The Rock returned to the ring at WrestleMania 40 on Saturday night and he teamed up with Roman Reigns to defeat Cody Rhodes & Seth Rollins at the Showcase of the Immortals. Rock has been making regular appearances on WWE programming in recent weeks and his return has been a very hot topic in the wrestling community.
The Great One was asked during the WrestleMania 40 post-show press conference if there was a moment when he knew he wanted to return to WWE, and he said that the moment came when Ari Emanuel informed him that he would be buying the company.
“Yes, there was. When Ari Emanuel called and said, ‘I’m going to buy the company.’ ‘Okay, what does that strategy look like.’ We discussed that. There was talks almost two years ago about me returning to WrestleMania 39 in Los Angeles. We thought everything was going to dovetail nicely into that, great story. That didn’t shake out in the way we had anticipated, and that’s okay. I had said back then to the people we were negotiating with, ‘Maybe it’s time to put the pencils down and we’ll revisit when it feels right.’
Between putting the pencils down a year and a half, two years ago, regarding WrestleMania 39, the actuality of the selling of the company, that became impetus to look holistically at doing WrestleMania 40 in Philadelphia. A lot of things had to come together. The agreement, the deal, I’m not worried about that, especially when the negotiations are between myself, Ari Emanuel, and Nick Khan. I wasn’t concerned about the agreement.
My number one priority was, can I comeback and have real value this time around and not coming back for hot shots or one night. It’s fun, it’s fun for the fans, but I wanted something a lot more substantial, but something we could really build upon. These past two or three months, we’ve been laying ground work nicely and not only building for WrestleMania this weekend, but I think beyond that and the future.”
H/T Fightful
