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WHY I HAVE LOATHED THE ROCK-CENA ANGLE, MSG IS MSG, VINCE WASTING WCW AND MORE

By Dave Scherer on 2025-03-17 10:00:00

You can send us questions for the PWInsider.com Q and A at pwinsider@gmail.com.

Is John Cena being advertised for Smackdown after Wrestlemania and Backlash a big sign of him beating Cody?

It could be or they could be continuing a story that comes out of Mania. I do have a bad feeling that they will have Cena beat Cody though.

Will WWE and Triple H tell Cena to go easy on Cody when they are in the ring for a promo together?

I don’t see why he could. Even if Cena went into business for himself, I am confident Cody could fire back in kind.

I was watching Scott Steiner's recent CVV interview, and he brought up the idea that WWE buried most of the big WCW stars in the years after WCW closed (including Sting when he finally arrived), with the only exceptions being Rey Mysterio and Booker T (who were up & comers at that point in my opinion). While I have always believed this to be pretty much true, now that a couple of decades have passed, how much of the momentum from the Attitude era was truly lost to this gaffe? And how many sources that you knew at the time were readily frustrated by such decisions? (Or was it all hands on deck to beat a dead WCW horse?) It's almost funny that the "do what's best for business" line that became such was a McMahon mantra years later was ignored when the opportunity of WCW's closing came up.

They totally blew the invasion angle.  It could have done strong business but it always seemed to me that Vince McMahon’s goal was to pay by WCW leading him for a few years by totally destroying them, which he did.  He destroyed them so badly that he had to bring ECW into it just to make it somewhat interesting for a short time. I think he left a lot of money on the table, for sure. 

Do you consider wrestling in the Felt Forum/MSG Theater actually wrestling in the Garden?

To me?  No. The Garden is its own entity.

Question for Dave. I don't mean to sound disrespectful because I'm not, but what is it about The Rock that you don't like. Last year you were unhappy he got involved in Mania season despite the fact he listened to the fans and pivoted, giving us a hell of a story. And now he's involved this year and you aren't happy again. He's not taking anyone's spot, he's in the corner of the company’s now hottest heel stacking the deck against the baby face which is logical. A lot of times you rightly criticised AEW for not telling stories, but it seems you really don't care for The Rock telling stories on WWE TV? I'm just interested to hear why you aren't digging him as I'm a huge fan as you can tell.

The irony is that back when he debuted, I was literally the only major reporter who didn’t bury him. I was the one saying that there was something big there when everyone else was telling him to die.  So I get that you love The Rock, I do too.   OK, my issues?  Let’s go to last year.  He’s a very smart man so he knew that having Cody give up the Title shot that he won at The Rumble would make Cody look bad, but he did it anyway. I am guessing he figured that fans would be so excited to see him wrestle that they wouldn’t care that Cody got screwed.  He was wrong.  I hated that he forced himself into a spot that wasn’t his, and that he didn’t care that he hurt the top babyface in the process.  To his credit, he did listen to the fans and he pivoted.  Then this year, here he is again.  He didn’t take a spot?  Yes he did.  Roman Reigns, CM Punk and Seth Rollins will be in a three way when one of them should have been taking on Cody.  That bugs me, a lot.  As for him hooking up with Cena, logic matters to me.  There are a ton of holes in the Rock’s road here.  He does a throat slash to Cody in November, then tells us have been friends since last year’s Mania last month.  Huh?  Why would he throat slash his friend?  Why wouldn’t his friend ask him what the hell that was?  Nope, they just ignored it.  I get that some fans don’t care about things making sense but I do.  Then, he did the poor, rambling promo where he ended up asking Cody, his friend, for his soul.  And what did Cody do?  Nothing!  He should have said F U right there, but he didn’t.  Rock once again made him look like a clown.  Then Cena, who won the Chamber and earned his title match at Mania, turns to join The Rock.  WHY?  He didn’t need to. Rock didn’t help him win.  He did it on his own.  They have made us wait three weeks for an explanation, maybe because they were still trying to come up with a good one.  And that leads to another big problem I have with it.  Under Vince McMahon the booking was so bad that every year he brought in older, part time talent and they took the spots of the guys working all year.  I hated it then, but his booking was so bad I could somewhat understand it. That isn’t the case now.  The booking has been really good and that makes me hate Cena and Rock glomming top spots even more.  Hope that explains it.

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