Report: Panic backstage at Monday Night Raw with The Rock gone and planned angles being nixed

According to a report from the Wrestling Observer, "there is absolute panic" backstage at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey, right now, just hours before Monday Night Raw is set to go on the air at 8 p.m. ET on USA. The reason?

The Rock apparently went home.

According to the Observer report, WWE had planned a major angle with Rock getting beat up by Brock Lesnar to set up the main event of WrestleMania XXX on April 6, 2014. However, with "The Great One" having up and disappeared, the creative team is apparently rushing to rewrite the show with the belief that the angle has been nixed.

There is, of course, still a chance that Rock shows up and everything moves ahead as planned, or that they run with the program and just do this angle at a later date. But WWE likes to do these things at this show because it's one of the biggest of the year considering it comes the night after WrestleMania, the biggest pay-per-view event of the year.

It's also being reported that John Cena's next feud will be set up tonight as well.

Stay tuned to see if anything does -- or doesn't -- happen tonight and make sure to follow along with the Raw live blog by clicking here.

UPDATE:

Apparently a meeting taking place at this moment regarding Rock

— Bryan Alvarez (@bryanalvarez) April 8, 2013

We'll continue updating with more details as they become available.

UPDATE 2:

According to PWInsider.com, the script for tonight called for Rock to open the show talking about his loss to Cena last night, which would have led to Lesnar and Paul Heyman coming out to set up a future match between the two. They're also confirming Rock flew out to Los Angeles, completely catching the company by surprise and putting a lot of heat on himself in the process.

UPDATE 3:

According to the Observer, Rock is missing Raw tonight because he suffered an injury in his match with Cena last night, though the severity of the injury is not known at this time. That seems like an interesting reason to miss the show, and it doesn't explain the backstage panic at his not being there, unless he suffered the injury and left without telling anyone, which makes no sense at all.

UPDATE 4:

Dave Meltzer wrote the following on The Board over at F4WOnline.com: "Definitely not a creative issue. Everything they were planning tonight was right from his mouth and laid out by him to creative, not the other way around. He was the one who told Brock the angle and Brock was more than fine with it. Don't know the severity of the injury. Don't want to speculate more until I hear more." Take that for what you will.

UPDATE 5:

Here's the story as we know it now.