The Rock made a surprise return to Raw on Monday night in Brooklyn, New York. It was the first time he was on WWE programming since his surprise return at WrestleMania 30. As reported by PWInsider earlier on Monday, The Rock was in New York City for meetings at Time-Warner headquarters to discuss one of his projects. The Rock is a busy man that always has a lot of things going on. Apparently he was not listed in the early scripts for Raw, so they changed things up and were able to get him on the show. Rusev and Lana were in the ring complaining about how Big Show disrespected them by pulling down the Russian flag last week on Raw. Instead of just Lana talking, Rusev was fired up talking about how Big Show was a coward just like all the fans. All of a sudden, some familiar music hit. It was The Rock. The crowd in Brooklyn went crazy as The People's Champ stood on the stage and soaked in the ovation. When he went into the ring to confront Rusev, the cheers were even louder. The ovation lasted a solid four minutes before The Rock could even say a word. The segment came off great because The Rock came off like a superstar confronting the Russians, who he said he didn't hate because they Russian, but because they were a**holes basically. It led to The Rock throwing a series of punches at Rusev, who wasn't able to fight back at all. Rock didn't take any bumps at all. Following a flurry of Rock punches, Rusev ended up bumping over the top rope to the floor as the Brooklyn crowd went wild. http://youtu.be/sbKIZhkIzcI About an hour before Raw, WWE tweeted that Rusev would face Big Show on the show. When Raw started, they announced that Big Show wasn't going to be wrestling and that he would have to listen to Rusev & Lana. The fact that they would advertise a match an hour before the show, then completely change it and have The Rock show up just shows how much they are booking things nearly on the fly at this point. The placement of the segment was also interesting. Those of us that watch the NFL Monday Night Football game live were able to catch this segment because as the game was approaching halftime near the 10pmET hour, that's when The Rock showed up. That's not an accident. We saw WWE do that last month when they had John Cena and Brock Lesnar on at the halftime of the NFL game to promote their Night of Champions match. They knew exactly what they were doing when they put The Rock's segment in that time slot. It was a very smart move. Whether this means The Rock is going to be back in WWE for WrestleMania 31 or some other event, we don't know. They have definitely set something up for The Rock to face Rusev down the line if they could get Rock to agree to something. The Rock has stated in the past year that he would return for the right storyline at the right price. Maybe that's what this was about. Then again, it could have just been a random appearance because The Rock just happened to be in the New York City area when Raw was in Brooklyn. If you're wondering, these three have met before albeit under different circumstances. This is from Lana's Instagram account after WrestleMania 30. http://instagram.com/p/mb5y-8BK0j/ Do you think The Rock will return to WWE for one more match, possibly against Rusev? Let us know in the comments below. We'll keep you updated if there is any other Rock news in the near future.
John wrote at WhatCulture from December 2013 to December 2015. It was fun, but it's over for now. Follow him on Twitter @johnreport. You can also send an email to mrjohncanton@gmail.com with any questions or comments as well.
