Reports have indicated that WWE was originally planning on having Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson at Survivor Series last night.

Last night's Survivor Series show celebrated 25 years since The Rock's WWE debut, with many video packages being played to remind fans of some of the iconic moments from his career.

Considering so much of the show was centered around his career, as well as WWE promoting his new Netflix movie, many were left surprised that The Rock didn't appear on the show.

A new report from Andrew Zarian has claimed that WWE was originally planning on having The Rock at the show, dating back to July, but COVID-19 put an end to those plans:

Sunday's WWE Survivor Series was originally supposed to feature Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. And for anyone watching last night, it was blatantly obvious that was the plan. In July, I was told that the Brooklyn, New York, pay-per-view would be centered around Johnson. Between heavily promoting his new Red Notice movie on Netflix, the 25th anniversary of his WWE debut that took place in New York City, NBC’s renewal of Young Rock, and the second season of the Ruthless Aggression documentary series, the timing was perfect.

The report notes that WWE still had to promote the Red Notice movie due to financial commitments that they had made, and opted to keep the majority of the show with the same format:

In late-September, the same source told me that Johnson would not be on Survivor Series due to his filming schedule and needing to quarantine for travel. However, there was still a financial obligation to continue with the plan for the movie promotion without Johnson which is what we saw last night. The basic concept stayed the same, minus Johnson himself.

If you didn't manage to catch the show last night, you can watch the event in its entirety, including the kickoff show, right now on-demand on the WWE Network.

You can watch the fallout to Survivor Series on Monday Night Raw tonight and Friday Night SmackDown later this week live over here in the UK on BT Sport.