Could the former New England Patriot find himself in action at the biggest show of the year?
Monday 25 March 2019 10:55, UK
The timing of Rob Gronkowski's announcement that he is retiring from NFL could not have been better for WWE.
Their biggest show of the year, WrestleMania, will take place exactly two weeks after the New England Patriot revealed he has called time on his gridiron career.
Before even the first speck of dust had been allowed to fall on that proclamation, Mojo Rawley had made his thoughts known on Twitter. His statement was brief, but the final sentence carried with it great meaning.
"It's about to get really wild now. The best is yet to come!"
'Really wild' could of course mean just about anything. But the associations with WWE were instant, and not just because of Gronk's famous WrestleMania 33 moment, where he took out Jinder Mahal to pave the way for Rawley to win the Andre the Giant memorial battle royal.
Ever since that incident - and really, for quite some time before it too - Gronkowski had been linked with a move to WWE. His position in that Venn diagram space as both a fan of the product and a very well-known elite athlete will always lead to such associations.
It will be a tight turn-around if he is to, firstly, be ring-ready for WrestleMania and, secondly, to generate enough of a build-up for him to be involved in a match people might care about.
Neither, admittedly are large obstacles. In the ring, his involvement can be kept brief and any shortcomings easily masked by an opponent as capable as, say, The Revival, who have been touted as potentially filling that role.
He is exactly the type of person WWE want to get in their rings and that is especially true for an event with the size, importance and - it is always hoped - mainstream appeal of WrestleMania.
It's for wrestling fans first and foremost, of course. But the holy grail at Titan Towers is always bringing in people who don't watch every week and that is never more true than for their biggest event of the year.
WrestleMania's connections with stars from around the world of sport are a vital part of its rich history. At WrestleMania II, there was an - admittedly not brilliant - battle royal which pitted wrestlers against football players. Shaquille O'Neal was in the battle royal itself at the 32nd Mania.
And then there is the gold standard - Mike Tyson, the 'ringside enforcer' for Shawn Michaels' mega-match against Steve Austin at WrestleMania XIV.
Gronk is perhaps not at the level of Tyson, or maybe even Shaq, but he is nevertheless a huge name in terms of American sport.
Using a very '2019' metric: He has close to 3m Twitter followers and 3.2m on Instagram. His name was trending on both sides of the Atlantic for hours after he announced his retirement.
Not long ago, there was speculation that WWE was in talks to sign Canadian wrestler Kenny Omega, who has made a name for himself as one of the best in the sports entertainment business through his exploits in Japan.
Multi-million dollar offers were the talk of the online wrestling news community but no such deal for Omega materialised.
Purist WWE wrestling fans were therefore denied a series of dream matches but beyond the wrestling bubble the news barely resonated at all.
It will be the exact opposite if WWE are to bring in Gronkowski. There will be a percentage of hardcore fans whose eyes will roll when they see his name on the bill, but their number will be dwarfed by the amount of new eyeballs on the product, and at the most important time of the year too.
And that is WWE's primary objective in WrestleMania season. It would be a mistake not to bring him in.
