10 WWE Wrestlers The Rock Refused To Wrestle
2. John Cena
The Rock and John Cena had the most successful box office feud in WWE of the modern age.
Their main event at WrestleMania XXVIII made the pay-per-view the highest grossing event in professional wrestling history at the time. And then the following year their rematch at WrestleMania 29 became the highest grossing live event in WWE history.
It took a considerable amount of energy and negotiation for those matches to take place though, with Rock for years not even wanting to contemplate a match with Cena, who he felt had disrespected him multiple times in press interviews. Before Rock walked out on Raw in February 2011 when it was announced he was the host of WrestleMania XXVII, Cena had called Rock a sell-out for refusing to come back to the company that made him a star.
Cena said in 2008;
“This is my take on The Rock, and he’s genuinely nice guy. I’ve met him, and he’s a fantastic human being. What I kinda get peeved about is, and I guess this is my flaw because I hear it everyday with young talent, mid card talent, with people aspiring to make it in this business, I hear ‘I’ve wanted to do this my whole life.’ Rock falls into that category. At one point he loved wrestling, and wanted to do this his whole life. Then explain to me why he can’t come back for an anniversary show, why he can’t make an appearance at WrestleMania. Simply put, it’s because he wants to be an actor, and there’s nothing wrong with that. He’s a very good actor, he’s very successful, he’s done very well for himself, and associating with sports entertainment doesn’t do much for his acting career, so I get why he doesn’t come back. Just, don’t f**k me around and tell me that you love (wrestling) when you’re just doing it to do something else.”
Cena has since publicly and privately apologized to Rock in recent years for not seeing the bigger picture of it all, calling himself ignorant for not understanding how strict movie studios are for forbidding actors from outside projects (like WWE) when filming.