WWE: The Rock To Announce He'll Compete At Royal Rumble 2013?

The Rock announced yesterday that he will be making a special appearance at the forthcoming Raw 1,000th episode on July 23rd. He noted that his goal is to recapture the WWE Title for the eighth time, something he mentioned on his last Raw appearance the night after he defeated John Cena at WWE WrestleMania 28. F4WOnline.com reports that the belief is The Rock will be making some kind of major announcement on the 1,000th Raw. He will appear live in person, not via satellite and he has scheduled his one-off appearance in before overseas filming on his film Fast Six begins in late July and early August. Now this is where the news above ends and What Culture speculation begins (please note we have no sources for this info, this is just the direction we think the WWE might go in)... With The Rock making it known loud and clear that he wants to recapture the WWE title, we must believe that this is the WWE setting up next year's WrestleMania main event where The Rock will be challenging for the title. We imagine that the major announcement he will make in a few weeks will be to announce that he'll compete in the 30-man Royal Rumble match to earn himself a shot at the WWE title at WrestleMania 29. We suspect this will be how WWE setup The Rock's title chase and he'll appear about as frequently as he did earlier this year in the weeks after the Royal Rumble leading into WrestleMania. The last we heard the current plan was for The Rock vs John Cena II at WrestleMania with Brock Lesnar vs The Undertaker as the semi-main event but we have a feeling the WrestleMania picture for next year will be much clearer after Raw's 1,000th episode. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3SjFXN0CJM&feature=player_embedded