It's been 3 1/2 years since Dwayne Johnson last wrestled as The Rock (at Wrestlemania 20). Sure, he's made guest appearances on Raw since then, most recently back in March to help promote Wrestlemania 23. He quietly hung up his tights & boots, and, in interviews to promote his latest film, "The Game Plan", has said that his ring name won't be part of how he's billed from this point forward. That decision, however, might've come a wee bit too late in the eyes of certain media outlets.

It's well known that the NY Post has nothing but disdain & contempt for the WWE, and despite the distance he's put between himself and his former employers, Johnson can't seem to get a fair shake from the Post's movie critics. Kyle Smith, for one, gave "Game Plan" just one star, a far cry from the positive buzz the film was getting online just a week or two ago. I've read that there are other critics who feel the same way, but not because of Johnson. The majority of the critics will point to flaws in the script, and the fact that there are too many cliches in the plot that have been used too often in recent years. Smith, however, gets called out because of his paper's ongoing bias against anything WWE. I rarely have seen the Post give any of Johnson's films a positive review. While everyone else was raving over "Scorpion King" 5 years ago, for example, the Post's Jonathan Foreman (no longer with the paper) ripped it, but made it sound to me like he hadn't seen the film. That ticked me off. Okay, Disney just did a similar family comedy with another action star (Vin Diesel in "The Pacifier") fairly recently, and that also got ripped. It's still too fresh in the minds of Smith and his fellow critics, and perhaps that plays into their poor judgments.

As of this writing, I haven't seen "Game Plan" yet, but plan to, because, as The Rock himself would say, "IT DOESN'T MATTER" what those jabroni critics think! And when I do, I may be so inclined to send Smith a nice, point-counterpoint letter while restraining myself from cutting a Rock-esque promo that would include shoving a keyboard up his candied backside. Know this. The people will defend their "Champion" to the very end.