John Cena Says His ‘You Can’t See Me’ Gesture Was Inspired By G-Unit’s Tony Yayo

John Cena recently made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote his new HBO Max series Peacemaker, dressed in his wardrobe from the show. During the conversation, Fallon asked Cena for the backstory behind his infamous “You Can’t See Me” gesture, which became popular during his peak days as a wrestler in the WWE. Cena explained that the gesture started as a dare between him and his little brother Sean.

“The reason I did this is cause while we were making the album to which my theme music is on, my younger brother, Sean, was always our litmus test,” Cena said. “He kinda liked the same music and he would never go to the studio with us and we’d come home with our tracks and play it for him and he was ruthless man. He would never be satisfied with any song.

“He heard ‘My Time Is Now’ and just did this dance that Tony Yayo did in one of the G-Unit videos,” Cena continued. “It was like, he put his hand over his head and just kind of bobbed his head… and I was like, ‘Man, what are you doing? That looked just ridiculous.’ He said, ‘No, no, it’s Tony Yayo, he’s doing this thing.’”

Cena then suggested that he would mimic the move the next time he was on television, which prompted a dare from his little brother. Cena went through with the dare and the rest is history. “Years later, it just overcame the meme culture and now, literally, I’m invisible,” Cena added. “People are like, ‘Why is Jimmy Fallon talking to an empty chair?’ So many people are going to say that. So I’m invisible now. On a dare, by accident.”

Tony Yayo caught wind of Cena’s comments and showed him some love on Twitter. “Shout out to John Cena,” he wrote in a tweet.

You can watch the interview between Fallon and Cena above.