Peacock Censors One of The Rock’s Most Iconic WWE Raw Promos

The March 24, 2003 episode of Monday Night Raw famously featured a “Rock Concert” segment where Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson— fully embracing his heelish “Hollywood Rock” persona at the time — sang in front of the crowd in Sacramento while antagonizing them and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin ahead of their match at WrestleMania XIX that coming Sunday. The segment lasted roughly 13 minutes, starting with Rock in the ring and ending with Austin sneaking into the arena via a truck driven by The Hurricane and smashing Rock’s guitar. Fans noticed this week that the replay of the episode, available only on Peacock here in the United States, had the majority of the segment cut out and jumped from Rock introducing himself to Austin and Hurricane driving into the ring. 

Oddly enough, most of the segment is still available for replay via WWE.com. Peacock made headlines last year when it was discovered that the streaming service had been censoring certain infamous segments from its WWE library, including Roddy Piper dressing in half-black face for his match with Bad News Brown at WrestleMania VI and Vince McMahon casually saying the n-word at the 2005 Survivor Series event. Both Peacock and WWE gave statements to The New York Times back in March 2021. Why this particular segment had to be cut is unclear, but you can find the episode here and the unedited clip below.

“NBCUniversal said that Peacock was ‘reviewing WWE content to ensure it aligns with Peacock’s standards and practices,’ as it does other shows and films on the platform,” The Times reported. WWE then added, “Peacock and WWE are reviewing all past content to ensure it fits our 2021 standards.”

Johnson spoke with ComicBook back in November while promoting the release of his latest film, Red Notice, and talked about the heavily rumored dream match between himself and Roman Reigns, the current WWE Universal Champion. 

“It seems like Roman, you know, I’m very close with Roman obviously, and we talk about this all the time, and I continue to encourage him to keep doing your thing, keep sharpening those skills,” Johnson said. “I think he’s doing a great job with his promo, his execution, his in-ring work. It all continues to improve and grow. And that’s always the best part, I think, about that world of professional wrestling is that when someone gets anointed and given the ball to run, they either score a touchdown with it or they don’t. But then some, not only score a touchdown with it, but then they begin to change the way the game is played. And in Roman’s case, he’s slowly doing that, and you could start to read the tea leaves. And again, I’m very, very proud of him. I like everything that he’s doing. I like everything that the Usos are doing. I like what they’re doing together, and we’ll see down the road.”