Dwayne Johnson
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
So I did consider it, and it was the summer of 1997.
And as I was rehabbing my knee, I got a call from the WWE saying,
who said that we're going to bring you back at the end of the summer, but there's going to be one difference.
And I said, what's that?
And they said, we're going to make you a heel.
And so in wrestling... A villain.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's at parlance.
Babyface is a good guy.
Heel is a villain.
And they said, we're going to make you a heel when you come back.
I said, great.
I just want any kind of change.
And I went back as a villain.
And probably about three months later, the rest was history.
And I took on the persona of The Rock.
So my original name when I went in to WWE was Rocky Maivia.
And I hated that name because it was, when I got into wrestling, as you said in my introduction, my grandfather was a pro wrestler, my dad was a pro wrestler, my grandmother was one of the first female promoters.
in pro wrestling, so I came from a long lineage.