The Rock

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

Rocky was in several great matches, was an underrated sympathetic babyface, and was kind of a modern Piper in that, while mechanically he may not have been the best, his charisma was enough to make many of his matches watchable. All that said, he had a really short run, so don't see any way he makes a 100 greatest of all time.

[MoS]

I would put him in the lower sections of the top 100. Probably the best mic worker at getting the fans involved, was really good at getting his heat back after losing, was a very enthusiastic seller, and had quite a lot of great matches. Crowd reactions were second only to Austin, and that added to the heat of the match.

[W2BTD]

He should have been better. He was a very good athlete, and he was brought up in the business. Could be a case of a guy being so over, that there was no point in pushing yourself physically or mentally, consciously or otherwise (like Hulkamania era Hogan, who could get away with the most simplistic psychology and minimal physical effort...so, he did).

 

At the end of the day, The Rock was an average pro wrestler with super elite charisma.

[MoS]

I do not see how you can make an argument that Rock did not push himself to get better, seeing how he upped his game significantly when there was an influx of talent in 2000, and in general, it can be said that all facets of his work improved with each passing year. 2003 saw some of his best work. It was said that he would watch his tapes to see how he could improve himself.

 

And charisma is an integral part of being a pro wrestler, in my opinion. It cannot be separated.

[Lee Casebolt]

One of the best things you can say about The Rock is he got significantly better when he could have just coasted on charisma. '98 Rock and '01 Rock are night and day.

[fxnj]

He has a few matches I like (Wrestlemania Austin matches and Summerslam Brock match) but I don't think a lot of his other matches hold up that well outside that particular time period. I tried watching the Benoit match, for example, and I couldn't make it past the half-way point with all the interference bullshit the guys were relying on in place of physicality. Also, as big a box office success as it was, his comeback doesn't reflect favorably on him at all from an in-ring perspective as it exposed him as lacking creativity in laying out cleanly worked matches or the ring smarts to work around the limitations of age. There's also the deal with how short his peak full-time run was that really shouldn't leave him as a lock for 100 if we're also arguing over whether or not Ishii deserves a place for having spent a similar time period working at a much higher level.

[W2BTD]

I do not see how you can make an argument that Rock did not push himself to get better, seeing how he upped his game significantly when there was an influx of talent in 2000, and in general, it can be said that all facets of his work improved with each passing year. 2003 saw some of his best work. It was said that he would watch his tapes to see how he could improve himself.

 

And charisma is an integral part of being a pro wrestler, in my opinion. It cannot be separated.

 

I'm talking bigger picture, not incremental year to year improvement. To me, a guy with his athletic credentials, who you would think would have a very firm grasp of the mental side of things due to growing up surrounded by wrestling, should have produced a much better in ring pro wrestler. I'm sure he'll lose sleep, being one of the biggest stars ever and all, but this is what this ultra nerdy project is about. Rock always felt like a guy who wasn't as good as he should have been to me.

[WingedEagle]

Not exactly a factor in this discussion, but I always noticed that Rock was one of the most awkward bleeders ever. Blood took to his skin like rain to waterproof jacket. It never seemed to stick, just kind of a slow trickle and disappeared pretty quickly.

[Shining Wiz]

Not exactly a factor in this discussion, but I always noticed that Rock was one of the most awkward bleeders ever. Blood took to his skin like rain to waterproof jacket. It never seemed to stick, just kind of a slow trickle and disappeared pretty quickly.

 

If you looked the Rock, would you be eager to scar your forehead like a Dusty?

[Loss]

Rock paid a lot of money for that face.

[WingedEagle]

Ha sorry if I didn't make my point -- I'm not faulting him for how often he did or didn't blade and have zero issue with that. It always looked like when he did, there was almost no flow and he dried up pretty quickly. Some guys blade and GUSH. His juicing looked as though he had incredible natural powers of healing.

[Shining Wiz]

Ha sorry if I didn't make my point -- I'm not faulting him for how often he did or didn't blade and have zero issue with that. It always looked like when he did, there was almost no flow and he dried up pretty quickly. Some guys blade and GUSH. His juicing looked as though he had incredible natural powers of healing.

I was suggesting he may not have been cutting with much enthusiasm.

[stomperspc]

Why would Rock’s successes – or anyone’s for that matter – be measured against our own personal perceptions of their potential? Rock either had a career worthy of placing him in the top 100 of all time or he didn’t. I don’t hold it against the Rock that he “could have” been better based on his pedigree just as I wouldn’t give a wrestler bonus points for having a great career despite obvious limitations (ie. less athleticism). Ultimately, the actual output is what counts.

 

I think Rock did enough during his career to make my list. I agree with MoS that I don’t separate charisma from a wrestler’s overall ability. It is part of the package. Having said that, there have been wrestlers who showed a certain amount of charisma outside the ring or while talking, but couldn’t translate it to their ring work. In cases such as those, the wrestler’s charisma might not matter when rating them but I don’t think that’s the case with the Rock. His charisma improved his work. It enabled him to get monster reactions on comeback spots, garner sympathy while selling, and get the fans into matches in ways other than running through a lot of moves.

 

Rock was a “less is more guy” in many ways. He got an elbow drop over huge. He made rather pedestrian slaps the focal point of his comebacks. Even the Rock Bottom wasn’t much of a finisher but he got it over. He leaned on his charisma to do so, as well as his ability to know when and how to present these moves. At the same time as MoS also alluded to, the Rock demonstrated he could grow and adapt by how he adjusted when wrestlers like the Radicals, Jericho, Angle, ect. came into WWE and changed up the style a bit. It wasn’t always pretty, but in the end he effectively evolved his style just enough so he didn’t look totally out of place wrestling offensive-minded guys like Benoit.

 

One last thing is that watching the 1997 and 19987 year books, I came away with a much great appreciation for Rock’s pre-superstar work. There were a lot of timing and luck elements involved in Rock’s ascension to super stardom. However, watching him right before he takes off it is clear that even if the circumstances had been different, he still had more than enough ability to carve out a career as a “normal” (below true superstar level) main eventer. His promos then were more traditional, he was a great bumper, and had a strong sense of timing.

[BillThompson]

Rock is an interesting case, but I think he'll finish just outside my list. I like that he's a student of the game, but I wish he would leave the game behind because his sporadic appearances the past few years have only hurt his standing as he's just not very good anymore. Rock wrestled one style, the WWF/E main event style, and he did it very well, but when stacked against a guy like Cena I don't think he measures up.

[Jimmy Redman]

I was marginally more enthusiastic about Rock when this began than I am now. I always assumed I'd have Rock on my list, but now I'm going to have to think really hard about it. For a megastar who has insane charisma and super heated and fun main events, I have him below Hogan.

 

He does have more matches than you'd think on the surface. Many Austin matches, the Hunter feud, the '98 ladder match, Hogan match, Brock match... His 2002 is interesting because for the briefest of moments he is thrown into Smackdown Workrate Wonderland and is having long main events with Benoit and Eddie and shit, which is cool to see. I am also a big fan of the first Cena match, although it was more due to Cena, and now it seems the main thing Rock brought was not blowing up during it.

 

Main things I'd want to revisit would be the Foley matches and Jericho matches. Depends if I have time to do so before Mania.

[elliott]

Watched a pair of Rock vs X-Pac matches from RAW 98 and Capitol Carnage and I was surprised by how good Rock was already. Sure the polish isn't there and it never really would be but he just understood how to work his character into matches so well. Dude was a freak. There's not really enough to call him a lock for my list, but he's someone I'll think about for sure. 

[MoS]

He had a bad habit of deciding to sit in chinlocks randomly out of nowhere in his TV matches in 99-00, which would suck the heat from his matches. Of course, he didn't exactly have an issue with getting the crowd to get popping again when he wanted to. His general work would always be very loose, but he was excellent at feeding off crowd reactions and his comebacks would be usually hot. Seven years ago in this thread, I wrote that he would be in the lower sections of my top 100. I think that's still where I stand on him, although he will drop like 10-15 places.

What do people think of his comeback run? For me his first promo back was an all-time classic segment and it basically went downhill since. The first Cena match is fine, and I like the Punk matches, but the 2nd Cena match is pretty bad. More tellingly, he just did not seem to really fit in the 2010s WWE landscape. Of course a part of it is that his character was outdated, but I think it's more than just that. Someone on this board said back then that they never thought they were watching The Rock in this run but instead were watching Dwayne Johnson play The Rock, and that seems a perfect way to describe my issue with it. He was getting destroyed in promo battles with Cena and Punk, terrible and lame zingers on Vickie Guerrero, it was just a mess. The best thing to come out of it was a random promo where he was clearly high out of his mind and was talking about how there's a lot of great weed in the city. That was genuinely entertaining

[Ricky Jackson]

I remember that comeback promo being like a hard slap to the face, reminding me how fun and exciting WWE used to be. Early 2011 WWE was comatose from what I remember. But yeah, it was pretty much downhill from there for Rocky. I wasn't even that high on the first Cena match at the time. 2nd one outright stunk. This run would also be the template for the future: a neverending succession of returning stars as Vince's preferred booking crutch for slapped together main events and short-term gains. I hear Goldberg's coming back again. Oh boy

[Kadaveri]

In case people aren't aware Rock "tore his adductor and the top of his quad completely off his pelvis" in that WM29 match. It's not really their fault as wrestlers that it was bad.

[Ricky Jackson]

Aw come on, Bruno broke his neck against Hansen in 76 and that match was still a banger...

I kid. I know Rock was injured and I do feel a bit bad for shitting on the match. Still, I think the point stands on that run being lackluster 

[MoS]

Even without the injury, that match was laid out terribly imo. It was perhaps the first big-time WWE main event match that consisted almost entirely of finishers and kicking out of finishers