The main program of this Blu-ray set is a 45-minute TV special hyping the John Cena vs. The Rock main event for WrestleMania XXVIII. It’s a pretty good summation of the feud, and a good primer for casual fans.
Both discs are packed with the segments and promos and interviews featuring Cena and Rock in the year-long build to their WrestleMania XXVIII match. It’s extremely thorough, I’m pretty sure absolutely nothing is missing. The first disc runs 3:12:40, and the second clocks in at and the second clocks in at 2:41:55, with 1:27:19 worth of Blu-ray exclusives.
Unfortunately, the set is light on matches, featuring just one per disc, plus an extremely clipped version of another.
~ Match Results and Star Ratings~
- Survivor Series, 11/20/2011: The Rock & John Cena defeated Awesome Truth (R-Truth & The Miz) at 21:32. ***
- WrestleMania XXVIII, 4/1/2012: The Rock defeated John Cena at 30:35. ****
~JZ Says~
The clipped match referenced above is the WrestleMania XXVII main event – The Miz defending the WWE Championship against John Cena. The Rock was the host of WrestleMania and got himself involved. He personally re-started the match after both Cena and Miz got counted out, and then hit Cena with a Rock Bottom, allowing Miz to pin him. I don’t mind that the whole match wasn’t shown, because it’s bad, but I also wish this set had a few more matches on it to break up the promos.
Finally we get to the Survivor Series, where Cena and Rock joined forces to battle Awesome Truth. Miz and R-Truth had a pretty good thing as top heels in late 2011, but this was pretty much the end of that. I remember liking this match quite a bit, but this time around it was a tougher nut to crack. They stalled A LOT in the early going, and the crowd seemed minimally invested. At least they perked up for the back half of the match, especially when Rock started hitting all his signature stuff. The People’s Elbow on Miz was enough to get the pin. Solid and all, but it didn’t feel like the major deal WWE was hyping it up to be, having Cena and Rock on the same team.
The big WrestleMania match closes the set, and it’s a very good match, especially considering Rock hadn’t wrestled a big-time singles match in about a decade. They worked a pretty basic match, but it escalated well to the finish. Cena got overconfident and went for a People’s Elbow, but Rock popped up and flattened him with a Rock Bottom to get the pin. I think everyone and their mother knew Cena was getting his win back the next year, but that was really the only logical conclusion for the feud. They also added a “Film Cut” of this match, which is just a different look at it. It’s a fine bonus feature, but doesn’t shed any new light on anything.
I really liked this Blu-ray in theory, as it’s an extremely thorough look at a year-plus long feud, with everything they did. On the other hand, this wasn’t a super compelling feud (even though it drew crazy money), and the promos got pretty repetitive watching them all on top of each other. A different feud, with more matches than promos, would probably be more my speed for this kind of set.