27-year-old WWE star looks back at working with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson still has some gas left in the tank, as evidenced by his latest WWE stint. Before he became The Final Boss, Johnson appeared poised to challenge Roman Reigns at WrestleMania. However, way before that, he joined Pat McAfee and Austin Theory for an unannounced in-ring segment on the September 15, 2023, episode of SmackDown, marking his WWE return after spending years away.
Johnson had officially and quietly retired from in-ring competition in 2019, but then the dream match for many fans between him and Reigns was too big for WWE—and the Attitude Era legend himself—to look away from.
Austin Theory took to Instagram on the one-year anniversary of Johnson's return and his promo with the latter. He simply shared a snap of the two sharing the ring:
The Final Boss declared that Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes is next for him, having pinned the latter one night before The American Nightmare won the belt on the grand stage. However, he has not returned to action since making his intentions known. He had taken time off to begin shooting for Benny Safdie's upcoming feature, The Smashing Machine, based on former wrestler and MMA star Mark Kerr.
Cody Rhodes discusses Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's original WrestleMania XL plans
In February, The Rock resurfaced a month after teasing going after The Bloodline's Head of the Table. However, this happened immediately after Cody Rhodes won the Royal Rumble.
The American Nightmare gave up his spot for the legend. A week later in Las Vegas during the Kickoff Press Event, after this decision received massive fan backlash, Rhodes informed The Rock that he was not going to go through with it.
Speaking to Inside The Ropes recently, the Undisputed WWE Champion claimed that if fans found out about what Dwayne Johnson had in mind, it would have proved detrimental to The Show of Shows:
"If people knew the real plan for me, they’d be even more angry. I can’t share the real plan for you, The Rock plan, whatever it may be. That was going to be on my mind in terms of how do we make that work? How do we accomplish that? I had a really good team of people around me."
Dwayne Johnson's writer Brian Gewirtz had mentioned before how Cody Rhodes' facial expression did not sell The Rock vs. Roman Reigns for WrestleMania XL as it was intended, which did not help matters. The American Nightmare elaborated on this recently, admitting that there is some truth to it.