A few months ago, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson made an agreement with WWE to return to the ring. When he did this, everyone involved figured he’d be featured in the main event of WrestleMania 40 against his cousin Roman Reigns. Instead, a fan revolt, a creative pivot, and a need to save a potentially ruined marquee event caused Johnson to do what has defined his career since he began as a wrestler: he had to pivot. Johnson created a brand new character and evolved into a new version of himself. It’s what he does best — because if The Rock is going to do one thing, it’s reinventing himself to survive.
Johnson began his WWE career as a guaranteed star. The first third-generation star in the sport — his father was Soul Man Rocky Johnson and his grandfather was the High Chief Peter Maivia — he was billed as the company’s blue chipper. Rocky Maivia, as Johnson was known then, came to the WWE as a 24-year-old version of what wrestlers call a “white meat babyface” — a smiling, jovial, good-natured athlete like Hulk Hogan or Sting. However, this coincided with a new WWE “Attitude Era” that blurred the lines between good guys and bad guys. Good guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin cursed, drank beer, and were rebellious. So there just wasn’t space for Rocky’s brand of corniness.
It didn’t take long for fans to boo him at every turn. They would chant, “Rocky sucks” and “Die, Rocky, die,” even when Johnson was supposed to be the good guy. His career was doomed.
Then Dwayne Johnson reinvented himself.
After an injury kept him sidelined for weeks in 1997, Johnson returned as someone wholly different. He became a bad guy, a heel, joining the Nation Of Domination, an all-Black Nation Of Islam-inspired group that antagonized fans, especially white ones. This is where Rocky Maivia died and The Rock arose in his place.
“I grabbed the microphone. Fans were already booing. They started chanting, ‘Rocky sucks,’” Johnson told HuffPost in 2016. “In that moment, The Rock was born … A month later, I was the hottest heel in the company.”
Johnson wouldn’t just be the hottest bad guy in the company. He’d become a fan favorite, spending the next four years competing with Stone Cold Steve Austin as the biggest star during wrestling’s most popular era. Part of Johnson’s greatness was his improvisation, calling audibles in the ring and dropping comedic gold on the mic. It was clear he could be a star beyond wrestling. Soon, he’d turn that potential into reality.
Johnson’s foray into film and television would prove to be his most important transformation. And it hasn’t always been as smooth. When The Rock entered Hollywood, it felt like a surefire move, and it was treated as such. His first starring role in The Scorpion King in 2002 would deliver, at the time, the biggest April Box Office performance ever. His next big feature, The Rundown, featured a cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a move that would signify a passing of the torch to the next great action hero. Still, Johnson had a foot firmly planted in the wrestling world, even if fans were starting to sour on him.
By 2003, Johnson had switched from a professional wrestler to a megastar actor who happened to wrestle sometimes. Fans noticed the shift and soured on the former People’s Champ, claiming he abandoned them for Hollywood’s glitz. They’d begun booing Johnson every time he made a guest appearance, culminating in massive “you sold out” chants. The Rock was supposed to be beloved when he returned, but fans had other ideas.
That’s when Johnson made one of his most brilliant pivots. He would evolve into Hollywood Rock, a character that leaned into everything fans said about him. He’d interrupt his interviews with phone calls to his agent. He’d complain about how he hated the small towns he’d been booked to appear in. He delivered hilariously villainous promos in every city he went to, from Sacramento to Toronto. Johnson took fan reactions and turned them into his best work. He was such a great villain that he left fans clamoring for more. And though he’d make some one-off appearances for the next few years, The Rock had essentially ended his wrestling career.
It was time to take over Hollywood for good.
When we look at Johnson’s film career in 2024, it’s hard to imagine a time when he wasn’t a guaranteed hit-maker. But Johnson’s foray into acting was, well, rocky. That was largely due to his decision to distance himself from professional wrestling.
“I was told at that time…here’s the biggest stars in the world: Will Smith, George Clooney, Johnny Depp,’ ” he said in an interview with The Pivot last year. “You look nothing like them. You gotta stop talking about wrestling. Stop calling yourself The Rock. You’re too big, go on a diet, get out of the gym.”
Johnson did exactly what he was told, ushering in a period from 2005 to 2010 when he seemed lost. He’d debut a new, slimmer body that was far from the buff wrestler he once was. He’d make family-friendly movies like The Game Plan (2007) and The Tooth Fairy (2010). The former was panned but performed well at the box office; the latter was a disaster and caused Johnson to rethink his whole approach.
“After [2010’s] Tooth Fairy,” his manager and ex-wife, Dany Garcia, told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. “We recognized that Dwayne was moving away from his core of who he was.”
Michael Buckner/Variety/Penske Media
When Johnson and Garcia decided to change representation, he returned to what made him great: Wrestling and action movies. In 2010, The Rock would return and host WrestleMania 27, immediately igniting a feud with the biggest wrestler in the world, John Cena. The two would feud across two WrestleManias, and the result was a WrestleMania 29 clash that broke every record WWE had at the time. It was also a chance for The Rock to reconnect with the fans who’d felt he left them behind.
As Johnson once again embraced wrestling, he also became the go-to guy to infuse energy into major movie franchises. He appeared in Fast and Furious 5, a movie that reminded everyone of the kind of star he could be and reminded studios of what kind of draw they had in Johnson. He did the same with Jumanji; a franchise that’s garnered nearly $2 billion since he became a star of the reboot. These moves would bring Johnson to the box office success that seemed like a no-brainer when he left wrestling. Movies like Moana, three more Fast and the Furious installments, and Central Intelligence with his frequent comedic collaborator Kevin Hart made Johnson feel like a guaranteed box office star.
For Johnson, though, not all changes bear immediate fruit. Some are career devastation.
Throughout Johnson’s entire rise to mainstream success, he’s had a quizzical relationship with politics. Johnson has flirted with the idea of running for president for nearly a decade. His TV show, Young Rock, was centered around a future presidential campaign. In 2020, Johnson delivered an Instagram video where he endorsed Joe Biden — the first real presidential endorsement of his career (he attended the 2020 Republican National Convention. However, that was part of a WWE-branded appearance where wrestlers would attend both parties’ conventions). Earlier this month, he stated that he regretted that endorsement.
“The takeaway after that was it caused an incredible amount of division,” he told Fox News. “I realize now going into this election, I will not do that. My goal is to bring this country together. I believe in that. There will be no endorsement. At this level of influence, I will keep my politics to myself. It is between me and the ballot box. But I will tell you this: Like a lot of us out there, not trusting of all politicians, I do trust the American people and whoever they vote for, that is my president and who I will support 100 percent.”
The comment was mostly met with eye rolls and reminded fans that Johnson has never quite had the range to engage in politics, yet he keeps trying to insert himself.
Just like he did with the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) — and the results were damaging. Johnson seemingly banked his acting career on the character Black Adam being a cornerstone of the DCEU for years to come. But the Black Adam film was a box office disappointment and truly awful. The internal power struggle for the future of the DCEU led to Johnson’s ouster from any future Black Adam plans. On the other side of the chaos was a movie run that has left Johnson without a major hit since 2019’s Jumanji: The Next Level.
Still, Johnson has managed to become as popular as ever, and that’s thanks to his most recent and creatively fruitful adaptation: Wrestling. Johnson returned as part of a deal that landed him on the board of directors for TKO Group Holdings, the company created by the WWE and UFC merger. As part of that deal, Johnson returned to the ring with a ready-made storyline that would pit him against his real-life cousin Roman Reigns in a WrestleMania 40 main event. The match would see the clash of the biggest star the sport has ever seen versus the man who had ruled WWE for the past decade and who had been champion for more than 1,000 days.
But there was one problem: fans rallied behind Cody Rhodes to be the man to end Reign’s title run at WrestleMania.
Johnson believed his star power would convince fans to back a match between him and Reigns. But fans revolted when WWE announced it would be Johnson instead of Rhodes in the bout. The announcement became the most disliked YouTube video in WWE history. Fans bombarded Johnson’s social media pages with complaints about the decision. Johnson and WWE had miscalculated. And they needed to adapt. Fast.
Within days, Johnson pivoted into a new story. He not only made the decision to write himself out of the match, giving Rhodes the main event against Reigns again, but he would also align with Reigns, joining the heel Bloodline faction. And this time, he created a new character, The Final Boss, who is a blend of all the villains he’d ever been. He was The Rock from the ’90s, antagonizing the audiences and calling them trailer trash. He was Hollywood Rock from 2003, acting bigger than the sport, insulted that a wrestler like Rhodes wouldn’t dare compare to him. But the new layer was where the magic happened.
The Rock was now unhinged, terrorizing and dropping F-bombs on the air. At 51, Johnson is at his bulkiest, adding a domineering presence to every angle. When he attacked Cody Rhodes at the end of the March 29th episode of Monday Night RAW, he made a bloody spectacle that was intense, intimidating and a little scary. The entire Rock return in 2024 has truly been the best acting of his career, including Hollywood. And it all culminated in a 40-plus-minute match on the first night of WrestleMania 40. Even as Johnson was being booed by fans, they still cheered when his music hit. His return helped WrestleMania become the highest-grossing event in company history.
These days, it feels like Rock is doing more than being an action star. He is someone comfortable in his craft.
On Monday, Johnson announced that he’ll be stepping away from wrestling for a while, which is to be expected as he goes off to film more films. He still has to figure out how to get out of his current Hollywood slump. Even if he doesn’t, he’s spent the last few months giving us the best work he’s ever done. And it’s all thanks to a career full of shifts, adapting, and taking his lead from the people.
