The Rock is back!
Yey!
I don’t know why he is here because there’s a dude caught on cam with a camera. I bet he’s a videographer for some sort of Rock Project as stated in his shirt. Yes, this is cool... but we also got that super over Denver crowd and that probable, unfortunate de-push of Austin Theory.
Yes, this is a moment and Theory will probably remember this promo for all of eternity but The Rock had the same moment with Billy Gunn (Dear God promo),
The Big Show (constipation jokes),
and Rikishi (I did it for The Rock) and their main event pushes were ruined.
Theory is a McMahon boy that never really got over because his punchable face is still meant for the midcard scene. Someone needs to hook him up with Randy Orton because The Viper was in the same predicament during his Legend Killer days.
Maybe the same voices need to talk with Theory.
Anyway, I like the fact that he brought Pat McAfee with him. It was great enough that we saw McAfee but the ovation of The Rock’s return is so insane. McAfee looked like the lovable frat boy with all the emotions and interactions during the segment. It was like he was doing a reaction video while the video was playing in front of his face.
Again, Austin Theory is the perfect foil for this. First up, he has the “Austin” name so there’s a quick connection with their promo. Also, having him say “It doesn’t matter” is so awesome and you can see McAfee’s face in shock is equally awesome. Then I thought The Rock tried to mimic Stone Cold’s voice but it ended up messing up his larynx at the end of the segment (or was it because he was too overwhelmed with the audience participation) but it was still fun nonetheless.
And his interaction with John Cena is awesome.
Three part-timers spewing words technically in one segment?!?
How cool is this!!!
And this is nuts, considering this is the first televised show of the main roster wherein Vince McMahon is not the head of all of the things in WWE. Yes, there was last year but one could argue that behind the scenes, there is still a McMahon leading the way. And while yeah, they could have done this on NXT because technically, that’s the first show after WWE Raw but no offense to the facility... look at how the crowd reacted in Denver.
I guess this means The Rock and Roman Reigns is going to be the penultimate end of The Bloodline storyline and we’re probably going to see this at Wrestlemania. I was actually hoping Cody Rhodes would finally get his chance with LA Knight set up as a Roman Reigns roadblock but this works as well.
It was so awesome seeing one of my favorite WWE stars of all time in such a random Smackdown sans the buildup other than the in-show prompt.
In some ways, you feel that LA Knight had it right when he is channeling the Attitude Era with the way he does things.