The modern version of WWE loves to bring back the popular wrestlers of yesteryear to turn fan nostalgia into piles of money. From 2011 to 2013, they had their strongest version of this, as one of the Attitude Era’s biggest stars, The Rock had (finally) come back to WWE, and wrestled several marquee matches against the big stars of the era, namely John Cena and CM Punk.
This all led to some highly lucrative WrestleManias, but the overall narrative of The Rock’s return to WWE was riddled with problems and questionable decision making. Nostalgia only goes so far, so let’s talk about why this story actually kind of sucked.
10 The Rock Returns
After about seven years away from WWE, The Rock made his return on the 2/15/2011 edition of Raw to a ballistic reception from enthusiastic, nostalgic fans. During his return promo, he promised a full-time commitment to WWE, but he also buried both The Miz and John Cena to tremendous cheers.
While it was gratifying to see someone trash the undisputed face of WWE in 2011, it would ultimately prove to be the first moment in Dwayne Johnson’s steamrolling of full-time talent.
9 WrestleMania XXVII
The Rock’s return included a non-wrestling gig hosting WrestleMania XXVII, where he’d draw the ire of John Cena during his main event title match against champion The Miz. The whole thing was kind of overbooked, as the two men would reach a double count-out finish.
The Rock, speaking for the Anonymous Raw General Manager, would restart the match as a No DQ affair, and then deliver a Rock Bottom to Cena, allowing Miz to retain. The Rock could have just sneak attacked Cena, stealing his moment and setting up a match anyway.
8 A Year of Build
The main event of WrestleMania XXVII was considered a disappointment -- possibly one of the most disappointing of all time. However, there was a plan, as it was meant to kick off an entire year of building up to the main event of John Cena vs. The Rock at WrestleMania XXVIII in 2012
The decision to set up a match a year later was incredibly ambitious and obviously paid off, but unfortunately, this build happened at the expense of the 2011 main event, which didn’t feel worth it for any fans at the time.
7 The Rock Being a Babyface
One of the biggest problems with The Rock’s return is one of alignment. In the ‘Mania match, he was a babyface for restarting the match, a heel for betraying Cena, and then a babyface again for attacking The Miz post-match.
It puts the Rock in a strange position as a celebrity with tremendous popularity who is better than both the villains and heroes of WWE by sheer force of fan nostalgia. It may have made more sense for The Rock to just stick to his forte of being a heel, as the vocal WWE crowds were going to cheer him over Cena no matter what.
6 Feuding with CM Punk
In the months following his victory at WrestleMania XXVIII, The Rock got into a feud with the WWE Champion CM Punk, who gained sudden mainstream popularity through a feud with John Cena. While The Rock taking on an upstart like CM Punk seemed like a cool idea that would give Punk further legitimacy, Punk was being presented as the heel and The Rock was the too-cool babyface.
While WWE crowds could easily cheer The Rock over the uncool and kid-friendly Cena, it was harder to cheer the rich movie star over the hardworking and cool full-time wrestler.
5 “Cookiepuss”
The thing about CM Punk’s rise to main event status is that he felt edgy and rough compared to the squeaky clean corporate WWE Superstar John Cena. Cena was easy for The Rock to trash, and juvenile nicknames like “Fruity Pebbles” to describe Cena’s colorful T-shirts got over.
Against CM Punk, The Rock didn’t have as much ammunition and tried to get equally juvenile nicknames like “Cookiepuss” over to make fun of something Punk said about old WWE ice cream bars. The Rock never seemed less cool and out of step.
4 Winning the WWE Championship
For fans watching the 2013 Royal Rumble pay-per-view, The Rock’s defeat of CM Punk to win the WWE Championship was the most obvious outcome possible. The Rock was a celebrity with nostalgia on his side; CM Punk was just a wrestler with the longest modern WWE Title reign. The biggest surprise here was that The Rock won off a secondary move, The People’s Elbow.
It was a poor decision, made even worse in how it started a trend of WWE putting the belt on the waists of part-time champions at the expense of full-time stars. Had they not done it with The Rock, it may not have happened with Brock Lesnar and Goldberg.
3 The Convoluted Rematch Set-Up
At the time, WrestleMania XXVIII was the biggest, most financially successful ‘Mania of all time, so of course, WWE couldn’t resist the idea of doing a sequel the following year.
That’s all well and good, but by booking The Rock to win the WWE Championship and John Cena to win the Royal Rumble to make “Once in a Lifetime” happen a second time in a lifetime, it felt like too much work to force a rematch. For most fans, Cena saying “Let’s have a match again” and Rock saying “Okay” would have more than sufficed.
2 The Road to WrestleMania
While a WrestleMania rematch was certainly a no-brainer from a financial perspective, the build to the match felt like a rehash of their previous feud: John Cena talking about The Rock being a Hollywood part-timer, The Rock slinging some homophobic insults, and so on.
There was the added element of Cena’s life “falling apart” in the aftermath of losing to the Rock, but even that didn’t work, because he competed for the WWE Championship and beat Brock Lesnar during this time. Maybe if The Rock turned heel during this stretch of his run, the feud would have felt different.
1 Making the WrestleMania 29 Rematch Last Nearly 25 Minutes
The first Rock/Cena match was a classic just by dream match energy alone and ended up lasting half an hour. Unfortunately, several more matches during this period made it clear that The Rock didn’t quite have the stamina to wrestle full matches anymore, as he quickly got gassed during his 2013 matches with Punk.
Moreover, Cena’s winning at ‘Mania felt as much as a sure thing as Rock’s victory at Royal Rumble earlier in the year, so for many fans, this attempt at an epic bout felt needlessly long.