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There were things about The Rock that bothered me when he did them, and while I've grown to appreciate Rocky's overall greatness and accept that my tastes on the matter were probably subjective, personal and underdeveloped -- Rock would come off a bit corny to me and he was the fucking Rock.
I don't want to see a guy with zero charisma, who looks like my uncle that is still chasing 20-something year-old tail at the clubs well into his 30s trying to do the same thing. His punches go all over the place, his poise in the ring is fucking ridiculous. His promo shtick, at least the stuff I saw a few years ago, made no sense. I've asked Simple Fan this many times, but I still can't work out what "Dummy? Yeah! Dummy? Yeah!" even means. Is he talking to himself? Wtf?
It's like he's a Rock fanboy that doesn't understand what it was that a) made The Rock good, or b), and more importantly, made him special.
Does it pass into irrational hatred? Maybe. I play it up as part gimmick, of course. But it's refreshing to see someone like Tom Guycott, a seemingly reasonable guy, identify the same things I do. I just think he's a really awful on-air performer, and he's treated by some people (not many or anyone important) like he's this charismatic blue-chipper.
To try and tie this into something Tom mentioned about Kelly Klein (who I haven't seen): I think one of the frustrating things about wrestling is the socialist fraternity it's become. To an extent it's good, I guess. I like nice people, and everyone in wrestling seems so nice and supportive of one another these days. But while I appreciate the importance for kindness in the outside world, in a performance-based industry I'd really like to see some fucking stars, please. And stars have ego, and they understand that when it comes to performance not everyone can do this thing. It is a talent, it is a skill, it is an art where some people are going to be worshipped as gods and other people are going to pour passion into it giving it their best shot, but they're just not the right fit for it.
There's no substitute for hard work in this world, true. But I think wrestling really suffers when people that aren't that good get treated like they are because their buddies are too nice to tell them that they suck or refuse to put them over because they understand that it would shatter the point they are trying to make. I feel like you couldn't get a Stone Cold Steve Austin today, because an Austin would insist on putting Rock over a month before WrestleMania, or he would have worked with Jeff Jarrett and Billy Gunn. He wouldn't have been the carnivore that was going to make sure he got steak first, where the most important relationship was his one with the crowd buying tickets and not the crowd in the back standing around and clapping over each other's planchas.
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