dwayne johnson history

 dwayne johnson history 

Dwayne Douglas Johnson (born May 2, 1972), also known by his ring name The Rock, is an American actor, producer, and semi-retired professional wrestler. Johnson was a college football player for the University of Miami, with whom he won a national championship in 1991. He initially aspired to a professional career in football, but was cut by the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and began training as a professional wrestler in the summer of 1995.[7] In 1996, Johnson secured a contract with the WWE when it was known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and was promoted as the first third-generation wrestler in the company's history as he is the son of Rocky Johnson and grandson of Peter Maivia. He rose to prominence after developing a charismatic persona of a boastful trash-talking wrestler named The Rock. He subsequently won his first WWF Championship in 1998 and helped usher the WWF into the "Attitude Era", a boom period in the company's business in the latter 1990s and early 2000s which still hold professional wrestling records for television ratings.[8] In 2004, he left the WWE to pursue an acting career and went on a seven-year hiatus before returning in 2011 as a part-time performer until 2013. Considered to be one of the greatest professional wrestlers and biggest draws of all-time,[9][10] The Rock headlined the most bought professional wrestling pay-per-view event, WrestleMania XXVIII, and was featured in some of the most watched WWE Raw and WWE SmackDown television episodes ever.[11][12] He has won several championships in his career, being a two-time Intercontinental Champion, a five-time tag team champion, and a ten-time world champion.[13] He was also a Royal Rumble match winner and WWE's sixth Triple Crown champion. Johnson has also attained success as an actor, producer, and writer.[14][15] In 2000, he released an autobiography titled The Rock Says... which debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.[16][17] Johnson played his first lead acting role in The Scorpion King (2002) and went on to star in numerous other films, including The Rundown (2003), The Other Guys (2010), Moana (2016), and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017). His most successful box office role has been a recurring role as Luke Hobbs in The Fast and the Furious movies, helping it become one of the top-grossing film franchises in history.[18] In 2012, he founded his production company, Seven Bucks Productions, which has since produced several films.[19] Consistently ranked among the world's highest paid actors,[20] Johnson made the Time 100 Most Influential People in the World list in both 2016 and 2019