Having been forced to sit on the sidelines and wait out the strikes, which included having his development deal suspended by Universal, Dwayne Johnson has decided that sitting around doing nothing isn’t quite for him.
Of course, he’s been keeping himself busy with his many extracurricular activities, although his association with Oprah Winfrey to launch a $10 million relief fund for those affected by the Maui wildfires was not exactly received as the kind and generous deed it was intended to be, driven largely by the eye-watering wealth of the A-list duo asking the public to dip into their pockets and contribute what they can.
All that aside, Johnson shocked the professional wrestling world this past weekend when he made an unannounced return to WWE for the first time in four years, sending those in attendance into a state of complete and utter meltdown. The Rock doesn’t dabble in the squared circle anywhere near as often as he used to, and with the strikes ongoing, there are people out there who decided to dub him a scab for doing so.
Ignoring that John Cena never got the same sort of hostile reception when he was announced for two months of WWE appearances during his downtime, the accusations don’t make a lick of sense for the sole purpose that despite being a multi-billion company that runs multiple shows every week with a contracted roster of talent that numbers into the hundreds, the recently-merged outfit doesn’t consider its wrestlers to be employees at all.
Instead, they’re dubbed independent contractors, and one of the thorniest issues in the entire pro wrestling business is the complete and utter lack of any sort of union, something that’s been bubbling just under the surface since as far back as the 1980s. The Rock can’t be a scab if he’s part of a non-unionized organization, which is a problem in and of itself that WWE seems to have no interest in addressing.