there are a lot of wrestlers who have become big stars within the industry just look at the likes of roman reigns randy orton or triple h for evidence of this there are even a select few who have managed to breach the mainstream such as hulk hogan steve austin or john cena that said no one in the history of wrestling has ever been able to smash through that glass ceiling into the larger culture quite like dwayne johnson going from arguably the biggest star in wwe during the late 90s and early 2000s to at points the highest grossing movie star in the world over a decade later
yes it's been a long and storied voyage to the top for the great one but how did it all happen well join us today as we take a deep dive into his entire career journey in people's champ the rock story dwayne douglas johnson was born on may 2 1972 in hayward california to parents atta and rocky the letter of which of course was the legendary territory wrestler soulman rocky johnson one half of the first ever african-american wwe tag team champions with tony atlas and you'd think this alone would make it destiny for the young dwayne to get into the world of sports entertainment but as
if that wasn't enough he was also a member of the iconic noie family on his mother's side his grandfather being the high chief peter mayavia the blood brother of amatunawai on hawaii the patriarch of the clan despite this lineage and a natural gift for athletics however duane would notgrow up wanting to be a wrestler sure he would enjoy watching it as a child frequently seeing many of his kin kicking ass and taking names but when it came to where he saw his own career going it was very much in football a
sport he would start playing at school and would quickly discover he had a lot of skill in that said though school days weren't always fun and games for the future movie star as he would find himself getting into a lot of trouble with the police during those days getting arrested multiple times during his teenage years as he struggled to develop any roots given the fact that his family would frequently move around from place to place as a consequence of his father's job yes during his formative days dwayne would spend time in places as far and wide as new zealand hawaii north carolina connecticut tennessee and pennsylvania all before settling in florida after he'd accepted a football scholarship for the university of miami there he would play mostly as a defensive tackle and would even win anational championship with them in 1991. this being enough so that after graduating in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in criminology and physiology he would move over to the canadian football league where he had a brief run with the calgary stampeders as a linebacker still for a man as driven as dwayne was he quickly realized that he wasn't reaching the levels he wanted to and so by 1996 he decided to make the jump over to the world of his father and grandfather instead from there beginning his training in pro wrestling
and given his name and the fact that he'd taken to the whole thing like a duck to water it didn't take long then for pat patterson to notice him with him getting the youngster several tryouts with wwe where he would perform under
his real name taking on the likes of owen hart chris candido and the brooklyn brawler at house shows
following this dwayne would make a brief pit stop in jerry lawler's united states wrestling association working under the
name of flex cavana and winning their tag team titles with bart sawyer all this before getting signed up to a
full-time contract with vince mcmahon's promotion then being sent over to dr tom prichard to complete his training
and so by that year's survivor series pay-per-view on november 17 1996 having made his tv debut just two weeks earlier
dwayne was finally ready to hit the ring for his first match there now being re-christened as rocky maya via a combination of both his
father and grandfather's names he took part in a four on four elimination match that would see him end up becoming the
sole survivor clearly showing that the company saw a lot in his future and as the weeks went on the hard push
for the third generation superstar continued come february 13th 1997 he would even beat a young hunter hurst helmsley to
win the intercontinental title for the first time despite this though there was already a fan backlash growing as with the company
now being in the dawning age of the anti-hero where the likes of stone cold steve austin would become the cool thing
to like the smiling babyface theatrics of rocky were largely seen as passe and so this led to him getting vitriolic
heat from audiences some of whom would even go as far as to bring signs that read die rocky die all while loudly
chanting rocky sucks at him seeing this then wwe decided to pivot and so after rocky suffered a knee
injury and had to take some time out the company began making plans to turn him heel a decision that would become
apparent on screen when he returned in of 1997 with him from there joining up with the nation of domination
and lashing out at those fans who had been booing him and in the process of this with his confidence
now growing rocky was able to let his natural charisma come through as he began to develop the cocky and
effortlessly cool side to his character that would soon go on to define him this was also when he changed his name to the
rock and started referring to himself only in third person using this change in attitude to help propel him back
towards success as he entered into a feud with steve austin later that year this program ultimately serving as a
tease for what the future would hold for both men and by the end of that first chapter the rock would once again be the
intercontinental champion from there going on to defend this belt against ken shamrock over the next few months
but despite shamrock clearly being positioned as the babyface in this rivalry by that point the sheer charisma
of his opponent was becoming too much for fans to ignore as more than a few cheers began seeping in through the
chorus of booze cheers that would only grow over time as rocky morphed into the most electrifying man in sports
entertainment a star in-ring athlete and arguably the greatest promo in wrestling history one who could hold crowds
everywhere in the palm of his hand much like rock stars of the past such as elvis presley and freddie mercury
in fact so over had he become by then that the night after wrestlemania 14 he would overthrow farook as the leader of
the nation from there taking up the mantle himself as the stable entered into a feud with degeneration x a feud
that would eventually center on the rivalry between rocky and triple h and this was a rivalry that would seep
into real life as well as both men had made it clear that they wanted to be the company's next top dog and saw the other
as being in their way of achieving this ultimately though rocky was just too popular to be overcome at that point and
so even though he would lose his ic title to the game during a ladder match at august 30th 1998 summerslam he would
soon find himself being rocketed up to the main event anyway of course before this could happen
though vince mcmahon would have to address the elephant in the room and turn him baby face given that the great
one was getting monster reactions everywhere he went by now he'd already started referring to
himself as the people's champion some months previous to this a moniker that was initially supposed to get heal heat
for the california native come the autumn though it was clear that he was indeed the favorite of the people
arguably even more so than the company's top star steve austin and so when the wwe title was vacated that autumn with a
new champion to be determined during a one night tournament at november's survivor series pay-per-view there only
seemed like two reasonable options for the winner the rattlesnake or the rock what no one expected though was on that
night rocky would win his first wwe title but only after turning his back on the people and joining forces with the
evil boss and his corporation cronies in the process with him from there only referring to himself as the corporate
champion and basking in the booze of the audience once more now it might have seemed like a strange
thing for wwe to turn one of their hottest star's heel right as they were reaching the next level of popularity
but there was a method to this madness as he was being positioned for a big main event at wrestlemania 15 against
the man who was fast becoming the ying to his yang stone cold himself before this though he would have a feud
with mick foley at the start of the year one which would see them trade the world title back and forth for a few months
and would feature some truly iconic moments such as the night mick won his first wwe title on the january 4th 1999
episode of raw the time the two men fought inside an empty arena during halftime heat and the now infamous i
quit match at the royal rumble later that month once this was over though and foley had
fully prepared his opponent for the biggest match of his life it was down to business as wwe began building that
year's wrestlemania main event where the company's two biggest superstars would meet in their inevitable showdown
on the night however it would be austin who would get the win and even when rocky got another shot at the following
month's backlash a match which was better than the previous encounter he still wouldn't be able to
pin his rival to regain his lost gold still failure wasn't a word in the great one's vocabulary and so quickly bouncing
back from this then he gave fans what have been begging for when he finally turned babyface again the next night
reigniting his feud with triple h in the process as he started making it his aim to take out the corporation one by one
and now formerly a good guy again the rock's popularity swelled to even greater heights than it had before he
had excellent matches with the likes of the undertaker over the course of the first half of the year while also
continuing to prove that he was the best promo in the business becoming an absolute catchphrase machine as he gave
us the likes of laying the smack down just bring it and it doesn't matter all while the millions and millions of his
fans chanted along with every word by that summer he even got the distinction of having the company's
newest show smackdown be named after one of his catchphrases and it was on smackdown as well as raw that he would
form an unlikely bond with his old rival mick foley the two going on to form the rock and sock connection probably the
best odd couple team in wwe history as the effortlessly cool rocky would bounce off the weird and freaky foley perfectly
it took a while for mick to endear himself to his far more stylish partner of course but once he did it was magic
at every step in fact they're now famous this is your life segment on the august 30th episode
of raw which saw mick regal the great one with supposed figures from his past would become the highest ever rated
segment in the show's history at that time and from there the two would even have three separate runs as tag team
champions together holding those belts on and off until october of 1999 as fans cheered them along at every step
they would only really lose them in fact when the hardcore legend feeling the wear and tear of his ears of ultra high
risk style began readying himself for retirement on top of that the fact that Steve
Austin was about to spend a year out of action so he could go get neck surgery left a face of the company-shaped hole
that the people's champion was only too happy to pick up becoming the undisputed top star of wwe throughout 2000 a year
which to this day is still considered by many to be the absolute peak of not just Vince McMahon's promotion but of
wrestling in general and of course with the most eyeballs that had ever watched the show now
firmly tuned in each week the rock's magnetic charisma shone through screens around the world this turning him into a
full-blown mainstream phenomenon as he made guest appearances on the likes of that 70s show and star trek voyager
while also hosting saturday night live and even becoming the subject of a song by wyclef jean
he became a pop culture icon in fact as even more so than steve austin and hulk hogan the california boy became the
public face of wrestling this all helped his continued upward momentum in the ring too as by april
30th backlash pay-per-view he would finally be able to pin triple h to become wwe champion once more with him
from there defending this belt against a who's who over that summer that included the likes of kurt angle chris benoit the
undertaker kane and even the mcmahons themselves in fact during a year when steve austin
was gone from action it was the rock and to a lesser extent the game that ended up carrying the company on their backs
this proving that when given the ball to run with the people's champion could not be stopped
even when austin returned to action in the autumn the great one's progress was installed and by this point there was
even a legitimate argument to be had about who was the real top star in the promotion that was why it felt inevitable then
that the two would meet once more with this eventually happening at april 1st 2001's wrestlemania 17 the show that's
still to this day regarded by many to be the greatest ever put on by any company and a big part of this was the perfect
main event that saw arguably the two biggest stars in the industry's history at that point battling it out to see
once and for all who was the best of course anyone who is watching at the time will remember that while the rock
went into the show as the champion he lot a loser after the rattlesnake had done the unthinkable and aligned himself
with vince mcmahon in order to wrangle the title away from his opponent in hindsight the heel turn was a
decision that's been credited as the reason for the boom period ending and while it was a large part of it it also
hurt that it was the point when rocky first began getting interest from hollywood with this pulling his focus
away from wrestling more and more in the years that followed as movies gradually became his priority
after wrestlemania 17 in fact he would take some time off to go and film his first major role as the scorpion king in
the mummy 2. and so successful was this role for him that just a year later he would get his own spin-off unsurprisingly named the
scorpion king as his momentum continued that wasn't to say he was done with wrestling altogether though because he
would have a few more prominent runs left in him the first of which would begin when he came back from his
beatdown at the hands of austin and mcmahon to rescue team wwe during the invasion storyline in mid-2001
positioning himself then as the captain of the new york promotion in their ongoing war against the villainous
alliance of wcw and ecw during this time he would even become the wcw champion on two separate
occasions beating booker t at that year's summerslam to start his first reign and then chris jericho on the
november 5th episode of raw to start hissecond and as if that wasn't enough it would
ultimately be rocky who would save thecompany when he got the winning pinfallover the rattlesnake during the
winner-take-all match at that year's survivor series this formerly ending the invasion and leaving wwe as the ultimate
victors from there the people's champion set his sights on becoming the first undisputed champion and though he would ultimately
fail to do this he did get quite the consolation prize when in february of 2002 the nwo came into the company and
immediately set about injecting everything in their sights with a lethal dose of poison of this takeover included hulk
hogan coming out to do a promo on the february 18th episode of raw intent on positioning himself as the top dog once
again after having been away for the last nine years of course during those nine years things had changed a lot and
now the hulkster was arguably no longer the biggest star in the industry that's why the great one felt the need
to hit the ring and confront him from there challenging him to have a dreammatch at the upcoming wrestlemania 18
one which hogan accepted with glee and so just like that maybe the most important bout in wrestling history had
been booked the biggest mainstream star of the past versus the biggest mainstream star of the present
given how anticipated the whole thing was then the actual contest had a lot to live up to and had it been two lesser
performers in the ring that night it could have very easily fallen flat on its face
luckily though rocky and hogan were not two lesser performers and so when the time for the bell came they played the
crowd like a fiddle doing very little but speaking volumes with what they did do
in terms of a sustained match long crowd reaction it's probably still the most intense atmosphere ever seen at a
wrestling show and though nostalgia did lead many in the crowd to cheer for hogan that night and even a few to boo
rocky by the end it would be the people's champion who would get the pinfall
the torch having been firmly passed over to him in a truly once in a lifetime moment after that the budding hollywood star
hung around for a little while longer before going off to shoot his next movie the rundown
during this time before he left he would be the first overall pick during the company's inaugural draft and would even
become undisputed champion for a period after beating kurt angle and the undertaker in a hugely underrated triple
threat match at july 21 2002's vengeance following this he would put the incoming brock lesnar over strong at the next
month's summerslam pay-per-view making the beast look like an absolute killer in the process during a match of the
year contender as he proved that he was still willing to do the honors for others whenever required
despite this selfless attitude though by then the constant sabbaticals to go and film movies had left some fans to start
souring on the great one with the perception beginning to build that he was abandoning them for the glitz and
glamour of hollywood that was largely why when he returned to the ring on january 30th 2003 he'd once
again morphed into a heel this time portraying himself as hollywood rock an iteration that many years removed now
regard to be his best maybe it was because he once again truly felt like the cocky performer he had
been back when he first got over coming out to the ring with an arrogant toothy smile and dark sunglasses performing
special rock concerts where he would serenade everyone with his own hits such as smackdown hotel all while mocking the
fans in attendance it was a complete revitalization of the character and it propelled him towards
much success as he would not only beat hulk hogan for a second straight time during the rematch at february 23rds no
way out but he would also finally get that elusive win over steve austin during the third in their trilogy at
wrestlemania 19 a month later the very mean that ended up being the rattlesnake's swan song from the ring
and as if retiring stone cold wasn't enough the hollywood star continued to prove he was a class act and someone who
would give back to those lower down on the card when he had a mini program with the hurricane even going as far as to
lose to him on the march 10th episode of
raw following this he had a match with the incoming goldberg with the great one coming out on the losing end of that
bout too as he prepared to once again leave and go film his next movie walking tall throughout the remainder of the year he
would make sporadic appearances with the company however returning once again as a babyface and eventually setting up a
tag match at wrestlemania xx where he would reunite with his old rock and sock tag team partner mick foley to take on
ric flair batista and randy orton of evolution and that as it turned out aside from a couple more cameo appearances would be
his last major appearance with wwe for almost a decade as in late 2004 his contract would lapse and the company
would neglect to sign him to a new one with them at the time blaming this on an administrational error
of course the idea that vince mcmahon simply forgot to resign the rock is laughable and it seems far more likely
that there was some beef between the two parties particularly as by then the people's champion was becoming such a
big movie star that he was starting to outshine the brand of wwe itself removing himself almost entirely from
the world of wrestling then and focusing of his energies on his film career instead rocky started going by his real
name of dwayne johnson once again as he began building on his already impressive portfolio of box office hits
but while many of his more comedic-leaning early roles had made him a legitimate star such as his
performances in kids movies like race to witch mountain and the tooth fairy it wasn't until he got the role of luke
hobbs in the fast and furious franchise that he fully solidified his position as a modern-day arnold schwarzenegger level
action hero and at points the biggest box office attraction in the entire movie industry
that's what made it so special and so unexpected then when after seven years of having been away from wwe he was
announced as the surprise guest host of wrestlemania 27 on the february 14 2011 episode of raw coming out to a monster
reaction and then cutting a promo on one half of that year's main event john cena lambasting him for public comments he
had made about the great one that criticized him for abandoning wwe for so long and as it happened these comments had
led to real-life heat between the two men as dwayne felt disrespected by them capitalizing on this then the company
began using it to set up an eventual match between the two something which was solidified when at wrestlemania 27
rocky laid out cena with a rock bottom and cost him the win this causing big match jon to make a challenge to the
great one the next night on raw face him one-on-one at the following year's wrestlemania 28.yes it was a unique marketing strategy
to book the main event of wrestlemaniaone year in advance but it worked because when the rock came back for a
tune-up match at november 20th survivor series teaming with his future opponent to take on the miz and our truth the
show did monster box office buys and if there was any doubt about how the singles match would work out
wrestlemania 28 made even more money becoming the best drawing wwe pay-per-view in history as in an echo of
his showdown with hulk hogan a decade prior rocky faced off in a past versus present dream match which to the
surprise of many saw the hollywood star pick up the win of course the reason for this soon became apparent as whispers began going
around the wwe were planning to book a rematch the following year using the intervening time to tell the story of
john cena finding redemption after having suffered the biggest loss of his career
this did slightly dampen the idea of the original match having been promoted as once in a lifetime but nevertheless the
return bout was always destined to be another huge success especially when the people's champion once again became the
wwe champion after beating cm punk for the title at the 2013 royal rumble making this second encounter between the
two faces of the company for all the gold and in the natural conclusion to this story when the two faced off one more
time at wrestlemania 29 on april 7 2013 cena finally got his redemption when he pinned the great one in the middle of
the ring to regain his gold and his pride in the process as of the time of this video's recording
though that would mark rocky's last real mean in a wwe ring something no doubt partially decided by the fact that he
injured himself during it tearing multiple tendons and causing his latest movie hercules shooting schedule to have
to get delayed as a result given the fact that this would have cost the studio a lot of money it's understandable why most producers are
now less happy to have dwayne wrestle matches and it's meant that aside from one sort of impromptu match with eric
rowan at wrestlemania 32 that lasted all of six seconds whenever he's returned since it's been in a non-wrestling role
either showing up to deliver one of his trademark promos inducting his father and grandfather into the wwe hall of
fame or helping out the likes of ronda rousey or his cousin roman reigns outside of the ring though his movie
career has only continued to go from strength to strength with his continued roles in the fast and the furious
franchise even leading to him and jason statham getting their own spin-off hobbs and shaw in 2019
as well as that he's also done multiple films for disney having feature roles in hits such as moana and the jungle cruise
while also starring in a number of buddy comedies with his frequent collaborator kevin hart and continuing to build his empire even
further from here he's moved into film production creating his own company seven bucks production and helping to
fund projects such as the jumanji reboot and his next major upcoming role set in the dc universe black adam and
oftentimes foil to the likes of superman and shazam on top of this he's developed and starred in a number of tv shows
such as ballers the titan games and young rock the latter of which tells the story of his younger years before he was the most
electrifying man in entertainment all that well meanwhile back in the world of sports he's recently purchased
the xfl with him now planning on doing what vince mcmahon was never able to do by turning it into a legitimate force in
the world of football but the question most wrestling fans will continue to ask is will we ever see
him in the ring again well up until recently that might have felt unlikely but given recent rumors that have been
going around it seems like he's actually getting set to make yet another triumphant return this time supposedly
to face his cousin and current face of the wwe roman reigns in fact many expect this match will take place next year at wrestlemania 38 but
there's been no confirmation yet as of the time of this video's recording so we'll have to wait and see if it happens
whether it does or not though the rock's legacy is secured as one of the greatest if not the greatest professional
wrestler of all time really if we were talking about box office draw and mainstream success the
only two people who could challenge him are hulk hogan and steve austin at a time when the industry was at its
hottest the people's champion had audiences everywhere glued to their screens and he's proven in the years
since that no matter how long he stays away for he'll always be just as relevant whenever he chooses to come
back but in ring's success aside he's also been able to break out of the wrestling bubble in a way that no one
else before him has at this point there's a whole generation of people who don't even associate him
with being a wrestler anymore in fact to them he's not the rock he's dwayne johnson the biggest movie star in the
world and while for wrestling fans he'll always be their guy for the larger culture that will ultimately be his
legacy as one of the greatest entertainers of his generation someonewho's managed to completely dominate
hollywood and who doesn't look likely to give up this role anytime soon based on what he's got lined up over the next few
years so with that in mind then we should all get used to many more years of seeing him electrifying our screens because
he's only going to get bigger and better from here whether it be in football wrestling business or movies and that's
a fact if yes
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