The Rock WWE Takeover: Backstage Politics In Movies, Wrestling & Beyond

CHAPTER 1: THE GOOD ATTITUDE ERA

At No Mercy 2000, The Rock lost the WWF Championship to a rookie Kurt Angle, cementing Angle as a main event star. Kurt even later said:

“The Rock was never political. He never got involved with any of the finishes. He always did what he was told to do, and that’s what I loved about Rock. He always took the high road, and never tried to go behind somebody’s back and get a finish changed.”

Triple H, for comparison, reportedly tried to sabotage Angle’s push behind-the-scenes, successfully lobbying for the Stephanie-Kurt romance angle to be dropped after that year’s SummerSlam.

At Vengeance 2001, Chris Jericho defeated The Rock and Stone Cold in the same night, which didn’t have the best follow-up, but the intention was there to make a new star.

Triple H, for comparison, is believed to have got Jericho pulled from his first WrestleMania main event the year before, according to Jericho himself.

And at SummerSlam 2002, The Rock lost the WWE Undisputed Title to rookie Brock Lesnar, making Lesnar the then-youngest WWE Champion ever. Stone Cold had actually walked out of the company in the build to that match, refusing to put over Lesnar in the King of the Ring tournament.

Although he had his own reasons, thinking that should be a bigger occasion, not just a throwaway match on Raw.

Like Jericho and Angle said, WWF’s main event stars in the Attitude Era were fiercely protective of their spots, and would use their backstage influence to bury other people’s pushes. The Rock, however, just did whatever the company thought was best.

Apart from Shawn Michaels. Apparently the Rock legitimately hated Shawn Michaels because HBK had disrespected his wrestling promoter grandmother a decade before at a show in Hawaii – which is why we never got a Rock vs Michaels match. But still, he never buried Michaels. He just refused to work with him.

But main eventers is one thing. There’s a self-interested argument that you want to make new top stars out of Jericho or Lesnar or Angle so you can make more money when you beat them in the rematch. I bet the Rock didn’t care about lowly midcarders and buried them all the time… Or did he?

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