Wrestlemania 27: Why the Rock Hurt the Biggest Show of the Year

Have you ever walked into a convenience store and greeting you, just inside the front door, is a display for a brand new candy bar? It is positioned in the forefront so it gains exposure. The older candy bars are shuffled to the background so the consumers are more likely to give the newbie a try. Sometimes the candy bar is accepted and sometimes it is rejected. But neither is possible if it is not put in the position to capture the attention of the public.

Wrestlemania 27 should have been the showcase for the young talent currently populating the WWE roster. Wade Barrett, Justin Gabriel, Heath Slater, Cody Rhodes, The Miz, John Morrison and Dolph Ziggler have all made incredible strides over the past calendar year and Wrestlemania was to be the first time they had the opportunity to showcase their skills and prove to both the loyal pay-per-view buyers as well as those who only purchase Wrestlemania every year that they belong.

Daniel Bryan and Sheamus, two men advertised to compete for the United States Championship, had promised to steal the show during interviews with several radio stations in Atlanta.

What should have been the night that several key young talents broke out and became Superstars in every sense of the word became a celebration of a man more likely to star in at least one more terrible, big-budget Hollywood disaster than compete inside any sports-entertainment ring. The Rock ruled Wrestlemania 27 and that may very well prove to be a costly mistake.

There is no denying The Rock was brought back in order to secure pay-per-view buys and help achieve the elusive "one million pay-per-view buys" goal Vince McMahon sets for his company every year. There is also no denying The Rock was brought back to help attract media attention to the show. But at what point are the buys and the media attention for one show worth sacrificing an entire year's worth of hard work and what could be considered a make-or-break year for several young key talents?

From the very start of the show, Wrestlemania appeared to be catering to The Rock. He received a special introduction and fourteen minutes of promo time to start the show.

In that time, he ran through his normal routine, "laying the smackdown" here and kicking "candy a**es" there. He told the crowd what they wanted to hear, as he generally does, and ended his promo at a quarter after seven (Eastern time, of course). It was around this time that the first reports of the pre-show activities trickled into pro wrestling websites across the internet. A lumberjack match between Sheamus and Daniel Bryan devolved into a battle royal, won by the Great Khali.

At any point before informing Sheamus and Daniel Bryan that they were no longer on the Wrestlemania event card did the writers stop to think that, if Rock's unnecessary promo to open the show had been eliminated, the US Championship match could have still taken place? Or, if the useless backstage segments featuring Rock putting himself over and further burying John Cena had been cut, the eight-man tag-team match and the six-person tag match would have received more time? In both matches, ten men and two women (Lay-Cool), who had worked an entire year at furthering the product, received a grand total of less-than five minutes to ply their trade.

Unfortunately it was not the Corre, Daniel Bryan, Sheamus, John Morrison or Dolph Ziggler that were most hurt by the poor time management and the overexposure of The Rock on the show. The performer most hurt by Rock's presence on the card was the one man who could least afford it.

Over the last four years, The Miz has transformed from being a reality star on MTV to being a competent tag-team performer. From there, he became a breakout mid-card star who could talk with anyone and was quickly becoming a mature in-ring performer. Then, from Wrestlemania 26 in 2010 to Wrestlemania 27 in 2011, he firmly established himself as a main event star. He captured Money in the Bank in July, won the WWE Championship in November, and has been featured on tens of late night talk shows since. Miz proved himself a capable ambassador to the media for WWE. Poised to win in his first Wrestlemania, an "electrifying" speed bump slowed his progression to a near stop.

The Rock's return to WWE was not focused on enhancing what should have been an entertaining match between Miz and John Cena for the WWE Championship. Instead, the inevitable show down between Rock and Cena took the forefront, leaving Miz out to dry. The question in the days leading to Wrestlemania was not whether or not The Miz retained the WWE title but whether or not Rock would pay Cena back for the Attitude Adjustment he suffered on the March 28 edition of Raw.

The match at Wrestlemania proved to be less about Cena, The Miz or the WWE Championship and more about The Rock. The fans, disinterested by what occurred inside the squared circle, sat on their hands and directed their attention to the entrance way, awaiting the arrival of the self-proclaimed "Great One." What should have been the final step in the Miz's journey to being accepted by the wrestling world as a main event attraction became, instead, the unraveling of months of hard work spent establishing Miz as championship material.

2011 will be remembered as the year The Rock made his return to WWE after a seven-year absence. Fans will remember his incredibly childish "Fruity Pebbles" one-liner aimed at John Cena and the fact that, for one night at Wrestlemania, he electrified the WWE as "only he can."

But Rock's lasting legacy from his return will not be how many Cena jokes he made. It will not be that, for the first time since Wrestlemania 20, he took the biggest stage of all and reminded the fans why he is so fondly remembered.

Instead, the lasting legacy of The Rock's return to WWE will forever be The Rock standing tall at the end of Wrestlemania 27 while the current WWE champion The Miz, the face of the company John Cena, and a locker room full of young talents—who had seen their opportunities erased in favor of solidifying the status of someone already considered a wrestling icon and Hollywood superstar—were left in his path.