The Great One Returns

Finally, The Rock has come back home!!! Those were the famous words spoken by The Rock during his tremendous return home to WWE after seven grueling, long years. Since 2004, the landscape of the company and wrestling as a whole changed drastically. From that point on to 2005, John Cena's star skyrocketed into the wrestling stratosphere. However, along the way, the company lost a huge piece of its backbone because The Most Electrifying Man In Sports Entertainment and one of the Cornerstones of the Attitude Era was long gone. Since then, Cena has become WWE's marketing machine and constantly in the Main Event for 5 consecutive years and at least in the main event picture constantly. With the Great One gone, there was a tremendous void, because the mainstream acceptance and television ratings began to drop in comparison to its heyday from the days of The Rock. Chris Jericho himself proclaimed that he would save the WWE from becoming boring and stale, but he went from getting the fans to cry "Save_Us" to "Save_Me" after failing to end Randy Orton's reign as champion, which was the same from the time that he returned in 2007. Nothing quite changed in three years. Fortunately, The Great One has returned to fulfill Jericho's task of reviving a once proud, and profitable company. Something that was once a captivating and trendsetting program has now deteriorated into a "boring" snoozefest, where the fans are forced to cheer for and care for mediocrity. Those words from Jericho were a joke back in 1999, but 12 years later, they are the truth. TV ratings have taken a downward spiral, pay per view buyrates have plummeted, mainstream acceptance is null and void, and the crowd reaction from longtime fans and wrestling purists is complete and utter silence. These poor fans are silent, because they are embarrassed to be there watching, and as a fellow longtime fan, I am embarrassed for you. For 5 straight years, Cena has used the same gimmick, won the exact same way in every match and has never ever gone heel. This is one of the things that has hindered Cena, badly and the thing that I was happy about Monday Night was the way The Rock came straight to the point and addressed John Cena's verbal bashing in the media during interviews in magazines and the internet. This was pure vindication for me as a fan, because this return has broken the usual mold that the WWE has been stuck in during these past 5 years, especially these last 2 years. PG has not been as much of the problem as the quality. Think about it, when names such as Hogan, Savage and others dominated the scene in the '80s and early '90s, WWF was still PG, but the product was better without question, because of the promos, feuds, buildups of characters, rivalries, tag team division, managers, and blend of established stars along with stars on the rise. These are the things that were the key ingredients and components of WWF's success, which brought tremendous ratings, revenue, buyrates and mainstream acceptance all across the board. This same formula, along with an extra twist is what made the company excel to higher heights during the Attitude Era ('98-'01). As I have previously said before, The Rock was one of Vince McMahon's centerpieces during this time period, and the way that he commanded the crowd with both his skills and words was beyond extraordinary.