Four weeks ago, WWE legend The Rock announced on Instagram that he would be at this year’s WrestleMania 32 at AT&T Stadium. When the announcement was made, everybody, including The Rock himself, was hoping that “The People’s Champ” would end up wrestling on the show. However, due to an insurance issue that hasn’t been able to be resolved, The Rock won’t have a match at WrestleMania 32 .
It was previously assumed that The Rock would end up wrestling Triple H this spring in Dallas as WWE has teased a match between the two on more than one occasion over the last year, most notably at last year’s WrestleMania 31 , where The Rock teamed up with former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, and the two of them took out The Authority, a.k.a Triple H and Stephanie McMahon.
Triple H winning this past Sunday’s Royal Rumble is a good indication that The Rock won’t be wrestling this coming spring unless WWE is planning on having The Rock challenge “The Game” for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. This seems very unlikely, especially since a number one contender’s triple threat match will be taking place at next month’s WWE Fastlane pay-per-view.
Furthermore, Brock Lesnar, who was another potential opponent for The Rock, will be wrestling Bray Wyatt at WrestleMania 32 . So, it’s looking like The Rock won’t be wrestling on the show.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer reported on Monday’s Wrestling Observer Radio that The Rock hasn’t been able to work through the insurance issue that was preventing him from wrestling at AT&T Stadium, which means that The Rock’s WrestleMania appearance won’t involve wrestling.
The Rock returned to WWE television on Monday’s RAW , which was teased earlier in the day on WWE’s Twitter page, and his appearance didn’t indicate that he would be wrestling this coming spring.
On the aforementioned post, it was reported that if The Rock isn’t able to have a match at WrestleMania 32 , then he’ll be in the corner of Roman Reigns in his match against Triple H, with the idea being that he’ll be there to counteract Vince McMahon, who will be in Triple H’s corner.
The last time The Rock was involved with Roman Reigns was at last year’s Royal Rumble , where the WWE fans initially turned on Roman Reigns. Of course, the idea there was that the fans wouldn’t boo Reigns if The Rock endorsed him. However that wasn’t the case, and the fans continued to boo Reigns after The Rock entered the ring.
There’s an idea that’s been floating around which doesn’t involve The Rock endorsing Reigns at WrestleMania 32 after Reigns wins, which is presumably going to be the result of the main-event, but rather, The Rock will be there to lay out Vince McMahon, which will be WWE’s way of writing Vince off of television.
It’s common knowledge that Vince McMahon isn’t interested in being a character anymore because he doesn’t like to have “old people” as weekly television characters, especially if they’re going to be involved in a major way. In an attempt to help the falling ratings near the end of 2015, Vince returned to television, and he’s been willing to remain as a weekly character as long as it prevents the ratings from hitting record lows.
Vince had been looking for a way to not be on WWE television since 2007, which is when he attempted to write himself off for the first time by having his limousine explode with him inside of it . Of course, that ended up being spoiled by the Chris Benoit tragedy, which forced Vince to return to WWE television.
Since then, there have been several times where Vince has attempted to have his swan song, but he always returns, and the idea that The Rock is going to lay him out at WrestleMania 32 may end up being Vince’s next attempt to leave WWE television forever.
(Featured image via WWE )