With the Road to WrestleMania 41 in full swing following the 2025 WWE Royal Rumble, it appears that The Rock will not be competing at the event, despite initial speculation.
At one point, WWE had considered The Rock vs. Cody Rhodes as a WrestleMania 41 main event, but plans have shifted. According to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, there has been no serious talk of The Rock wrestling at the show, though he could always change his mind.
Meltzer said, “I got asked about The Rock today, so I figured it’s as good a time as any. I mean, I think most people know the basic gist of everything. It does not appear now that we are at the point where, you know, you can really look at this WrestleMania thing and you can see…I mean Gunther and Jey, Cena and Cody Rhodes, Kevin Owens against Sami Zayn, probably something to do with Seth, Roman Reigns, for sure. Maybe Punk’s involved in that as well, but you can see all the key guys are pretty much accounted for, and there’s no Dwayne in the mix, and there’s no talk of Dwayne or anything like that. I expect that Dwayne will be at WrestleMania in some form, doing something, but having a serious, you know, 10-minute match, or 20-minute match, or 45-minute match, like last year. That doesn’t appear to be happening. I suppose he could still change his mind and work his way in…..The chronology….if you remember, at Bad Blood, he came out at the end of the show. And I was pretty much told right, like, right after Bad Blood. And it’s like, you know, someone brought up to me. It’s like, you know, in a very negative term, what he did. And they go, ‘Why negative?’ You know? It’s like, he’s gonna wrestle Cody at WrestleMania. And it’s like, well, guess what? He ain’t gonna wrestle Cody at WrestleMania. He ain’t gonna wrestle at WrestleMania, and they go, what? And it’s like Brad Slater and Dwayne both told the company that he ain’t gonna be able to do WrestleMania. So why do you do this run-in and it was basically, the people who know this are not happy that you know he went in there and stole the end of the show just to do that when you know those people that ended the show and on the Atlanta show should have been the final thing, but Dwayne gets to do what Dwayne wants to do, and everyone has to live with that. So that was the deal at the time. Now, of course, he always had the chance to change his mind. The story was that he was too busy. But yet, afterward, you know, the same people were just like, ‘Yeah, of course, he could change his mind.’ And it was kind of like, if is he going to, you know, he better decide if he’s going to do it by January, because they got to do a Royal Rumble. And, you know, if Dwayne is going to be in the main event of one of the shows, and they have to know that by at least the setup of the Royal Rumble, but that’s come and gone. I don’t want to say it’s not going to happen, but it certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. And there’s never really been a time, you know. There were things that were said and things that have been said to me about, not so much when I reported it, but I don’t know what it was. I mean, I reported the thing first back in, I guess October. [He] went back right after Bad Blood, right? So it would have been, I’m trying to remember when, November, December, when all of a sudden everybody started reporting it. And I kind of heard, ‘Oh my god, Dwayne’s mad that everyone’s reporting it. He doesn’t want this out.’ One person said, ‘I bet he does the show now, just because he’s so. Mad that everyone’s reporting it.’ If he’s too busy, if he’s got other projects, you know, I mean, he’s not gonna be able to do it. I mean, my gut on him is, is that if he didn’t have other projects, do it, the guy loves pro wrestling. I mean, it’s like, no matter what you may think, I can tell you for sure that the guy loves pro wrestling. If he has the time to do it, he sure as hell wants to be part of this period of pro wrestling, when pro wrestling is the most lucrative it’s ever been.”
Back in October 2024, The Rock made an appearance at Bad Blood, teasing a major confrontation when he made the 1-2-3 countdown gesture while staring down Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns. However, it was later reported that both The Rock and his agent, Brad Slater, informed WWE that he wouldn’t be available for WrestleMania 41.
Meltzer reported that some within WWE were frustrated by The Rock’s Bad Blood run-in, as it altered the intended show-ending moment and created unnecessary speculation about his availability.
While The Rock has left the door open for future involvement in WWE, it appears that Cody Rhodes vs. John Cena and Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins (possibly with CM Punk in a Triple Threat match) are currently the key WrestleMania 41 matchups moving forward.
Despite not being scheduled for a match, The Rock could still make an appearance at WrestleMania 41, possibly in a promo segment or as part of a storyline moment. However, unless plans change, fans shouldn’t expect to see him in the ring this April.
