Did professional wrestler and actor John Cena lose four sponsors "worth millions" after "humiliating himself" at the Oscars? No, that's not true: This claim is from an article on a satirical website known for publishing fabricated content. This website has a disclaimer that reads, "Everything on this website is fiction."
The claim appeared in an article published by The Dunning-Kruger Times on March 11, 2024, titled "John Cena Loses Four Sponsors Worth Millions After Humiliating Himself at the Oscars" (archived here), which began:
You may have witnessed the abomination that was The Academy Awards, where John Cena, a man who supposedly cares about children, humiliated himself in front of the world.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
John Cena Loses Four Sponsors Worth Millions After Humiliating Himself at the Oscars
The claim in this article is that Cena lost the sponsorship of four companies, that are purportedly now refusing to work with him, costing him "$10 million annually," as a consequence of doing a preplanned skit at the 2024 Academy Awards. The skit involved Cena appearing on stage with no clothes on while covering his purportedly exposed privates with an envelope that was supposed to be used for him to present the Oscar for best costume design.
The article continued:
'We went from having a respected actor and wrestling champion to having another member of the woke left,' said Under Armour President Joe Barron, 'We're not renewing his contract.'
The current president of the athletic performance brand Under Armour is a woman named Stephanie Linnartz.
Joe Barron was a friend of Christopher Blair, who is a self-described liberal troll and the creator of The Dunning-Kruger Times. Barron's name is frequently used in Blair's satirical stories as a posthumous tribute.
Further down in the article, it reads:
ALLOD Entertainment Correspondelator Tara Newhole says the atmosphere at the Oscars wasn't nearly as explosive as in previous years, but with incidents like this, it didn't exactly disappoint, either.
There is also no evidence that an "ALLOD Literary Correspondelator" named "Tara Newhole" exists. The name is instead a phonetic pun for the colloquial phrase for an abusive critique.
A Google News search (archived here) using the keywords "John Cena" AND "Loses" AND "Sponsors" AND "Millions" AND "Humiliating" AND "Academy Awards" AND "Oscars" AND "2024" produced no results to substantiate this claim.
Lead Stories has reached out to John Cena's representatives and will update this fact check if any responses are received.
The Dunning-Kruger Times
The Dunning-Kruger Times is a satirical website with an about page (archived here) that has following disclaimer:
About Us
Dunning-Kruger-Times.com is a subsidiary of the 'America's Last Line of Defense' network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery, or as Snopes called it before they lost their war on satire: Junk News
About Satire
Before you complain and decide satire is synonymous with 'comedy':
sat·ire ˈsaˌtī(ə)r noun: The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if you're still having an issue with that satire thing.
The website is named after the Dunning-Kruger effect, a term from a psychology experiment that describes the phenomenon of being ignorant of one's own ignorance. (That experiment has been disputed by a math professor.)
