The Rock Is Going To Win An Oscar

It’s only a matter of time. You know it, deep down inside, too.

Dwayne Johnson is going to climb those Dolby Theater stairs and accept that 8.5 pounds of gold. For The Smashing Machine? Maybe. For his next prestige film? Possibly. But the Vision is Clear. He Will Do It. Whether it’s a year from now, or three, it will happen.

And when it does? I will be fucking pumped.

The Rock has made 40-some films since harkening for Hollywood. This is not hyperbole: I have seen three of them. Not three of them in theaters. Three total. Walking Tall, The Other Guys, and Moana. That’s it. I don’t want to see the other ones. I actively turn the channel when they’re on. They are not my cup of tea. But my God, if he is in a wrestling ring I will walk away from Thanksgiving dinner with the ghosts of past loved ones to see what happens. He’s a draw for me when it comes to wrestling, and repulsive when it comes to cinemas. I do not want to see any of the others, and I will never see them, but I know that… it doesn’t matter.

Hollywood is Dead. I didn’t say it was dying. I said it was Dead. It’s all controlled by Silverlake, and you can look up what I mean when you’re done reading this article. The Oscars, like WWE’s Hall of Fame, are rigged. They can let the votes matter, or they can let them not matter. It’s a choice they wield. The game is spiced like ham.

Now, more than ever, Hollywood will do what it takes to remain relevant. And to do that, the people putting it together know who they need to put in their ring to fight for gold. And we know from our experience watching him in a wrestling ring, that he doesn’t stop until he wins.

In fact, the title of this article is a misnomer. I think he will have three to his name when all is said and done. One for Acting. And two for Producing.

But why now? Why would Hollywood have a change of heart after always keeping wrestling and wrestlers at more than arms length? Is it because of COVID, the Strikes, or AI? I don’t think so.

You wanna know why I think it will fiiiiinally let the great one in to their club? Because deep down, somewhere deep, deep down, underneath their sad plastic salads for lunch, they know, they can actually feel, that they’ve lost their goodwill with the ticket-buying fans. And to rebuild that, they need to honor the ticket buyers by putting forward nominations and winners for what people actually saw. And that is where Dwayne Johnson just makes sense. He can pay for all the acting coaches in the world to fine tune him like a “smashing machine” until a performance is good enough to outweigh the rest of his competitors.

Picture Marvel, LucasFilm, Pixar, and all of the films, series, and stories they have created. They all sold collectively for less value than what WWE created in merging with UFC into TKO. And the absence of anything Wrestling from Hollywood’s Biggest Night of Circle-Jerking will come to its end.

Dwayne won’t celebrate with a wrestling catch-phrase. He’ll thank his family: his grandfather, his mom, dad, and bloodline. He’ll tell the story of being broke and following his dreams. It certainly won’t be a Smackdown of Silverlake. You may like me, hate his fucking movies of the last twenty years. But all it will take is one movie, one performance, and he’ll be g-o-l-d.

Look at Matthew McConaughey. He was Rom-Com’s favorite type cast. Interstellar was a paradigm shift. For The Rock, maybe it’s The Smashing Machine. Maybe it’s something else. But it will happen. And as a fan of wrestling, who has always wanted so desperately for it to be seen and respected by others in society, it will be fucking awesome to watch him walk that aisle and hoist the gold for the world to see.

To get my weekly column delivered to your inbox a day before it appears on NoDQ, drop me a line at aaronrights@gmail.com with Subject: “Add me to your newsletter please”