The Rock was meant to make stunning WWE returns to face Brock Lesnar and Triple

The Rock is one of the WWE’s prized assets and biggest global star ever, arguably.

After wrestling full time from 1996-2003, he went on to carve out a successful Hollywood career that has seen his films make billions at the box office and the man himself listed as the top earning actor in a calendar year more than once.

However, his association with WWE has always remained and that’s an important link for the company, too.
After all, Rock’s return to open up SmackDown’s debut on FOX last year garnered around four millions viewers. That’s the highest rating in nearly two decades.

However, The Great One has not wrestled since a very brief squash match against Erick Rowan at WrestleMania 32.

Prior to that, Rock worked with John Cena at WrestleMania 28 and 29, splitting the victories, but dropping the WWE title to the Leader of the Cenation at 29.

Brock Lesnar

During that match, The Rock tore his abdomen and was unable to make RAW the next night. If he had made it, he was due to get attacked by Brock Lesnar to kick off a feud that would lead to WrestleMania 30.

Those injuries meant Rock had to delay filming Hercules and the movie studio was not happy about that all.

Still, Rock did admit on Twitter he was meant to have the match with Brock and they wanted to make it happen at either ‘Mania 30 or 31.

“Between Vince [McMahon, the chairman], Brock & myself our WrestleMania 30 plan was ROCK vs BROCK. No plans now for 30 but possibly WM 31,” Rock wrote.

Wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer elaborated on what the creative was meant to be for The Rock and the reasons why it ultimately didn’t come to pass.

“In a media appearance with Kelly & Ryan, Dwayne Johnson said he quietly retired from wrestling.

“He is now 47 years old and hasn’t done a serious fight since he broke a series of muscles and suffered a hernia in the second fight against John Cena, which was really an annoying situation because he had been training and dieting and everything else needed to resemble Hercules and all that effort was ruined when he got hurt badly.

“Recording studios have since been pretty firm about him not fighting because that delayed the production of that movie. There was talk that he would be having another fight against Triple H.

“The Rock was going to star WrestleMania in 2014 with Brock Lesnar and, in fact, they were going to kick off the rivalry with an angle where Lesnar completely destroyed him on the Raw the day after WrestleMania 29 in 2013, but Rock was injured. It was also the first choice to partner with Ronda Rousey against Triple H and Stephanie…