Smackdown News: Finally, The Rock Has Come Back to WWE Programming

    Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will appear on this week's 10^th Anniversary of Friday Night Smackdown! according to WrestlingObserver.com, and WWE.com. WWE sent a film crew to Johnson's home and taped a promo that will air on Friday's show. No, it’s become old news, but I’m just reporting what happened from my perspective.

    Johnson has not been featured on WWE programming since the 2008 Hall of Fame ceremony, the night before Wrestlemania 24 where he inducted his father Rocky Johnson, and grandfather Peter Maivia into the WWE Hall of Fame. Before that The Great One made a couple of brief appearances on WWE television.

    For example, he weighed in his prediction for the Battle of the Billionaires match (Bobby Lashley with Donald Trump vs. Umaga with Vince McMahon) and made fun of Umaga calling him “shriveled up monkey p***s” on an episode of Raw before Wrestlemania 23.  If you don’t know your wrestling history well, I’ll give you a brief summary on The Rock’s career as a professional wrestler.

     Dwayne Johnson started wrestling in 1995. He started out in the independent scene, and worked his way up to the WWF. As Rocky Maivia, he made his WWF debut at Survivor Series 1996. Even though he was a babyface, the fans hated him tremendously. During his matches, the fans would chant "Rocky Sucks" and “Die Rocky Die”.

   After a brief absence, Rocky Maivia turned into the Rock. He then became a heel, and quickly won the Intercontinental title. As a heel, his promos were incredible and he seemed to come up with a new catch phrase on a continual basis. He became the leader of the Nation of Domination, and feuded with DX, and the Hart Foundation.

     It was during this time that he came up with his signature actions, to arouse crowds including "The People's Eyebrow" and "The People's Elbow". The Rock became WWF Champion at Survivor Series 1998, which was his second anniversary working for the WWF. He would go on to main event three Wrestlemania shows against Austin. Starting in 2000, Johnson would take a lot of time off due to his new film career.

   In 2000, his autobiography, The Rock Says, went to number one, on the New York Times bestseller list. His matches continued to amaze fans, even though he left briefly constantly to pursue his film career. In 2002, the fans were treated to a dream match when he finally got in the ring against Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania X-8. In 2004, he wrestled his final match at Wrestlemania XX, but still remains one of the greatest of all time.

    I think this will just be a one time thing, but Johnson may be hosting Raw soon. If this were to happen, he would most likely be their most entertaining guest yet. Hopefully this will happen because the only guest hosts that I have found entertaining so far were Shaq, Bob Barker, and Sgt. Slaughter. The fans would love it if this happened and it would definitely boost ratings. So please WWE, make The Rock the guest host of Raw. Thanks for reading.

   Sidenote: You can check out the Hit The Ropes Radio web site here. HtR Radio airs every Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET. Be sure to join the Facebook group as well (click here). Kevin Canny is a newly acquired writer for the Hit the Ropes Radio website. Be sure to check it out.

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