Over the last year, there was a torrent of rumors that Dwayne Johnson might dust off his boots and get back in a WWE ring for the first time in years. The whispers claimed he would main event WrestleMania 39 with his cousin Roman Reigns, but despite all the talk, that never happened. Last week, The Rock confirmed those convos with WWE did happen, but he said everyone involved decided against it because they couldn’t quite figure out the hook. Many fans took The People’s Champion at his word, but wrestling legend Jeff Jarrett is not buying it. And neither am I.
Jarrett, who is probably best remembered for his runs in WWE in the mid to late 90s and for co-founding TNA/ Impact Wrestling, was on his podcast My World With Jeff Jarrett, when the subject of The Rock came up. He said he believes the conversations with WWE did happen about main eventing WrestleMania 39, but he thinks the reason he walked away had less to do with creative and more to do with waiting for the WWE/ UFC merger to go through when presumably, he could demand a bigger payday. Here’s a portion of what he told his podcast co-host Conrad Thompson…
I’m not sure I’m buying that Rock was uninspired going into SoFi this year. We all know what happened the day after… There was a lot going on behind the scenes (with) Vince coming back, the sale/ merger, the executive situation. The WWE over the last twelve months, when you really think about it, if you want to pull in eighteen months, think about that, Conrad, lots of changes. I can kind of see in my man Dwayne, second and third generation (wrestler), going, you know, there’s a lot more upside to having some more patience.
Now, on the surface, The Rock’s comments seem to make a lot of sense. If he’s going to come back, of course it should be for a compelling storyline that doesn’t just seem random, but for those watching the WWE product leading into WrestleMania 39, the reasoning doesn’t hold water. At the time, Roman Reigns was in the middle of what many saw as one of the greatest storylines in WWE history. He was ruling his family (The Bloodline) with an iron fist and starting to lose control of his cousins (The Usos and Solo Sikoa) and had fully lost control of longtime groupie Sami Zayn.
The Rock could have interrupted any of the weekly segments The Bloodline was doing at the time and said he was the real head of the table. As someone with real life connections to the family, it would have made all the sense in the world, and fans would have immediately been into it. During his career, he certainly ran bigger programs, particularly with Stone Cold Steve Austin and John Cena, but you could make a case that none of those had the emotional hook that this one had the potential to. At the time, I even wrote about how much his return would make sense from a storyline perspective.
That being said, even if I don’t buy the storyline angle, that doesn’t necessarily mean The Rock sitting out WrestleMania 39 was over money. He has plenty of money. He may have wanted to sit it out because there was so much uncertainty going on. He may have wanted to sit it out because he’s the biggest movie star in the world and has other opportunities. He may have wanted to sit it out because he was focused on relaunching the XFL. We just don’t really know.
Fortunately, WWE will let The Rock have a WrestleMania match whenever he wants to commit. He made a surprise appearance on WWE Smackdown last week and once again showed why he’s one of the most beloved performers in the history of the industry. He had the crowd hanging on every single word, as he made fun of Austin Theory and later gave the rising star a People’s Elbow. It was a fantastic moment within one of the best Smackdown episodes in years, and now fans are even more eager to see him back for a full match.
The Rock has said he’s open to maybe doing WrestleMania 40 in Philadelphia. At this point, we have no idea if it’s going to happen, but if it does, we can all decide for ourselves whether it was because there was a great creative option, Endeavor put more money on the table or there was some other factor that made it more appealing this time around.