Should The Rock End His WWE Career?By Ben Spindler| May 5, 2013 Wrestling Blogs Previous Page At the time, WWE fans could not have known what his small role in The Mummy Returns would lead to in the future and when he returned to the WWE in July of 2001, it seemed that normal service would resume. He quickly became a key component of the WWE’s fight against the invading WCW and ECW alliance, and was booked to go over in a feud with Booker T and in the process win the WCW World Title. Meanwhile, the success of The Mummy Returns and in particular, The Rock’s portrayal of The Scorpion King part, led Universal Pictures to offer The Rock a staggering $5.5million to star in a prequel named after the character. The Guinness Book of Records lists this as the largest amount of money offered to an actor for their first lead role in Hollywood, clearly Universal were confident that The Rock was big box office. They had identified that his presence alone guaranteed a high turn out at cinema’s across the nation (and indeed internationally). What was perhaps more concerning for wrestling fans was, with The Rock able to make this kind of money by making movies, why would he continue to work the notoriously tough WWE schedule? Before he took a second break from the WWE in 2002, The Rock was one half of another massive match at Wrestlemania 18, against the returning Hulk Hogan. This was Hogan’s first in-ring appearance on a WWE pay-per-view since King of the Ring 1993, some 9 years previous and when he came to the ring prior to his match, despite being cast as the heel of the piece, Hogan was greeted with a rousing reception. The first hints that the ‘hardcore’ fanbase of the WWE was getting resentful towards The Rock for his crossing over into the mainstream was starting to show. Where previously wrestling fans had lapped up everything ‘the people’s champ’ had done due to his tremendous presence, that same talent was now drawing him away from the company due to the greater level of financial rewards that could be found elsewhere and the wrestling fans did not like it. With a budget of around $60,000,000, but grossing a worldwide total of just over $165,000,000, The Scorpion King was considered a big success and The Rock’s place as a movie star was secured. At this point, The Rock’s forays back with the WWE began to get shorter and shorter as his career in Hollywood took over. Whilst the wrestling fans were now back in full ‘Rocky Sucks’ mode, it cannot be ignored the things that The Rock did for the company during these brief returns. It was The Rock who put over Brock Lesnar cleanly at Summer Slam 2002, to elevate Lesnar to the position of mega star with the company. When he returned the next time in early 2003, he gave the rub to The Hurricane in a side storyline whilst building up to his 3rd match with Austin at Wrestlemania 19, and after defeating ‘Stone Cold’ at the big one, he then put over WWE’s new signing Goldberg in the main even of Backlash just a month later. Essentially, with The Rock fazing himself out of the WWE, he did his job, put over other talent and gave something back as is the time honoured tradition of the business. The Rock’s appearances after this became even more sporadic, and his last appearance in the ring for nearly 7 years came as one half of The Rock N Sock connection who were defeated by Evolution in a 2 on 3 handicap match. During the match, The Rock was again greeted with boos by the audience (despite again being booked as a face), yet another exhibition of their resentment towards a man who they felt owed the business his loyalty, given how it had so successfully made him famous. If truth be told though, The Rock simply made a decision that any of us would have, faced with the choice between working roughly 300 days a year on the road, getting his body banged up taking bumps in the ring for a lot less money than pursuing a burgeoning Hollywood career, there was really no choice to make. Having added The Rundown (released as Welcome To The Jungle in the UK) and Walking Tall to his resume in film by this point, The Rock was ready to commit himself full time to his new career. There is another factor in the decision that The Rock made at this time however. After all, what else was there for The Rock to achieve in the WWE? He had become a 7-time WWE Champion (at the time a record), had headlined 4 Wrestlemania’s, won The Royal Rumble and had big money matches against Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan, Triple H, Mick Foley, Brock Lesnar, Bill Goldberg, Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, The Big Show, the list goes on. He’d mastered both being a reviled heel and a beloved babyface, broken new ground in terms of catchphrases and promos, and had helped the WWE win the Monday night war once and for all. It is not unkind to say that had The Rock continued to wrestle, we would have seen a decline in his drawing ability and his remaining viable options in the company. Ultimately, when The Rock walked away, I feel that there is an argument to be made that it was the best thing for the business of wrestling too. The reason I say this is that business in the WWE had been on the decline since 2001, well before The Rock left, not that I’m arguing that this was caused by The Rock of course, just that The Rock was not having the same affect on pay-per-view buy rates and television ratings as he had been in year’s previous, and would do again. What possible impact would The Rock’s presence have had at Wrestlemania’s 27, 28 & 29 if he hadn’t left the company at the end of 2004, when his deal with the WWE ended and was not renewed? The impact of his twice annual returns to the wrestling world would have seen diminishing returns and his value commercially to the WWE would have dropped. Ultimately, it was The Rock’s departure in 2004 that allowed his return over the past few years to be such a big success. After The Rock left WWE, for what was expected to be the last time, he soon went on a prolific run of film making. Between 2005 and 2011, The Rock starred in 14 films including big box office hits Be Cool (2005), Gridiron Gang (2006), Get Smart (2008), Race To Witch Mountain (2009), and Tooth Fairy (2010). His decision to move into movies full time had paid off, Dwayne Johnson, as he was now publicly known, had become an established Hollywood star. It was with a measure of surprise then that Johnson returned as The Rock in the WWE in early 2011 when it was announced that he would be the special guest host for Wrestlemania 27. It had been 7 years since his previous meaningful contribution to the wrestling business, and on that occasion The Rock had not exactly been flavour of the month with the WWE’s fans. That however was all forgotten on February 14th 2011 when The Rock appeared on Raw after his involvement at Wrestlemania 27 was revealed to the live WWE crowd. What followed was a revelation, The Rock walked down the people’s aisle, stepped into the people’s ring and proceeded to school the entire locker room on how to handle one’s self and deliver the kind of promo that has the crowd feeding out of the palm of your hand. So masterful was The Rock that he made pretty much the entire regular roster seem amateur in comparison. After delivering a rousing speech about the WWE being ‘home’, he turned his attention to John Cena, referencing comments that Cena had made regarding The Rock’s loyalty to the sport and his failure in not showing up at special events in the past. By the end, fans were left in no doubt as to who the star of the show at Wrestlemania 27 would be, despite the fact that he wasn’t even booked in a match.
