Another WrestleMania season is upon, and once again there seems to be as much intrigue going on behind-the-scenes as in the scenes on Raw and SmackDown.
The Rock hasn’t made an appearance for WWE since some confusing visits ahead of last year’s WrestleMania 41. But despite — or perhaps because of — that, the idea of a backstage power struggle involving the company’s Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque and TKO Board member Dwayne Johnson has once again been suggested.
Which makes Triple H’s
long-time friend and right-hand man Shawn Michaels, aka WWE’s Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative, talking about their past with The Rock on Carmelo Anthony’s 7pm in Brooklyn podcast interesting and timely!
Basketball legend Anthony co-hosts 7pm in Brooklyn with a rotating cast that includes Kazeem Famuyide, and it was the media personality and former WWE writer who joined the three-time Olympic gold medalist to chat with Michaels on his latest show.
The portion we’re interested comes around the 38-40 minute mark on the opposite side of a couple ad reads. Famuyide brings up The Rock vs. Shawn Michaels as one of the biggest possible match-ups that never happened, and the Heartbreak Kid’s simple answer is, “well, he didn’t like me.”
HBK laughs, but continues:
“I will say this… there’s a big kerfuffle in the the wrestling business about me and Hunter [Triple H] doing stuff to him, and being mean, and stuff like that — all of it way blown out of proportion, nne of it even accurate. But those were things that when he was younger, he was fed a lot. But later on, and to this day, we get along and we talk about stuff.”
Shawn goes on to explain why the timing wasn’t right (“by the time I came back, he was well off into his Hollywood career”), and to put Johnson over as a star in general, and as the person who should win the fantasy match-up that was pitched to him.
But then Anthony tries to get specific about how HBK and Hunter were “mean and stuff” to young Rock, asking, “how did you guys receive The Rock back then when he first came in, in his younger days?” In response, Michaels refers to Dwayne’s father Rocky Johnson by Dwayne’s first WWE name repeatedly while retelling a condensed version of DJ’s story of becoming The Rock, and never answering the question.
“When he first came in… he was just Rocky Maivia’s son. When he first went out there, he was getting a lot of the ‘Rocky sucks’ chants and stuff like that, so there’s always ribbing and stuff like that in the locker room. But when he came back… I want to say he was injured and took some time off, that he really thought about how his career was going and wanting to change things up. And he came back as The Rock, and no longer being the son of Rocky Maivia.”
We’re thinking the truth probably lays behind the “ribbing, and stuff” portion of the quote, but let us know what you think… and if you think this is part of what’s behind the issues we’re hearing about at WWE to this day.
