The Rock In Next Year's Rumble Match

[Dat Kid1]

I'm absolutely convinced that Rock/Lesnar would be bigger than a third Cena/Rock match and probably even the second one. Cena/Rock and HHH/Brock rematches on the same card (the latter did very well buy rate wise for Summerslam) didn't even do the 1.3 million buy rate that WWE hoped it would this year, so I'm feeling they'll go a different route for the big 30th anniversary of the event in regards to who Cena and The Rock wrestle. I don't care for Rock/Lesnar either but I'm being objective, it's been rumored and it's an obvious cash cow for a Wrestlemania, not to mention WWE has already foreshadowed it with Lesnar staring down the Rumble poster with The Rock's picture on it when he and Heyman paid a visit to WWE Headquarters. I know it's hard to believe that WWE won't have the rubber match for the feud but Cena defeating The Rock once already proves he can defeat him again in any other rematch. There's really nothing left to prove for Cena as far as going against The Great One.

Anytime you have a grounds for a rubber match there is always something to prove. Now this is going to sound terrible and I'm going to have nightmares about it, but Rock/Cena is the modern day Rock/Austin. I feel like last year's match didn't up the ante on the rivalry, in fact a lot of the matches on the WM29 card had lackluster build. You take that and compare it to the powerhouse card of WM28 and it makes perfect sense as to why there wasn't so many buys. I mean how do you go from Taker facing HHH in a Cell to him just fighting Punk in a regular old match. A lot of Rock/Cena was just and awful rehashing of 28.

Now I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen again being that the writing has made a dramatic improvement since then imo. I mean looking at it from a booking perspective, Rock vs Cena 3, The match to determine who the better man really is without any doubt. Then on the other hand you have Rock vs Lesnar, which has absolutely no build around it. There is no premise for that fight to happen. There's no recent history or connections with characters (like Heyman with Punk for SS). If that match were to happen it would have to be built from the ground up with two people with very limited appearance dates in a short amount of time. The only thing that match really would have is just big names imo I'd rather have both names on the card against people who they have a story built around, rather than two people on the card who are going to have a terrible match because both of these guys have ring rust.

At least with Cena and Rock there is a recent storyline that people can come off of and jump right back into this feud, so that it can be escalated to the next level, the peaking point of the feud. If Cena were to fight someone else at mania who would it be? Punk would need to turn again, Bryan probably wouldnt get picked, and Taker would just be terrible as far as where it would leave storylines and character development no matter who won the match.

Cena/Rock 3 would just make more sense and having Rock face Lesnar in a #1 Contender's match would still allow that match to happen, drawing in some people that would carry over through to the WM season

 

[CFCrusader]

Only if he loses - and somewhere along the line, jobs to Roman Reigns (imagine that feud).

 

[Lockard 23]

Anytime you have a grounds for a rubber match there is always something to prove. Now this is going to sound terrible and I'm going to have nightmares about it, but Rock/Cena is the modern day Rock/Austin. I feel like last year's match didn't up the ante on the rivalry, in fact a lot of the matches on the WM29 card had lackluster build. You take that and compare it to the powerhouse card of WM28 and it makes perfect sense as to why there wasn't so many buys. I mean how do you go from Taker facing HHH in a Cell to him just fighting Punk in a regular old match. A lot of Rock/Cena was just and awful rehashing of 28.

Now I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen again being that the writing has made a dramatic improvement since then imo. I mean looking at it from a booking perspective, Rock vs Cena 3, The match to determine who the better man really is without any doubt. Then on the other hand you have Rock vs Lesnar, which has absolutely no build around it. There is no premise for that fight to happen. There's no recent history or connections with characters (like Heyman with Punk for SS). If that match were to happen it would have to be built from the ground up with two people with very limited appearance dates in a short amount of time. The only thing that match really would have is just big names imo I'd rather have both names on the card against people who they have a story built around, rather than two people on the card who are going to have a terrible match because both of these guys have ring rust.

At least with Cena and Rock there is a recent storyline that people can come off of and jump right back into this feud, so that it can be escalated to the next level, the peaking point of the feud. If Cena were to fight someone else at mania who would it be? Punk would need to turn again, Bryan probably wouldnt get picked, and Taker would just be terrible as far as where it would leave storylines and character development no matter who won the match.

Cena/Rock 3 would just make more sense and having Rock face Lesnar in a #1 Contender's match would still allow that match to happen, drawing in some people that would carry over through to the WM season

I don't think you can blame WM29's lower buy rate on having a lesser card since WM28 didn't have a powerful card overall either. The 5-6 week build itself probably had little to do with WM28's success considering Rock was getting an average of a 3.1 rating last year when he returned and Raw's ratings as a whole weren't that great for a Wrestlemania build, but the show still ended up doing the best buy rate ever. It shows people had already bought into the hype for "Once In A Lifetime" (it is the most hyped up match in history, after all) and thus they were just ready to see the match. Point is, it shows that no matter what new spin they put on Rock/Cena III, you can't avoid the extremely obvious outcome and thus people likely won't end up caring much about it. The buy rate for a PPV is typically credited to the top 2-3 matches or usually just the headline match (definitely Rock/Cena in the case of WM28.) So if they wanted WM29 to score the highest buy rate ever and it only ended up becoming like the #7 highest WM buy rate ever (would be even lower than that if they counted international buys for WM 1-19 but they didn't), then it's safe to say they should want to shake things up and try something new for next year.

Rock/Lesnar makes sense because it's a fresh match that would garner a lot of mainstream publicity and would also make more sense for Rock's retirement (he's almost certainly hanging the boots up after next year) than losing to Cena for a second time. You could jump start the feud in a couple of ways; One way is to go with the scenario I mentioned in the OP. You could build from there. Another way is to simply have Rock come back on the show and announce to the world that he's ready for one more match and then Heyman interrupts and ends up taking a Rock Bottom for some reason. Since Brock has always come to Heyman's aid and protection in scenarios like this, this could easily plant the seeds for a rivalry.

There's also the back drop of Lesnar being the biggest name that Rock has never defeated (except for Goldberg, but Brock is more relevant to WWE than Goldberg.) He defeated The Rock for the belt back in 2002 during his rookie year. This could all be brought up as a way to sell Lesnar as a threat, and to also make it so that Rock defeating Lesnar is him accomplishing one last accolade before signing off for good.

The scheduling shouldn't be a real issue either. They would only be required to both be on the same show maybe twice or three times at the very most. Just build the way you did their first match, by not really having them physically interact with one another until the PPV, just show videos of why they're the best and superior to the other and hype the match similar to Taker/HHH at WM27 by having other superstars talk about who they think is gonna win.