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Joey Janela Jokes That He Pitched a Match With The Rock For WrestleMania 39

December 5, 2023 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Joey Janela AEW Fyter Fest GCW Image Credit: AEW

Joey Janela claims (with tongue fully in cheek) that he pitched a match with The Rock at WrestleMania 39 in Hollywood. Janela recently spoke with Fightful’s Jeremy Lambert & Joel Pearl on In the Weeds and talked about his current status, noting that despite being away from AEW and national TV for a year and a half he still gets calls from big companies.

“People have asked me to come back to certain places on TV and stuff. I’m having fun doing Indies,” Janela said. He went on to joke, “When WWE hit me up, I said, ‘Listen, the only way I’m coming in is if I wrestle The Rock at WrestleMania.’ They said, ‘We have this plan for you, we want you to wrestle with The Miz.’ I said, ‘The Miz is cool and all, but I have to wrestle The Rock. No Rock, no go.’ ‘Rock is filming a movie.’ ‘Too damn bad, you don’t get Joey Janela.'”

He continued, “I pitched an angle to them, to WWE, to be a deranged paparazzi. The Rock is walking out of a steakhouse in LA and you see snapshots. Almost like DPP-Undertaker storyline. Eventually, the paparazzi jumps The Rock and it’s big Who Dun It? And then it’s me, and we wrestle at WrestleMania at Hollywood. The reveal is the cops reveal it in a mugshot. ‘We have the mugshot of the paparazzi,’ and it’s me—disgraced AEW wrestler Joey Janela. I have to go over The Rock too. They wanted me to wrestle The Miz at Hollywood. I said no. Rock or nothing, that’s what I said. I need to come in Rock hard.”