Arn Anderson recalls an incident between John Cena and Kurt Angle early on in Cena’s career:
“Vince pulled me in the office and went, ‘We got a new kid that we pulled up. We think he’s got a very bright future, Arn, teach him how to work.’ I did in fact have his matches, and John was very, very green. He was green in his thought process.
One night, he was working with Kurt Angle, some guy out in the audience had one of those hands, and John spotted it. He just leaves Kurt, rolls out of the ring, goes about 10 rows deep, takes the hand, and folds it into a finger. He goes back over the rail. Right there’s Kurt. Kurt hit him with the Belly-to-Belly on the floor and threw him in the ring and stomped his brains out.
When he came back through the curtain, I went, ‘Learn anything tonight?’ And he had this look [wide-eyed] on his face, ‘Oh yeah,’ because he had just got the dog sh*t kicked out of him by somebody that could do it and not have any repercussions from it. I just said, ‘You gotta respect the guy. You don’t leave a guy, even in the ring. You don’t leave a guy and walk over and start screaming at the fans with your back to that guy.’“
(source: Busted Open Radio)