Potential heel of the year – The Rock

It’s that time of the year when the wrestling business gets interesting. The WWE builds a head of steam on its way to the biggest night in the industry, WrestleMania. And one stop before WrestleMania, where everything matters, and the road to WrestleMania actually and truly begins, is the Royal Rumble. We’re mere hours away from the Rumble, which also has one of the most significant WrestleMania talking points, and that is the Rumble match itself. The winner of the Royal Rumble will go on to Wrestlemania to face either the WWE Champion or the World Champion. The world looks on eagerly to find who the man is this year, who is going to ‘headline’ WrestleMania (although the past few winners haven’t exactly ‘headlined’ the event, which has significantly diminished the value of the Rumble in my view). The bottom line is, Royal Rumble has the potential to shake the industry, and shape the next few years for the business.

Talking about shaking the industry, this article looks at a potential occurrence which could do that. My views about Dwayne Johnson have always been the same, and perhaps will be for a long time. I don’t buy Dwayne as a face, and I don’t buy him if he becomes the face of the company. It’ll be one more of Vince McMahon’s ingenious plots to gain mainstream attention and bring the eyes of the media and Hollywood to his company, which isn’t a bad thing by any means for him, and for the company in general. But what if Vince decides to do something he always used to do a decade ago? And that, is take a chance. By taking a chance, I mean thinking out of the box and catching the fans by surprise. How can he do that? Do something no one expects, something which can further the Cena – Rock match rumours going into WrestleMania.

If Vince takes a gamble and turns Rock heel, that alone would create shock waves in the industry. Imagine Rock losing at the Royal Rumble, and coming out the next night on RAW and declaring himself ‘too good’ to be in the wrestling business after being ‘humiliated’ by Punk! This is what I believe should happen. You have a guy like Cena who is seen as the saviour of the WWE, and the guy who upholds the integrity of the company, and you have The Rock talking trash about the business and the fans. Instead of having a face vs face like last year, they can go into WrestleMania with a face Cena vs a heel Rock. Imagine the arena filled with confusion and the people in a fix. They wouldn’t obviously cheer The Rock because he can actually make it a point and make it believable, and they can’t even cheer Cena because he’s everything an old fan hates.

How the story should unfold is simple. As Paul states in the above video, this is a twist that can embed itself with reality, and usually that is when it becomes magic (Remember the CM Punk ‘pipe bomb’ promo? Or the Joey Styles’ worked shoot?) Rock would lose to Punk at the Rumble, and come out the next night saying people cheered for Punk, and that he should be the champion. And a disgruntled Rock goes on to mock the fans, and tell them how he’s bigger than the business itself and bigger than the fans, and that he should leave for Hollywood because the fans don’t deserve to see him. Imagine a scene like the one which happened when Goldberg made his debut.

Imagine Rock doing it all over again! The fans will eventually get over the nostalgia part, and the one way Vince can make some serious ripples in the business is by taking a chance, something which he has already worked before, and turned the Rock heel. How would you like to find yourself in a predicament where you cannot cheer or boo either man in a match? Something like Hogan vs Rock back when the fans cheered the bad guy and booed the good guy?

It wouldn’t only make things very interesting, but would also lead up to one of the most anticipated matches (again), and only this time, people would actually make sense out of it. WWE direly needs to resurrect the career of John Cena, which has gone downhill since his loss to the Rock. One can even proclaim that the WWE writers were creative enough to keep Cena on the back burner, and symbolize that his loss to Rock put his career on hold, and that only a win against Rock in a rematch of the decade (Oh, whatever) can resurrect his career. That would be one of the most ingenious storylines the creative team could come up with!

So, a Rock heel turn wouldn’t only make sense, but can be the best thing for the business. Punk on the other hand can face a returning Undertaker (Which makes sense because of his ‘respect’ angle, and ‘Taker being the most respected superstar in the business), and the Rock can face Cena, with Cena getting the win, which can also leave the door open for a rubber match sometime in the future. Although these are just my thoughts and wishes to turn into a possibility, if Vince decides to take a chance with it and run with it, it can be the lead up to one of the most memorable times in the business, like the good old days.