Post by Next Man’s Knowing Rock on Aug 27, 2014 12:52:12 GMT -5
I always felt Rock was more a stick man than a great in ring talent. His promos are what made him a household name but his in ring work was average at best. Since his return he was still moderately entertaining, but more often than not he was stale on the mic. His schtick was exactly the same.
Punk and Cena saw through that, and ate him up. Even the Cena haters & Attitude Era fans realized it, but still refused to admit it.
I'd disagree with the part about The Rock's in-ring work being average at best in his prime. Almost all of his big matches used the attitude era shortcuts of weapons and brawling around the arena, but he did have a lot of really great matches from 98-2003. I'd place him well above average.
But when he came back, he just couldn't bring it in the ring anymore. The tag team match at Survivor Series kinda made it look like he could, but when he got to the singles bouts, he was just as exposed as he was on the microphone. Huge respect for him coming back for those runs, but he just wasn't the saviour he had been touted as in his absence. The business and the modern wrestlers had evolved.
I felt a bit bad for Rock that time that he did that really bad, long promo where he kept drinking water and coining lame catchphrases, then Cena came down, annihilated him on the mic in about two minutes, and walked off after saying "continue trending" and Rock just stood there embarrassed and trying not to cry for about a minute before saying anything. But then I thought, why am I feeling sorry for this guy? He's the biggest movie star in the world, the biggest wrestler in the world, and he's got the body of a god and tens of millions of dollars in the bank. And I guess that's why he didn't need to put the work into his comeback.
It was rather surprising that he couldn't really hang with Cena... it was no suprise that he couldn't hang with Punk.
Yeah, there's probably a kernel of truth in that. After Cena utterly exposed and demolished him, we already knew Rock didn't have it anymore by the time he got to Punk so we knew what to expect.
All the Rock did was prove how sorry WWE has become. Even at 40, he is still better than Cena, Orton, and Batista combined. He absolutely humiliated Cena every time they were face to face.