It took some time and acknowledgment that he made wrestling fans furious, but finally, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has leaned into the heel persona and pitted himself against Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins on the road to WrestleMania 40. Perhaps it was the "Rocky sucks" chants that resonated as the wrestler-turned-superstar recalled how that exact chant almost drove him from WWE to the world of MMA.
Johnson appeared as a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience and talked about his disastrous first year in the WWE. Fans began to chant "Rocky sucks" every match he had, even as he defended his Intercontinental Championship as the face at WrestleMania 13. The Rock talked about that match and the backstage conversation that followed it:
I was wrestling,The Sultan, who is actually my cousin Rikishi, he had me in a rear chin lock. Whole arena is chanting 'Rocky Sucks,' he's whispering to me, 'Don't listen to them, don't listen to them.' I'm like, 'Fuck, this is my life now.' We get out of the match, backstage Vince [McMahon] looks at me and Pat [Patterson] just says, 'I don't know what we did wrong, but we have to make a change.'
Following that conversation, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, then working as Rocky Maivia, dropped his title and soon needed some time off after an injury. The time allowed both parties some time to evaluate what went wrong, and while WWE thought about new angles for Johnson, he thought about a new career entirely.
Mind you, this was before the world was worried about upcoming Dwayne Johnson movies or even saw him as an actor at all. As such, he had his mind moving in a completely different direction, and it was inspired by a new organization popping up in MMA over in Japan:
In '97, I was still going out to L.A. and working out. We were crossing all the MMA guys. Pride just opened up in Japan. So I was seeing all these MMA guys going over to Pride...At that time I was making $150,000 wrestling 235 days a year. So, do the math on that, how much you're making per match. We start hearing hey these guys in Pride are making $250k, $350k, $500k, and I thought, 'Well fuck, I don't think I'm gonna make it in WWE. People are booing me out of these arenas. I can't be myself. They're telling me to fucking smile. I don't want to fucking smile, it's not who I am.' I start talking to Ken Shamrock at that time who was wrestling with us. I ran into Mark Kerr...and I have this idea in my head well maybe I should train to MMA and go to Pride and make money, real money.
One doesn't need a Peacock subscription to know about some of the successful crossovers between pro wrestling and MMA. Dwayne Johnson saw an opportunity to make more money over in Pride, at the trade-off of taking real punches but working less. He also saw an opportunity to be himself, and now smile through the boos in WWE.
The idea about moving to MMA was serious enough that Johnson was training to make the switch until a fateful call from Vince McMahon. The Rock continue the rest of the story, and how he eventually leaned into being a heel upon returning to the WWE:
I find the right coach and train so I had this whole thing in my head. I was talking to my wife at that time I said, 'I think that's the way to go.'...I get a call from Vince, and he says, 'How's your knee,' and I say, 'It's healing up.' I don't tell them about this idea after I talked to Shamrock and Kerr and all these guys. He goes, 'I want to try and bring you back, one time. See how it turns out. I want to turn you heel. And we have a faction called Nation of Domination...'I'm walking out there, they're booing me, 'Rocky sucks,' but now I'm a heel with this heel group. I grab the microphone and I say something like, 'Listen I'm a lot of things, but sucks isn't one of them. Joining the Nation isn't a white thing, it isn't a black thing, it's a me kicking you ass thing.'...The fans felt something that night. Within a month I became the hottest heel in WWE.
The Rock's heel turn went over with fans in a big way, and it's part of why many are so excited to see him embrace it once more upon returning to the WWE. Commiting to the heel turn and teaming with Roman Reigns, rather than against him, is the exact boost this storyline needed to propel it even further than it's gotten without Dwayne Johnson. Had he stayed the course and wrestled Reigns without taking into consideration what the fans wanted, the "Rocky sucks" chants might've haunted him again at WrestleMania 40.
The real question is now that heel Rock is here, is how often we'll see him at upcoming WWE events. As a member of the TKO Board of Directors, he has a vested interest in helping promote the wrestling organization further, but how he'll do that after this coming WrestleMania remains to be seen.
The Rock, who now retains the full rights to that nickname, is back in WWE and appearing on SmackDown, which airs on Fox on Fridays at 8:00 p.m. ET. Tune in to see what "The Great One" has to say, and what is next for him as we march closer to the big showdown at WrestleMania 40.
