Dwayne The Rock Johnson Pat McAfee Screengrab via ESPN
ESPNWWEBy Matt Yoder on

WrestleMania 41 was an enormous success for WWE in almost every way. “Almost” because the ending of the Night 2 main event between Cody Rhodes and John Cena fell remarkably flat. And in appearance on The Pat McAfee Show, TKO board member and “Final Boss” Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson explained his absence and danced around some of the criticism.

Critics panned the ending to the Cena-Rhodes match as incredibly anticlimactic and disappointing, thanks to the interference of Travis Scott and the no-show by The Rock.

The “Final Boss” character of The Rock has been one of the central figures in WWE ever since he was involved in WrestleMania 40 last year and his scorching hot feud with Rhodes was heavily anticipated to continue into WrestleMania 41.

However, over the last year, Johnson has made sporadic appearances on WWE programming, sometimes as his “Final Boss” character and sometimes seemingly breaking character to appear in his role as a TKO board member.

That included some awkward stop-start moments in his feud with Rhodes, such as when he praised his rival while in corporate mode on the WWE Raw Netflix debut in January, but then slipped back into character and asked for his soul in the buildup to Elimination Chamber.

While the payoff at Elimination Chamber was Cena appearing to sell his soul to The Rock, thereby turning heel for the first time, Johnson was hardly mentioned after that in the build to WrestleMania 41.

That led fans to thinking, hoping, and anticipating that he would surely make a surprise appearance to pay off the angle to help Cena win his record 17th championship and recreate some of the magic from the year prior, where countless run-ins under “Bloodline Rules” that saw Rhodes win his first world championship from Roman Reigns saw everyone from Cena to The Rock to The Undertaker make appearances.

Alas, that didn’t happen. And after Scott took forever to walk to the ring, the lone distraction led to a low blow and belt shot from Cena that was enough to win the title from Rhodes. It left pretty much everyone asking the same question.

That’s it?

With The Rock was booked for Tuesday’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show, it was an indication that WWE and Johnson might have gotten the message about fans’ dissatisfaction with the WrestleMania 41 ending. And he appeared entirely out of character as Dwayne Johnson, TKO board member, entirely pulling back the curtain on the plans for the biggest event of the year.

According to Johnson, he was asked to participate in the Elimination Chamber to help boost ticket sales and increase the event’s popularity on the Road to WrestleMania. After conceiving of Cena’s heel turn and his role in it with WWE executives Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Nick Khan and TKO owner Ari Emanuel, Johnson said he was happy to take a step back and shine the light on Cena and Rhodes in the main event.

First, Johnson explained the origin of the “sell your soul” angle for Elimination Chamber, stating that it opened up options for his interaction with Rhodes down the road.

“It was a litmus test to find out, in my opinion, how will fans respond if Cody sold his soul to the Final Boss? Let’s get a temperature check on this. Let’s establish it, let’s anchor it in, and you come to find out that there were a lot of fans who were saying, ‘sell your soul!'” Johnson said. “I was an advocate of that. Not turning Cody heel soon, but eventually down the line I like the idea of that because Cody’s a smart guy, he’s an intelligent guy, he’s a ring general, and I think this idea of ‘you give him a reason to turn’ way down the road by the way, not based on titles, not based on this, but it’s his soul and what that means. That affects generations. It’s transcendent beyond pro wrestling. And fans were loving it.

However, The Rock also admitted that creatively he would have “finessed things a little bit differently” for the criticized main event.

“I knew then, the best thing for the Final Boss, we’ve established this idea of Cody’s soul, we can always come back to it. I did feel, and I made the call, I don’t want to be involved in that. Step back, let the Final Boss step back, back into the shadows. Let all the spotlight go to John, let it go to Cody, let’s not make it about Cody’s soul eventually or John’s soul, no, let’s let them do what they do,” Johnson said.

“I called John after Elimination Chamber, called Cody, and I said, I think the Final Boss’ work is done. We’ve established it. We just pulled off the greatest angle in the history of professional wrestling other than Hulk Hogan turning heel back in the 90s. I said, ‘this is amazing.’ We have six weeks. Now let’s build, you guys go and crush it and I’ll be right there with you. And I’m always here if you need me, but I think it’s best for the Final Boss not to be involved in that finish,” he continued.

“I love the finish of the match. I would have finessed things a little differently on how they got there, but that’s just me creatively. There are a lot of minds in the room. That’s my thought but ultimately the bottom line was, I love John getting 17,” Johnson proclaimed.

First of all, it is admirable that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would pull back the curtain to this extent and share his own thought process behind WrestleMania 41, his appearances, and the build to the show. Wrestling fans have never experienced anything like this before, in almost real-time. It shows that WWE is becoming increasingly comfortable with breaking the fourth wall and embracing the entertainment aspect of the product. Their new Netflix documentary series will take that to another level.

However, while Johnson shared his side of the story, it’s unlikely to make fans feel any better about the WrestleMania 41 finish or the road to get there, as it still doesn’t make much sense. Based on the story told here, this is the timeline we have.

  • The Rock is called into Elimination Chamber by Ari Emanuel to help struggling ticket sales.
  • WWE comes up with the idea of the “sell your soul” angle between The Rock and Cody Rhodes that could be paid off “way down the road” and not necessarily immediately.
  • Turn John Cena heel at Elimination Chamber at The Rock’s signal, but have The Rock purposely disappear from WWE programming.
  • Put the focus on Cena and his title win… while also featuring interference from Travis Scott as the lone connecting point between Elimination Chamber and WrestleMania 41.

The way The Rock explains this, the only possible outcome was to let fans down by not expecting his return.  You can’t put the focus entirely on Cena and Rhodes and then have Travis Scott of all people interfere in the main event instead of the man that WWE fans have been invested in for almost 30 years and the man who was supposedly the linchpin for this entire thing.

Furthermore, you can’t have John Cena and The Rock stand triumphantly over Cody Rhodes at Elimination Chamber only for the Final Boss to disappear with no explanation given for any of it. The Rock references Cena matching Hulk Hogan’s famous nWo formation at Bash at the Beach as the only comparable moment in wrestling history. However, Hogan didn’t disappear for months, as the rest of WCW forgot it ever happened, only to revisit it at some unspecified point in the future. Imagine Michael Corleone discovering that Fredo was the family traitor and then just not bothering to tie up that loose end until halfway through The Godfather III.

This may suggest that WWE planned this scenario as a short-term jolt at Elimination Chamber, without any long-term goal in mind. For a company that has been praised for their long-term storytelling through the Bloodline years, that may have been its first mistake.

Sometimes, WWE tends to retrofit its creative missteps to suggest that it was right all along and just taking us for a ride. It’s often a defense mechanism to combat adverse fan reaction. But this explanation from The Rock doesn’t seem like that at all. It’s just the reality that his character can’t go in and out and realistically make it work. This seems like an honest and well-intentioned story that ultimately fell short of expectations, particularly for the biggest show of the year.

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