The Rock returned on SmackDown to a deafening pop, but any talk of a 51-year-old Dwayne Johnson replacing Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 40 is the type of rhetoric that makes ears bleed.

It’s worth mentioning that the WrestleMania 40 main event has not been made official. In fact, not a single WrestleMania match has been announced, yet WWE’s biggest show of the year in Philadelphia has already sold over 90,000 tickets, breaking the all-time gate record of $21.6 million previously set this year in LA.

This is one of the many reasons WrestleMania 40 does not need The Rock.

Though no WrestleMania main event has been announced, Cody Rhodes is the favorite to challenge Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship, thereby finishing his story. WWE has spent every day since Rhodes’ return in 2022 telling its audience that Rhodes’ goal as a top babyface is to win its biggest prize. There’s an entire documentary about it. Rhodes’ story, however, took a shocking detour after his controversial loss to Roman Reigns in the WrestleMania 39 main event. Adding even more chapters to the Book of Rhodes yet again, in favor of an unnecessary short-term boost from The Rock, would spell disaster for Rhodes as a top babyface.

The Rock would be a welcomed addition to WrestleMania 40, but only as an ancillary part of a machine that no longer needs a single attraction—let alone many—to sell out its biggest show. For years, there have been teases and rumors of Dwayne Johnson coming back to WWE to face his cousin, Tribal Chief Roman Reigns. The winner would emerge as the alpha of the Anoa’i family. Rock recently admitted the match almost happened this year at WrestleMania 39 in Inglewood.

“We got really, really close, but we couldn't actually nail what that thing was. So we decided to put our pencils down,” said The Rock during an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. “We agreed, 'Hey, listen, there's a merger coming up, eventually that will happen. There's WrestleMania in Philadelphia.' [eyebrow raise] I'm saying that's a potential too. I'm open [to it]. I'm open."

Years have passed, the match still feels like a pipe dream, The Rock has entered his 50s and WWE has since entered a new era. One where not only has WWE created new stars, but also the type of money-drawing babyfaces that render The Rock redundant.

It’s one thing for The Rock to return to a star-deprived WWE roster in the 2010s. But with Cody Rhodes already setting records left and right as a top babyface, The Rock headlining WrestleMania 40 over Rhodes would be like the Green Bay Packers bringing back Brett Favre in the middle of Aaron Rodgers’ 2011 Super Bowl run. It’s a far cry from Rock’s first comeback tour from a decade ago in an entirely different WWE.

In 2012, WWE was in the dog-days of its pay-per-view era. Though massive attractions in combat sports like Floyd Mayweather, Connor McGregor and Jon Jones garnered millions of pay-per-view buys in their sleep, million-dollar buyrates were few and far between in Stamford. WWE was struggling to create new stars and needed a believable challenger to feud with John Cena. In order to set live gate, attendance and buyrate records in Miami’s SunLife Stadium for WrestleMania 28, WWE needed The Rock.

On the strength of John Cena vs. The Rock: Once in a Lifetime, WrestleMania 28 grossed $8.9 million—the highest-grossing live event in WWE history. The event drew a record buyrate of 1.3 million. The Rock-Cena storyline was so strong, WWE ran it back Twice in a Lifetime the following year for WrestleMania 29, setting another live gate record.

2023, however, is a brand new day and a brand new decade. WrestleMania 29 in 2013 was the final year of WWE’s traditional pay-per-view model. Beginning with WrestleMania 30, WWE offered its pay-per-views for $9.99 on the WWE Network. Though many felt WWE was foolish to cannibalize its own pay-per-view business, WWE’s big risk paid off when the promotion struck a billion-dollar deal with NBCUniversal in 2021 to move the WWE Network to Peacock.

Now marketing its brand over any single talent, WWE leveraged that brand as a license to print money. They've inked a pair of billion-dollar television deals with NBCUniversal (WWE Raw) and Fox (WWE SmackDown), with another monster television rights deal on the horizon. Toss in hundreds of millions of dollars in Saudi money and a $21 billion merger with UFC (where Endeavor acquired WWE for $9 billion), and WWE has more guaranteed money than you can raise an eyebrow at. Forget the publicity The Rock brings in, with WWE now owned by the high-powered Endeavor, they’ll have the type of publicity machine one can only dream about.

If The Rock is Mickey Mouse, Endeavor is Walt Disney DIS .

The Rock alongside LA Knight facing Austin Theory and Grayson Waller (both of whom have had words for The Rock and currently team up as A-Town Down Under) is one of many possibilities that would avoid disrupting WWE’s already log-jammed main event picture. If Rock and Reigns must finish their story, they can do so for the symbolic Tribal Chief beads, which are more relevant to the long-term storyline of the Anoa’i Family than a butterscotch belt ever was.