Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson broke his silence as to why he wasn’t part of the build to John Cena and Cody Rhodes’ WWE WrestleMania 41 match and why he didn’t appear at the company’s biggest show of the year.
His answer: it didn’t make sense for the Final Boss.
Speaking on the Pat McAfee Show via video, Johnson said he felt his work was done after the events of March’s Elimination Chamber where Cena turned on Rhodes, seemingly at Rock’s behest.
He said once the turn was made, it was up to Rhodes and Cena to “build and crush” the story over the subsequent six weeks from Elimination Chamber to WrestleMania and that he thought it wasn’t a good idea for his Final Boss character to be involved.
When the plan was then put into place and executed, “I knew then the best thing for the Final Boss — we’ve established this idea with Cody’s soul and can always come back to it — I did feel and made the call that I don’t want to be involved in that. Let the Final Boss step back into the shadows and let all the spotlight go to John. Let it go to Cody. Let’s not make it about John’s soul or Cody’s soul. Let’s let them do what they do,” he said.
He added after Elimination Chamber, he called both men and said the Final Boss’ work was done and they pulled off the greatest angle in wrestling history other than than Hulk Hogan turning heel.
He said he loved the finish of the match, but that he would have “adjusted and finessed” a few things about how they got there. He didn’t expound on what those would be.
He said he could have been involved in the finish and is always open to conversations with TKO and WWE leadership, but questioned if he did that, “where do we go?” He also was cautious about his various other commitments he has and not wanting to overstep.
“Why get involved in that finish when the spotlight should just be on, in my opinion, John, 17, heel champion, what does 2025 look like if this man is saying he’s going to ruin professional wrestling? That to me is the anchoring storyline,” adding they will go back to the soul storyline at some point. He noted Seth Rollins texted him that when it’s time, his soul is for sale.
He admitted he was “surprised” to see Travis Scott come out, but that he loved it, putting over Scott as someone who both loves wrestling and respects it.
“The moment I saw Travis, I knew that immediately amplifies the Final Boss. They (the fans) were waiting,” he said with McAfee joking that he even thought Rock was coming out and was texting with him about it.
Ari Emanuel asked him to be at Elimination Chamber
Johnson revealed that about a month before Elimination Chamber, TKO head Ari Emanuel personally asked for him to appear at the event due to both ticket sales being slow and that Emanuel wanted to make the show from the Rogers Centre in Toronto a must-see event vs. just being seen as a conduit to WrestleMania.
He said he had a phone call with Emanuel, Nick Khan and Paul Levesque about ideas and later came back with the notion that the Final Boss doesn’t want titles or money, but wants your soul and the idea of whether Rhodes would sell his soul to the character. He wanted to know how fans would respond to Rhodes if he did just that and said lots of fans wanted that to happen.
As they got closer to the event, Levesque suggested Cena turn heel which Johnson loved. After Cena agreed, Cena wanted “an anchor” to root his character turn in: the mix of cheers and boos he experienced for the past 25 years.
His concern going into the turn was never about Cena, but his thoughts were about Rhodes and what they had established with the story and “the kind of babyface he is.” He said that if done right, Rhodes has another incredible run as a babyface in him and “an unheard of one as a heel.”
