The Phantom Rant: Rock… Wherefore Art Thou?

Well, Wrestlemania has come and gone and ever since the end of The Elimination Chamber when the unholy trinity of Cena, The Rock, and Travis Scott came together I kept saying all I wanted was The Rock to explain himself. I know the man has a busy schedule, but I wasn’t asking for much. Just a promo explaining why he did what he did. Cena more or less explained himself, but I needed The Rock to explain things like only he could. Hell, I said he could satellite in a promo so he didn’t actually have to be there.

Wrestlemania came and went and we got nothing. Not a damn thing. No Rock…no nothing.

There’s things I want to say, but this is a family friendly website. So kids, step outside for a minute.

Okay, now that I got that out of my system…What the hell Dwayne? It’s the biggest show of the year and you had a duty and responsibility to be there. But for whatever reason The Rock was in Hawaii instead of Las Vegas. It’s not like The Rock has to fly commercial and he’s stuck at an airport in the middle of the night. Rock can afford to fly on those nice gulfstream private jets. So it’s not like he has to schelp it on a six and a half hour flight on Delta or something.

Seriously, The Rock had one job to do and he didn’t do it. We ended up getting one of the worst main events in Wrestlemania history purely from a story standpoint. From a wrestling standpoint, the match was fine. It was your typical John Cena match with some extra bells and whistles thrown in. Cena looked to be in great shape even as he said on the Pat Mcafee show on Monday that he’s lost a step and he’s not the John Cena of ten years ago. But yeah, that main event from a story standpoint sucked. I know we set our collective sights a little too high for it..but when the big pay off and surprise of the night is Travis Scott maybe it’s time to reevaluate things.

First off it’s bad enough Travis Scott has this Cactus Jack stuff. How the hell has Mick Foley not gotten a huge payday for that I don’t know. I’m gonna sound like an old man wanting people to get off my lawn here, but that song Fe!n was terrible and I’m glad I’ll never have to hear it again after this.

The big payoff for the match was Cody getting his receipt to Travis Scott for the black eye and busted ear drum after Elimination Chamber. Personally I would have loved to of seen Cody just rear back and cold cock him…but a Cross Rhodes still probably did good for the social media views which as we know is way more important than anything else.

So yesterday The Rock came out of hiding and said the following on the Pat McAfee show.
“I did feel, and I made the call, ‘I don’t want to be involved in that. Let the Final Boss step back into the shadows. Let all the spotlight go to John and Cody. Let’s not make it about Cody’s soul or John’s soul. Let’s let them do what they do.’ I called John and Cody after the Elimination Chamber, and I said I think the Final Boss’ work is done. We just pulled off the greatest angle in the history of professional wrestling. I’m always here if you need me, but it’s best for the Final Boss to not be involved in that finish.”

That explanation is a load of crap. The Rock was desperately needed for this match and the best he can muster up is that.

I don’t know where we go from here. With no Rock to counter balance this things could go south real fast. On RAW earlier, Cena cut a good promo only to eat an RKO for his troubles. So at least we know we’re getting the time tested Randy Orton vs. John Cena match. For the first feud off the bat for Cena I guess this works best. Where this puts Cody Rhodes, I don’t know. But Cena and Orton usually have good matches so at least from that pesky wrestling standpoint it should be fine.

On the flip side we got a hell of a main event on night one with the triple threat between Punk/Rollins/Reigns. While most of night one under delivered, the main event more than made up for the lackluster show. The shock of all shocks was Paul Heyman siding with Seth Rollins and Monday night we got a hell of a of fight first involving CM Punk and Rollins and then Roman Reigns and Rollins only for a wild Bron Breakker appearing out of nowhere to spear the living daylights out of Roman.

The night ended with Rollins, Breakker and Heyman standing victorious and suddenly the bad taste of Maina the night before wasn’t so bad. Is this the start of a new Dangerous Alliance? I don’t know if they will go that far and add more people to this group. But 1992 was a banner year for WCW thanks to Paul E. Dangerously and his Dangerous Alliance back then. Punk and Rollins should be a good feud in the mean time because Roman is probably off for a while before he comes back to save the day to feud with Rollins and Breakker.

As an added bonus, Gunther was unhinged on RAW and he attacked Michael Cole and Pat McAfee for comments they made during his match against Jey Uso (which was fine btw…didn’t expect Jey to tap him out, but it was fine).

So things on RAW are cooking right now. I think with Jey as World Champion it will be a nice linchpin to tie things together. At some point we’re going to get Rollins vs. Jey Uso for the World title. I would assume probably Rollins wins Money In The Bank for that to happen.

I don’t know where things go on Smackdown because officially the WWE Undisputed Championship has been retired by the company. I think that makes Cena just the WWE Champion and he put up a counter letting us know he only has THIS many dates left before he’s done. So don’t expect to see him defending the title outside of Backlash for a while. I’m excited for the possibilities on RAW though so that should be fun.

On that note thanks for reading this week as always you can leave feedback down below, on twitter or email me at phantomlordnyc@gmail.com