100 Best Wrestling Moves EVER
31. The Rock | The People’s Elbow
The Rock’s People’s Elbow is, of course, utterly ridiculous.
The move illustrates the truest maxim in all of wrestling. Whatever works, works. Stars are stars irrespective of what they do, and wrestling is a star-driven industry. It’s not about making the people believe, or even telling the best stories: if you effectively promote a charismatic mega-star, you win.
The Rock stretched this premise with the glee of Stu Hart. The move comes agonisingly close to pure, insulting parody - but the sheer, bold arrogance of it is what made the Rock the Rock. An utterly extraneous rope run as a non-set-up to a very basic elbow drop: it’s dumb theatre. The dumbest.
But that inhalation of air, elbow pad removal, the cross of the arms - it all exists to illustrate that the Rock could get away with anything and you loved him for it. Before he got gotten-to, he was the coolest man alive.
It teeters on the cliff’s edge and only stops falling because the Rock was an unbelievable specimen.
Driving his elbow flush on the chest of his opponent would have absolutely killed.