25 Worst Wrestling Moments Of 2025

3. The Rock On NXT The Night After Raw Is Netflix

The Rock Swear Curse WWE
WWE

Fresh off blowing WrestleMania up on the Netflix debut (as opposed to blowing it off come showtime itself), The Rock had apparently spent his time online reading feedback when he appeared on the developmental brand for the very first time.

The January 7th 'New Year's Evil' show appearance was an earthquake of sorts for Shawn Michaels, but rather than the ground opening up and swallowing 'HBK' up as he may have wished, Rock simply opened fire on his haters and swallowed up time from the advertised matches instead. Inarticulately so too. 

It was admittedly quite fascinating to see a star of his magnitude in a relatively small wrestling setting of the Shrine Expo Hall in LA, but but the novelty wore off the longer Rocky wore on. And on and on and on. Swearing up a storm and stumbo bumbo'ing his way through some absolute nonsense about the 'Final Boss' being 20 steps ahead in response to the criticism his Netflix performance had received, Rock attempted to tether himself to an NXT concept he'd never had anything to do with, recapped his nicknames, continued to reference how little time he had to speak despite having nothing to say.

48 hours that ultimately defined a year...

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett