.

Randy Orton soon came in and attacked him as planned. Torn pec or not, Cena took an RKO in the ring and later another atop a table that refused to buckle under the weight of the two men.

Wading through great pain for the sake of the match isn't a Cena-specific thing. He's no doubt one hell of a tough man, but he's not alone. His fraternity is that of athletes who do unimaginable things in the name of entertainment.

Take Hall of Famer Jimmy Snuka, for example. In his biography, Superfly: The Jimmy Snuka Story, he writes, "I spent years taping my ankle, through torn ligaments and complete tears, because when I wrestled, I didn't feel anything." It's hard to wrap one's head around just how a man whose offense is predicated so much around kicks and leaping from the top rope could pull this off.

Snuka provides an answer of sorts. He explains: "Feeding off the fans made the pain go away."

There's certainly some science behind how men like Cena and Snuka have been able to fight through injuries and keep the in-ring action flowing. Adrenaline surely plays a part in the biological formula that aids them.

Beyond that, these wrestlers simply choose not to stop the violent theater mid-scene. There's often too much at stake.  

In the Way of Opportunity

Sami Zayn, a favorite from his days on the indy circuit and one of the more popular faces of WWE's developmental brand, NXT, had a door swing wide open for him.

Injured or not, he had to walk through it. Cena had just issued one of his many recent open challenges for the United States Championship. To the delight of the Montreal fans, Bret Hart introduced Zayn as the next man seeking the strap around Cena's waist.

This was Zayn's first singles match on Raw. This was the place to make his first emphatic statement, to make a lasting impression on a global fanbase.

His shoulder popped out before he even threw the first punch. An injury that had long nagged him, emerged at just the wrong time. While trying to pump up the crowd during his entrance, he hurt his arm again.

You can see him trying to pop it back into place:

He not only continued the match but issued a masterful performance. He did well to silence his backstage doubters with a high-quality contest against one of the company's biggest stars, bum shoulder and all.

Injury arrived at an inopportune time for Kevin Owens as well. The bearded bruiser made his NXT debut at the R: Evolution event last December. It was supposed to be a one-sided beatdown that showcased Owens as a destroyer.

The formula was simple: Arrive. Conquer. Leave. 

The only problem was that his opponent, CJ Parker, landed a palm strike too firmly. The blow tore open a gash in Parker's hand and broke Owens' nose.

Mike Killam of Wrestle Zone later posted graphic photos of Owens' blood-soaked face.

Despite the referee's best efforts, Owens' nose wouldn't stop bleeding. But this was no time to call an audible; the script called for Owens to not only stomp all over Parker but betray and attack his friend Zayn later in the night.

A trip to the doctor would have to wait.

The story that Daniel Bryan tells in Yes! My Improbable Journey to the Main Event of WrestleMania speaks to not only a toughness that wrestlers share but a form of insanity. Against Orton on June 17, 2013, Bryan was experiencing serious medical issues and could only focus on the art of entertaining.

At one point during the fight, pain jolted down his right side. He lost feeling in his arms. He said that he briefly couldn't stand up.

Fear didn't enter his mind as it would in a normal human being; he did everything he could to finish the performance.

He told the referee he was fine, but the official wasn't buying it. The ref asked the doctor to have a look at him while Orton waited in the ring. That wasn't the end of the action, though.

As Bryan tells it, the doctor "tried to call off the match, so I sprinted into the ring and started brawling with Randy to keep the match going. I saw this as my big opportunity, and I wasn't about to let it pass me by."

The clip of the match shows the doctor signaling to the referee and moments later become exasperated when Bryan keeps wrestling.

This was indeed a big moment for Bryan. He was en route to proving he wasn't just a reliable hand in the ring but a main event-caliber performer. This was to be a statement win and a statement match.

Even with his body sending him the most alarming of warning signs, that was all he could think about.

More Strange Stories

Pick up a wrestler's biography, and chances are you'll read a story like Bryan's or Cena's.

Injuries are commonplace in the business but guarantees are not. So surely a part of fighting on while hurt is part of a mentality of not wanting to miss out on a chance to nab a big man or pull off a memorable match.

There are no second takes in wrestling. There are no timeouts. Hurt or not, there's a story to finish and a show to deliver.

What wrestlers have been willing to do to themselves to achieve that is mind-blowing.

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin broke his neck in a match he was supposed to win. A mistimed piledriver left Austin barely able to stand at SummerSlam 1997. Still, he crawled over Owen Hart and made sure to get the pin.

Bruised spinal cord be damned, the Intercontinental Championship was his to be had.

Austin later described the incident on Chris Jericho's podcast as a "tough day at the office." "Hey, things happen in the ring," The Texas Rattlesnake added. Even Austin's language here speaks to how vastly different the everyday person is compared to the ones toiling in the ring.

No fully sane, normal person would describe suffering a broken neck as a "tough day at the office."

Mick Foley went through much of his Hell in a Cell match at King of the Ring 1998 with a variety of injuries. One of the most famous images of that savage match is a loose tooth sitting in Foley's nose as he grins.

Foley worked that night with a shoulder out of place as well, an injury that made climbing the steel cage an especially difficult task.

Jim Ross recalls the scene for Fox Sports: "Foley lost all feeling in his hands while climbing and blamed his challenging ascent not just on his dislocated shoulder but also on the fact that he was 'bottom heavy'— and the fact that the most pull-ups he had ever done was four in the sixth grade."

Undertaker, Foley's opponent that night, would have his own insane display of toughness years later.

At Elimination Chamber 2010, a pyrotechnics accident during his entrance left him with second- and third-degree burns. He was the world champ, though, and the key figure in the dramatic, shocking ending that was set to cap off the match.

And so he wrestled with charred flesh.

WWE officials did the best they could to relieve his pain. As a fan in attendance relayed to ProWrestling.net, "Throughout the time in his pod he was getting bottles of water brought over to him and kept on dumping them on his face and body."

Perhaps the most famous incident of a wrestler shutting out pain for the sake of performance is Triple H tearing his quad in 2001.

Teaming with Austin, he battled Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit in one of the best matches Raw has ever seen. The ending went just as it was supposed to despite Triple H's leg muscle having snapped.

Awkward footing was all it took to cause the injury. He was then forced to continue wrestling on one leg, pain racking him.

He writes of his mindset in Triple H: Making the Game, "We were on live television, so it never truly dawned on me to do anything other than finish the match as planned, to push the pain out of my mind and give the fans what they deserved—the kind of match they paid to see."

Jericho was supposed to apply The Walls of Jericho, a move designed to bend one's legs backward. Triple H agreed to take the move because that was part of the story they were telling. Triple H said it felt like Jericho was ripping his leg off. 

After the cameras were off and the show had wrapped, doctors attended to Triple H. 

Like any good wrestler, he wasn't thinking of how much pain he was in—his mind was on wrestling. Thoughts of when he'd return soon filled his head. Mentally, at least, he was already on to the next show.