Dwayne Johnson’s WWE Dreams Nearly Fell Apart After His First Meeting With Vince McMahon’s Right Hand Man
Dwayne Johnson also known as The Rock, is one of the most successful actors in the industry who started his career with being a professional wrestler and was soon regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. The former professional wrestler was also known to be an integral part of the development and success of WWF (WWE) in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The wrestler then shifted his focus towards acting and over the years, he has been a part of iconic movies and played characters that have indeed left a distinctive impression on the mind of the public. The actor soon climbed up the ladder of success in the industry and is now known to be one of the highest-paid actors in the industry. Johnson recently revealed how meeting Vincent McMahon’s right hand nearly shattered his dreams of wrestling.
Dwayne Johnson recalls meeting Pat Patterson
During a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Dwayne Johnson recalled reaching out to Pat Patterson who he describes as Vince McMahon; former CEO of WWE’s right-hand man. Johnson said Patterson was a brilliant mind in the world of professional wrestling adding that he was the first openly gay wrestler.
The actor explained that while he was training to get into professional wrestling, he called Patterson up and told him that he had been training to get into the wrestling business to which Patterson asked Dwayne Johnson;
“Why do you want to do that?”
Johnson shared with Rogan that he just asked him if he could come and watch him train which he did and asked him to work as heel (the bad guy) and then later told him to keep working and walked off. Dwayne Johnson noted at the time he thought he messed things up until he found out that Patterson called up Vincent McMahon to talk about him.
The retired wrestler continued that he later debuted on RAW where he wrestled Brooklyn Brawler in front of 14,000 people for his first ever-professional match and noted that after the match Pat Patterson told him that his punches suck.
Dwayne Johnson admits he did consider transitioning from WWF to MMA
During the interview, Dwayne Johnson shared with Joe Rogan that back in 1997, he actually did consider transitioning into the world of MMA. He said,
“In ’97, during that time, while 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 of that and how much you’re making per match. We start hearing, hey these guy over in pride are making 250, 350, 500 thousand dollars.”
Johnson continued,
“I thought then f**k, I don’t think I’m going to make it in WWE. People are booing me out of the arenas, I can’t be myself, they’re telling to f**king smile, I don’t want to f**king smile, it’s not who I am.”
Because of this, the retired wrestler said he considered training in MMA and going to Pride and making real money but then Vince McMahon told him that he wanted to turn Johnson into a heel and put him with the Nation of Domination. McMahon wanted to see how receiving the negative response would work for him and the rest is history.
