Does a major 2025 WWE booking decision remind fans of WCW in 1998? One AEW talent certainly thinks so.
At Elimination Chamber 2025, The Rock made a cameo appearance alongside rapper Travis Scott. They made their presence felt following John Cena’s win in the Men’s Elimination Chamber match. The Final Boss then prompted the Cenation Leader to turn heel against Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes.
Given the divisive reaction to Cena’s retirement tour, many fans, in hindsight, do not look back fondly on that angle. Moreover, The Rock breaking kayfabe to reveal that Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel wanted him to appear at Elimination Chamber solely to boost numbers has added further fuel to the controversy surrounding the booking decision.
Speaking on Jeff Jarrett’s My World podcast, co-host Conrad Thompson reflected on WWE’s decision to book Rock for Elimination Chamber. He made comparisons to WCW’s controversial booking choices in the late 1990s.
“The story of how The Rock got involved… Rock says, ‘Hey, I got a call for [Ari Emanuel], saying, hey, we need, we need some Rock dust. Can you come sprinkle it on us at Elimination Chamber?’… It feels like a business person making a wrestling call. Which sounds a little WCW 1998 to me,” Conrad Thompson said.
AEW’s Jeff Jarrett agrees…
Former WCW World Champion and current AEW Director of Business Development Jeff Jarrett agreed with Conrad Thompson and identified this shift in leadership philosophy as a major turning point for the sports entertainment industry in 2025.
“The leader in the marketplace, the company that’s been around forever… they have fundamentally shifted their decision-making process, and then they answer to Wall Street, as opposed to wrestling fans. I think that is the biggest ‘bad’ out of 2025 because it’s very clear that’s the decision now,” Jeff Jarrett said.
“I think the residual of Ari and team answering to Wall Street, as opposed to the, you know, really listening to their audience, it’s going to be interesting. It really is going to be interesting, because we’re in the entertainment business. They’re in the entertainment business.” [H/T: WrestlingNews.co]
John Cena and Cody Rhodes react to The Rock and Travis Scott ditching the WWE angle
John Cena recently addressed the fans’ reaction and criticism of the Elimination Chamber angle, noting how The Rock and Travis Scott never paid off the tease after Cena’s heel turn against Cody Rhodes.
“Hey, you have The Rock and Travis Scott. Awesome, we can plan all this stuff. [Then it was] Hey, you don’t have those two guys anymore. Not once, not once, did you and I ever—not once, the whole world has had this conversation about like, ‘Well, what would it would have been like if the two guys in it with their dick in the dirt, not once, had a conversation about ‘Man, what would it have been like if we had those guys?’ No, it was, ‘OK, what do you do next?’”
Logan Paul recently revealed that Travis Scott no-showed a WWE event that was supposed to set up a six-man tag earlier this year.
WrestleVotes later reported that the match Paul mentioned was scheduled to be Cena, Paul, and Scott teaming against Rhodes and The Usos at Money In The Bank.
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