101 Shocking Wrestling Plans You Won't Believe Almost Happened
61. The Rock Can’t Talk!
It's a mental trip to picture episodes of Raw or SmackDown between 1999-2001 without any of The Rock's promos. Hell, being honest, it's mission impossible to envision Rocky appearing without grabbing a microphone and saying some of his trademark catchphrases as "the millions and millions" say them along with him.
During that spell in question, the bold Bubba Ray Dudley pitched that he and kayfabe brother D-Von crush The Rock’s throat to stop him from talking for a while. His thinking? Pull back on a trope fans enjoy and let TV naturally build more and more anticipation for those cherished catchphrases finally returning.
Backstage, an initially puzzled VKM liked it, but WWE didn’t go with the idea in the end. No-one's quite sure why, but there's a decent enough chance that big Dwayne Johnson looked at Vince/Bubba and said, 'Yeah, that'll be shining bright lads!'. Rock knew what he was on shows to do during the 'Attitude' days, and it wasn't exclusively to hit Rock Bottoms or People's Elbows.
His enthused audience demanded those promos, so this could well have backfired on everyone. Or, maybe Dudley was onto something and folks would've been hanging on every attempted word from a hero who could no longer tell anyone: "Know your role and shut your mouth". What would they have subtitled the SmackDown video games then?! That's the real question here.
SmackDown: Utter Silence doesn't sounds as good as SmackDown: Shut Your Mouth. That's it, that was Bubba's plan. He wanted SmackDown: Get The Tables. Clearly.