Backstage Notes On Rock’s Smackdown Appearance & Promo

A new report has a couple of notes on The Rock’s appearance on Friday’s episode of WWE Smackdown. As reported, the People’s Champion appeared in a show-opening segment with Austin Theory and Pat McAfee. Fightful Select reports that Rock’s promo was not listed on internal rundowns of the show in order to keep the appearance from leaking out.

It was also noted in response to questions about the TV edits made to Rock’s promo that it was because of possible FCC violations. It was not a matter of the TV-PG rating as the TV rating is not enforced in the same way as movies (MPAA) and video games (ESRB) are, and nothing in the TV-PG rating prevents profanity.