The Rock made his long-awaited return to WWE during tonight’s SmackDown, and the pop he received from the WWE Universe was something to behold. The Rock came out during a segment between Pat McAfee and Austin Theory, and Theory would end up eating a People’s Elbow when all was said and done. WWE wasn’t done with the unexpected moments though, as later in the show WWE fans got an even more surprising reunion. During a backstage segment between The Rock and McAfee, they were approached by John Cena, reuniting Rock and Cena for the first time in quite some time.
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McAfee and Rock were talking about returning to SmackDown backstage, and then McAfee and Rock saw someone approaching, to which McAfee said “there’s someone you can’t see.” When the camera turned to Cena, Cena and Rock had a bit of a staredown. Slowly but surely Cena’s focus started to break and you could see him smirking, and Rock said, “I see you trying to smile.”
Cena’s smile got bigger and he shook his head, saying “I am. Welcome home.” Cena and Rock hugged and Rock said “Thank you. It’s good to be here.” Rock and Cena have faced each other in two different programs at WrestleMania, but could we see a third? That remains to be seen, but one match-up that does seem destined to happen at some point is Rock vs Roman Reigns. During an appearance on Pat McAfee’s show, Rock revealed that a match between the two was locked in at one point, but they couldn’t nail down exactly how to make it as special as it needed to be.
“The Rock headlining WrestleMania with Roman Reigns, SoFi Stadium, that was locked. We were doing it,” Rock said. “In the beginning of 2022, (WWE CEO) Nick Khan was very instrumental in bringing Vince and I together. We all flew to LA. We met. We sat. We broke out the Teremana, and about an hour later we started talking about the potential of what this match could be. Myself and Roman Reigns headlining WrestleMania at SoFi. We shook hands and we hugged right there and said, ‘Let’s do this.’”
“The north star thought was let’s not do something good, let’s not do something great, let’s do something unprecedented. A match? Great. Roman’s an incredible athlete. He’s going to be on Mount Rushmore. The bigger thought was what can we do for the fans where WrestleMania isn’t the end of something, it’s actually the beginning of something bigger. We got really, really close but we couldn’t actually nail what that thing was.”
“We agreed, there is a merger coming up, there’s WrestleMania in Philadelphia,” Rock teased. “I’m saying that’s a potential. I’m open. Let’s figure out what that is.”
What did you think of Cena and Rock’s reunion on SmackDown? Let us know in the comments and as always you can talk all things wrestling with me on Threads @mattaguilarcb!
