Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson's career is in the middle of a very interesting spot at the moment. On paper, he remains one of the hottest names in, well, basically all entertainment, as he starred in a major motion picture, sold an absolute ton of his signature tequila, and just generally dominated all things social media with his excessive exercise videos, his motivational speeches, or his comically large cheat meals, but there's some small but unsettling ripples that could hit at much choppier waters ahead for the man formerly known as Rocky Maivia. For one thing, his latest film, Black Adam, underperformed commercially and earned middling reviews critically, then came reported meetings with higher-ups at Warner to push for a multi-film arc for the character, push for a producers credit on SuperPets, and push for a tequilla bar at the PG-13 film's debut.

Still, for all of the disappointment associated with the end of 2022 for the third-generation wrestler, he isn't letting that roll into 2023; no, if “The Rock” is anything, it's hyper-optimistic, and he intends to ring in the new year with an optimistic message that would make fans of his old-school WWE promos very happy indeed.

“A thought I wanted to share with you guys,” Johnson said. “There’s a good friend of mine named Inky Johnson, you guys should follow him, he’s always got great perspective, grounding perspective, he keeps it raw, he keeps it real, he said something profound that was really profound that I feel ties into this whole thing. And he talked about having the guts to fail. And the reason why I bring that back around to you guys is having the guts to fail compared to having the desire to be famous, having the desire to succeed. By the way, you should have a desire to win, a desire to succeed, there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with that and that’s the truth. But I have found in life that the desire to become famous, the desire to succeed will never be as powerful as having the guts to fail. And I love that because when I look back at my own life and around every corner and still today, look, I’m a f*cking Tyrannosaurus Rex, I’m 58,000 years old but I still have that, that’s still my lead foot of just having the guts to fail around every corner and that leads my decisions, that allows me to take big swings, get my a– kicked on some of them, fail at some of them, but then also succeed at some of them. So, I will always take guts over desire. Have a great week and let’s get after it, this is our year.”

Well, it sure is nice to know that, for all of the downs 2022 brought to Johnson's career professionally, and for how many articles were written about how Dave Batista is a better actor, it's good to know he's taking things in stride, especially with a chance to make his triumphant return at WrestleMania 39 very much in play.

Jim Cornette believes WWE needs The Rock at WrestleMania.

Speaking of WrestleMania 39, while some fans have been hypothesizing about whether or not the 2023 Royal Rumble poster is hinting at “The Rock's” appearance on the card, Jim Cornette has let it be known to the WWE Universe that whoever is in charge of talent acquisitions, be it Paul “Triple H” Levesque or Vince McMahon, should go all-in on getting Johnson on the Hollywood card in a match against Roman Reigns, as it might be the last chance to take advantage of the opportunity.

“They better put a full court press to get The Rock at WrestleMania, if they don’t do it this year they might never get a chance to. It’s Los Angeles, Roman Reigns it’s perfect. Cena’s just been here. If they wanted to pull Cena back for WrestleMania for anything, he would have to commit to a couple of different dates, because they couldn’t just say ‘okay, he’ll be here,’ they just did this. ‘He’ll be here and have the big match’ they just did that on network tv, so they can’t do the same thing on WrestleMania, he’d have to do at least one or two appearances to set something up. I think they should go full on, try to get The Rock, because it may be now or never.”

Will The Rock ultimately make good on thousands of fantasy bookings and bring the ultimate “Battle of the Bloodline” to fans in Inglewood, California? Only time will tell, but that would certainly get “The Rock's” name back in the tabloids for all of the right reasons.