The Rock is officially gone from WWE, at least for a while. The People’s Champion made the announcement earlier this week on the Monday Night Raw after WrestleMania 40. In real life, he’s apparently back to Hollywood and off to film a movie. We won’t know his exact return date for some time, but plugged in fans who watched Friday Night SmackDown this week were treated to the start of a major new storyline that will no doubt involve The Rock as soon as he returns.
On Friday, WWE introduced a brand new character: Tama Tonga. The journeyman wrestler, who has worked extensively in Japan and is the real life son of WWE legend Haku, appeared out of nowhere and attacked Jimmy Uso, much to the shock of Bloodline wiseman Paul Heyman (No Yeet). Together with Solo Sikoa, they did serious damage to poor Jimmy because, in their words, losing matches has consequences. We were later told it was on orders of The Tribal Chief, and it was heavily implied that Tribal Chief was not Roman Reigns.
Now, I don’t know all of the ins and outs of exactly where this is going to go, but the long-term storyline here seems pretty clear. For a long time, the core members of The Bloodline have been Roman Reigns, Jey Uso, Jimmy Uso, Solo Sikoa and Paul Heyman. More recently, Jey Uso left and The Rock joined. Now, Jimmy Uso has been seemingly kicked out, and Tama Tonga has been added. I have no idea where Paul Heyman is going to end up or who else might get involved, but it seems likely long-term we’re going to get two separate Bloodlines: one run by Roman Reigns and one run by The Rock.
For those of you who might be fans of Dwayne Johnson who aren’t as plugged in on professional wrestling, the most prominent WWE storyline for the last several years has been The Bloodline, or the story of the real life Anoa’i Family. They’ve collectively main evented WrestleMania more than 15 times and have produced many prominent wrestlers including Roman Reigns and The Rock. Reigns has called himself The Tribal Chief and was the undefeated WWE Champion for over three years. His weekly story mostly involved him trying to manage his unruly family, who are also members of The Bloodline. The Rock has been supporting Reigns, but after he lost at WrestleMania, it now seems likely The Rock is going to work to take over The Bloodline, given The Rock considers Haku his uncle and his son just showed up to attack one of Roman’s closest long-time allies.
All of this will likely go down as one of the greatest on-the-fly improvisations in the history of WWE. The Rock originally showed up earlier this year with an eye toward main eventing WrestleMania 40 in a match against Roman Reigns. The plan was to do a fun cousin vs cousin storyline, but WWE fans turned on The Rock, because they felt his presence was disrupting long-term creative plans involving Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes. So, The Rock quickly pivoted and leaned into the negativity. He turned himself into a villain and joined Roman Reigns in The Bloodline. The partnership created a string of fantastic TV episodes and ultimately led to one of the most successful and well-reviewed WrestleManias in history.
Now it looks like WWE is setting in motion the next chapter. It likely won’t attract as much fanfare with The Rock and Roman Reigns both taking a break and currently off television, but if fans watch closely, they’ll almost certainly see the pieces being slowly moved around on a weekly basis to set up those returns and put each in a fantastic position to continue an all-time great story.
