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But as the Rock rose from being the mere “Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment” to the “Most Electrifying Man in All of Entertainment”, a blue-collar kid from Massachusetts was turning from a robotic prototype into a one-man franchise. Post-brand extension WWE was desperate for a new poster boy, and the freestyling John Cena not only became the company’s new face, but soon put a smile on it, winning a record number of WWE Championships on both its RAW and SmackDown! brands. Just as Hulk Hogan had dominated the 1980s and early 1990s, and the Rock the late 1990s and early 2000s, John Cena has reigned supreme since 2005, his smile only subsiding whenever he’d take a moment to stop and disparage Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson – the man who walked out on the business that’s become Cena’s raison d’être.
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Over the years, many of the finest feuds in professional wrestling have been those borne of real heat. Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels? By the mid-1990s they hated each other even more than their wrestling characters professed, culminating in Michaels’ involvement in the real-life 1997 “screwjob” in Montreal at that year’s Survivor Series. Matt Hardy and Edge? The latter stole the former’s girlfriend while he had a broken neck, and then went onto superlative success as the self-styled “Rated-R Superstar” while his adversary sat unemployed at home. But John Cena and the Rock is, in my view, an altogether more interesting proposition. Both were, at their respective heights, the company’s biggest babyfaces, yet both of them have drawn boos from crowds for showing the very qualities that made them heroes. In the Rock’s case, his initial eagerness to please soon turned an audience unwittingly headed for the Attitude Era squarely against him – a trend he quickly bucked by ditching his squeaky-clean “Rocky Maivia” gimmick and becoming the jabroni-beating, pie-eating, trail-blazing, eyebrow-raising Rock that we all knew and loved. But in Cena’s case, he was a hands-down fan favourite right from his first big push, only to gradually build up an increasing number of detractors as he enjoyed more and more success. This is unheard of, really, when you consider the length of time that Cena has been at the top, and particularly the out-and-out irreproachability of his actions during that time. This isn’t an old-fashioned good guy with a superiority complex, á la Kurt Angle – he’s a straight-talking, hard-working and often immodest performer who, by all rights, should be a firm fan favourite. The Rock, conversely, is by turns overbearing, hypocritical and downright mean. There was a reason he played the villain when he rejoined the RAW roster for a couple of months in 2003 – nobody could forgive him for leaving the squared circle. He was effectively booed out of SummerSlam 2002, having dropped his then-Undisputed WWE Championship to the so-called “Next Big Thing”, Brock Lesnar. But upon his return to the now-HD, widescreen WWE Universe, fans worldwide instantly turned their back on the leader of Cenation, vilifying him for his unfashionable constancy and instantly getting behind their intermittently-attending, but undoubtedly exhilarating, “People’s Champion”.
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Usually when I watch a non-PPV WWE home video, most of my interest lies with its (usually centrepiece) documentary. This was the case when I watched The Epic Journey of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, and I firmly expected it to be the case when I popped in the first disc of Rock vs Cena - Once in a Lifetime (a misnomer if ever there was one, given this year’s anticipated rematch), which picks up more or less exactly where the former left off – the Rock’s return to RAW just prior to WrestleMania XVII, which he would go on to host. However, this release’s supposedly-focal feature feels like a token extra; a fleeting look behind the scenes of the 6-hour epic that unfurls across the two discs in dazzling 1080p, blow by blow. As I didn’t follow this iconic rivalry live, I can’t say for sure that this Blu-ray presents every single Rock / Cena showdown on the road to WrestleMania XVIII in Miami, but it certainly doesn’t feel like anything has been excluded. I sat enthralled for hours as these two giants fired scathing promos - and, believe it or not, tweets - at each other; reluctantly teamed up against the Miz and R-Truth, a pair of good ol’ fashioned baddies; and eventually set the Showcase of the Immortals alight with undoubtedly the biggest match since Rock and Hollywood Hogan - and arguably one of the best too. I couldn’t help but feel for Cena when his unassailable arguments against the Rock fell flat with the rabid RAW audience, who lapped up every rapidly-trending soundbite (“John Cena’s got lady parts…” / “Fruity Pebbles…”) Rocky used to mask the inherent paucity of his retorts - when he deigned to show up, that is. The events housed on these discs don’t take place over a month or two, as most big-match build-ups do – the Rock’s appearances are peppered across more than a year, an innovation in storytelling that, in of itself, sets this feud apart from any other before or since.
But here’s the thing - as their hyped-to-the-hilt WrestleMania match pulled towards its spectacular finish, each man enduring finisher after finisher only to get a shoulder up at two, I wanted to see the Rock layeth the smacketh down - just like I wanted him to make the loveable, sock-wielding Mankind say “I quit!” back in ’99; just like I wanted him to drop the People’s Elbow on the renaissance Hulkster in ’02; just like I wanted him to end Austin’s career with a Rock Bottom in ’03. Why? Because he’s the Rock - the most entertaining sports entertainer that ever there was, and for all John Cena’s virtues, neither he nor anyone else - it doesn’t matter what their names are - could ever hope to compete with that. Let’s hope that he can continue to rise above it - after all, he’s little choice in the matter as long as Rocky’s around.
