10 Horrendous Promos Awesome Wrestlers Want You To Forget
8. The Rock's Act Gets Old
Dwayne Johnson is entering a turbulent period in his career arc.
After conquering Hollywood as the funny hard man, the tongue-in-cheek action hero who rescued a genre by recognising and luxuriating in its silliness, he's cycling out of fashion. His presidential aspirations cast him as a deluded, Hobbs & Shaw was a parody of wink-and-nudge meta, and now, the man everybody loved because he was so charismatic and easygoing - throngs of cinema-goers developed a parasocial relationship with the cool guy - is defensive and desperate and insistent that Black Adam was successful, actually.
The films aren't as good, he isn't as cool, and the Young Rock casting looks worse than shindie wrestling at the local rec center. The Rock wants to preserve his box office appeal and remind you of the good ol' days.
He's still cool! He's still cool!
Except he's been descending into parody for a long old time now, as was evident during his "kung pao bitch" promo ahead of WrestleMania XXVIII. It was so strange. It wouldn't have been especially funny if, in full-blown charismatic hype mode, he'd tossed it out rapid fire.
He punctuated each word with huge dramatic "effect", as if it was a truly grave insult and not something Brian Gewirtz came up with when he he was rushed for time.