There is a significant difference between professional wrestlers who help wrestling companies make money and those who help them survive. There are literally thousands who fit in the former category, while less than a handful fall in the latter. Hulk Hogan and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, of course, are two of the few whose contributions impacted the very existence of not just World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), but the cultural relevance of sports entertainment as a whole. However, to quote Yoda, “There is another.” If you smell what Yoda’s been cookin’, then you know I’m talking about The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment, The Great One, The People’s Champ, The Brahma Bull, The Final Boss, Dewey himself, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The Rock is a global icon and arguably the most popular action star in the world. Weirdly, though, fans, historians, and former wrestlers have a hard time agreeing on where he stands in the GOAT conversation. He is routinely left off Mt. Rushmore lists, and sometimes out of that discussion altogether. On a list of favorites, by all means, take him or leave him. In the GOAT discussion, though, The Rock sits in a class above with only Hogan and Austin as peers.
Before we dig into what makes The Rock one of the three greatest professional wrestlers in history, it’s important to explore why it might not be so obvious to the millions…and millions of The Rock’s fans. The #1 reason that his true significance is often overlooked is likely because he bolted town like Barry Sanders, leaving his fans wanting more, so much more. Despite The Rock’s Houdini act, it might come as a surprise that he has a nearly identical career resume to Austin. Both failed to gain traction with their initial gimmicks. Both had relatively short peak runs. Austin broke through in 1997 and retired in 2003. The Rock broke through in 1998 and left the company in 2004. Both were pivotal in WWF defeating WCW in the Monday Night Wars. They cut the greatest promos in the history of the business, delivered the most iconic catch phrases, elicited the loudest crowd reactions, and were booked as the main event in three WrestleManias. The difference in perception between the two might just come down to hurt feelings. Austin didn’t go anywhere which made his departure more palatable to fans. The Rock left for Hollywood, which, for many, felt like being stabbed in the back. The fact that The Rock was still at his physical peak while Austin wore visible battle scars only exacerbated the perception that Austin was the real people’s champ, while The Rock was a Hollywood turncoat. This criticism of The Rock is fair, and it was undoubtedly a gut punch for many at the time. However, the move to Hollywood would not only make The Rock a bigger star than ever before, but it would eventually give WWE credibility on a scale that it never could have imagined.Â
The Rock and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin were in very similar positions in 1996. Both were struggling with gimmicks that fans didn’t care about. For Austin, it was The Ringmaster. For The Rock, it was Rocky Maivia. The WWF was struggling immensely at the time. WCW was galvanizing increasingly older audiences with the NWO angle, while Vince McMahon and the WWF were still pushing goofy occupational gimmicks onto its dwindling audience. The contrast couldn’t have been larger, and it showed in the television ratings as WCW Monday Nitro embarked on an 83-week winning streak over Monday Night Raw. The outlook for the WWF was so bleak that McMahon implored his top star–Bret “The Hitman” Hart–to seek employment with WCW because he couldn’t afford to honor Hart’s contract. With media mogul Ted Turner bankrolling WCW’s seemingly limitless budget–and stealing McMahon’s stars on top of it–the future of the WWF was very much in peril. Pay-per-view (PPV) buys had plummeted to record lows. TV ratings had eroded. Merchandise sales were non-existent. McMahon needed a miracle.
Luckily for–and unbeknownst to–McMahon, he had two megastars on the roster, even if their initial efforts missed the mark. Austin, of course, found his niche with his anti-authority, badass persona. Although Austin’s popularity did result in more exposure for the WWF in 1997, it wasn’t until he had a yin to his yang that his character–and, subsequently, WWF’s TV ratings–launched into orbit. That foil was The Rock, who found his inner Soul Man in 1998, launching WWF to a level of pop cultural relevance that rivaled the hey days of Hulkamania. With an assist from the Mr. McMahon character, the chemistry between The Rock and Austin brought the WWF back from the brink and unlocked WCW’s stranglehold on TV ratings. The impact was just as noticeable in PPV buys as their main event match at WrestleMania XV attracted a record 800,000 buys, and then they smashed the record again two years later at WrestleMania X-Seven with a stratospheric 1.04 million buys. The Rock and Austin weren’t just talented performers; their popularity and chemistry literally saved the WWF from bankruptcy and eliminated its only competition.Â
Austin almost always gets rated ahead of The Rock on these sorts of lists and there is ammunition to justify it. The “Stone Cold” character metamorphosed a year before the Rock when the WWF was facing its most existential threat from WCW. Austin was also the king of merchandise. The “Austin 3:16” shirt is likely the most popular in the history of the business. His weekly dust ups against Mr. McMahon–and corporate culture–let the everyman live out their most diabolical fantasies against authority. He also did it while guzzling cans of beer and extending his middle fingers. In contrast, The Rock was a smooth-talking, jabroni-beating, eye-brow-raising, smart aleck. Audiences loved to hate The Rock and loved to love Austin. However, despite Austin’s advantages, The Rock has some things on his resume that Austin can’t touch.
While it wasn’t obvious to wrestling fans at the time, The Rock was doing something in Hollywood that would make wrestling more popular than ever before. Every movie and TV role he banked didn’t just increase his popularity in Hollywood; it increased the cache that he would eventually deliver when he returned to the place that made him a star. Yes, when the prodigal son returned, he came bearing gifts. After seven years away from wrestling, The Rock reemerged in 2011 to main event WrestleMania XXVIII with John Cena and then offered a sequel a year later at WrestleMania 29. The first match with Cena broke the record for WrestleMania PPVs at a staggering 1.3 million buys, and the two combined matches set the record for buys in consecutive years with a colossal 2.35 million. The Rock’s return came with record breaking numbers and a stamp of legitimacy for Cena–the face of the company at the time–that no active wrestler on the roster could’ve delivered.
Following his successful WrestleMania returns in 2011 and 2012, The Rock once again set out for Hollywood, except this time he would go on to become the biggest movie star in the world, even offering professional wrestling center stage on network television as his biographical TV series Young Rock aired in primetime on NBC. Once again, The Rock’s success outside of the wrestling industry would yield a massive return when he came back home again. He joined the Board of Directors at TKO–WWE’s parent company–and then used it as an opportunity to create his latest in-ring evolution, “The Final Boss.” Twenty-seven years after his first WrestleMania appearance, The Rock returned to main event WrestleMania XL to yet again deliver shine to WWE’s star of the present. This time around, it was “Dashing” “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes.Â
While Austin’s white-hot run during the Monday Night Wars outshined even The Rock, his overall body of work might not quite be on par with Rocky’s. Consider that Hulk Hogan, “Stone Cold” Austin, and John Cena never faced each other in the ring. The Rock not only faced each of them, but he was booked against them in the main event at WrestleMania a total of six times. The Rock and Austin are two sides of the same coin. Their contributions are as equally important as they are unique. Their value can be measured in stacks of cash for the companies they worked for and pink slips for the ones they didn’t. Nobody short of Hulk Hogan can say they had a bigger impact on the wrestling industry than The Rock and Austin.
