The Road to WrestleMania and the Slap out of Nowhere

?There have been few times in the past quarter-century when professional wrestling had a 'moment' and this past week week made up for a lot of lost time.

Setting aside the missing elephant in the room, and quite frankly I'll be honest to say I'll miss the micro-font, super-detailed, insider-laced journalism of Dave Melter on this subject. Then again I'll see the echo-chamber of a thousand minutes of knock-offs and "Dave says", bolstered by superficial comments.

Booker T, of course, is an exception and I'll get to him a little later.

This story is massive, fascinating and has the potential to impact the WWE’s direction for the next year, which is something painfully needed somewhere, and not in summertime.

Rock vs Reigns was anything close to lackluster, and not that the story is told with any result, but wow does that concept feel like a placeholder. Rock's involvement felt ... rushed, ?felt … so much like an interruption, felt … so much like a WWE swerve in the oughts, which does rhyme with noughts.

Yet in 2024, the fans weren't buying it. The weren’t, dare I say, smelling what the Rock was cooking. The "Rocky Sucks' chants seemed like a re-Flex of thousands (upon thousands) of emotionally invested fans irked at The Rock bumping out their biggest babyface.

And it moved the needle.

And it provides immediate direction in so many ways, something that the sport has woefully lacked for years. Sure, sure, AEW built MJF a nicely satisfying Championship win, but then what?

There's rarely a next angle, a next rival, a new direction.

What's next, who's next (screamed Goldberg) but the only man in the past sixty years who could maintain a Championship (by picking opponents and keeping his momentum going) is the real GOAT. Bruno Sammartino at least gets reverential references these days, while his achievements are still ?understated, unacknowledged, unappreciated.

Who do you think booked Bruno?

Look, beating Roman Reigns was CM Punk’s wet dream, but that was never gonna happen. The Cody story couldn't be derailed by an aging workrate parasite who diminished the competition and his rivals and then had one more boo-boo.

The Rock -- newly installed on the board of directors – was getting a big payday and putting over his cousin. The Rock is too smart to win, and let’s be honest -- too busy to carry that mantle, no matter how his cousin villainized the stature.

So it was slated to be one more WrestleMania where an epic match felt like a fart in the springtime.

On the other side, Rollins/Rhodes meant nothing without Seth getting back a win, and that would ruin the story. I think everyone figured that out. The Rock figured that out. Roman figured that out. Seth figured that out.

The fans knew that and beat them to it – at least the vocal, babyface, dedicated fans.

They knew the directions and the derailment and the deferment.

Yet I really don't think The Rock minded being a heel, because here he is.

But the Rock is the People’s Champion because the Rock said so, not because he gets jerked around by unpopular sentiment. Whether it was Dwayne Johnson, Paul Levesque or some unknown creative miracle, tuning in and turning up the subtle heel into a full blown heel turn blows the charts off of WrestleMania LX's potential.

Sure, sure, I still don’t know if it was planned, a spin, a work, a complete turn-around or just one of the best damn turns in the history of the business (short of Larry Zbyzko, but hey, let’s not get carried away).

This much I'm serious about -- ?Rock and Reigns was a showcase of generations, a family squabble that could have had repercutions, but a booking deadend. The only plausible result (the Bloodline turning on their previous generation) would take the minds of Eddie Graham, Pat Patterson and Bruno Sammartino a few hours to figure out. It could be done but could it?

But now? Now, The Rock has put the family tree at the forefront.

So much that it feels like it was meant to be that way, but then again, did it? On the surface it seemed like the vocal "Rocky Sucks!" chants were hard to fathom, and then the next show they became a bit too difficult to ignore.

If anything, The Rock (or whomever) sensed further fan derailment and actied immediately upon it. How the Las Vegas "Kickoff" came about and came around is immaterial to me at this point -- what was vastly as important was what happened -- the words and the step-up and the slap.

Cody played the quasi-attitude era "let's acknowledge storyline strongly" and put Jey’s name on the stage, after the utterly heelish Reigns diss on Dusty and calling him Brock ... Purdy.

Cody dropped "High Chief" as a quasi-shoot, a Heyman era "let's make it real."

But the "he'd be ashamed of you" was gasp-inducing, mark-out and made in a world where some other aging promoter would refuse to hearken back to a time when emotions meant something, even if those emotions were dangerous and uncontrollable

The Rock took the mantle of defending the Bloodline and made it real.

The Rock going heel claiming blood and Bloodline and family ties to a grandfather (which is cool as cool can be, thinking of my grandpaps who were all huge wrasslin' fans) is all the more awesome considering how much a heel Chief Peter Maivia was (let alone the Samoans (Afa and daddy Sika)).

The Rock slapping Cody back into the main event, it becomes something bigger and better for the future.

Getting back to Booker T, who called the HHH call-out by Dwayne Johnson on the Pat McAfee show, there's an obvious matchup worth of WrestleMania brewing. As annoying as aged WWE stars working 1/365 days was a decade ago, this is worse, but they sure-as-hell played it out well enough.

Long-toothed-legends should't be testing the current Champion, no matter how villainously bad they are in avoiding a full schedule, but fighting each other is fine.

The visual of HHH in the ring with Adam Pierce and Nick Aldis was brilliant, as was the return salvo, as was the implications of HHH taking charge on so many levels.

The "Road to WrestleMania" is a twisty one this year. It has been similar in the past, but not in so many ways. Cody's story is back on the table, or is it? Roman Reigns is back in the hot seat, because there was no way he was losing to the Rock.

The Rock has lost his matchup, but theres no way he's not destined for a spotlight. And the other guy in the orginal mix, Seth Rollins, got a flurry of words and was well-placed to be at the front of the line in the massive altercation, to be Cody's surrogate, to be the reason why Cody couldn't get back into anyone's face.

Seth Rollins did far too much not to be the babyface recipient of The Rock's heel turn.

And they've already given him a slot, with the weird Raw/Smackdown cooperation at the obvious behest of HHH. Obviously Rollins is healthier than they let on, or there could be more twists and turns.

But let's be honest, Rollins/Rhodes was a weird dynamic.

Seth coming back from an injury is ... to nice to be heelish, but a weird reminder of Cody's comeback and rehab. And CM Punks …. Well, nevermind that.

The problem is that the 0-3 record only works with Seth Rollins as Champion, the timing, the situation, the playing second fiddle to Roman, Cody and The Rock (on so many levels) doesn't enhance, it detracts.

So Seth is back in his slot as the workrate Champion, and can give someone a rub with a close one, lose because of injury, or otherwise make a statement against TBD.

And yet, there are other dynamics and stories in play:

Babyface and old-school staples. As much as the current generation of opinionaters claim kayfabe is dead, it's dead for a lack of trying. If Cody isn't built as a classic babyface, he's in a triple-threat (in WWE's worst booking) or relegated to the midcard. But Cody connects to fans with his consistency, confidence and understated charisma.

In the road to WrestleMania, Karma is putting a beating on CM Punk, isn't she?

Getting back to the elephant missing in the room.... he's not coming back, is he?!?