Dwayne Johnson Gets Candid About Returning to the Wrestling Ring at 52: 'It's Incredibly Hard' (Exclusive)

Dwayne Johnson returned to a WWE wrestling ring for the first time in 11 years for WrestleMania 40 last April – but his body isn’t responding the same way it did a decade ago.

“It’s incredibly hard,” Johnson, 52, told PEOPLE on Tuesday, Dec. 17, at the opening Natural amphitheater du Soleil ‘Auana in Honolulu. “Training gets really extensive and training camp gets really extensive.”

“So I left [to] training camp for WrestleMania, which was like eight to nine weeks of training camp,” he adds. “It’s really fast, and luckily I was able to get through everything.”

There is speculation, often fueled by Johnson, that he could return to the ring again — possibly for WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas next year.

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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson competes at WrestleMania 40 in Philadelphia on April 6, 2024.

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When he returned to the ropes last spring, he teamed with Roman Reigns and faced Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins, whom he calls “great dance partners.”

Since then, Johnson, also known as The Rock, has undergone another seven-week boot camp for 2025’s The Smashing Machine before closing out the year with a live action shoot Moana.

Of course, that’s not to mention promoting two movies back-to-back: Red and an animated sequel Moana 2.

“Red is special. It’s our little Christmas movie, as I like to call it, but also on Moana 2 more than anything, it’s really been an amazing global embrace of our Polynesian culture and how amazing that really is,” Johnson tells PEOPLE. “So it’s a good time.”

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Dwayne Johnson and daughter Jasmine at the Cirque du Soleil ‘Auana premiere in Honolulu on December 17, 2024.

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Johnson celebrated Polynesian and Hawaiian culture while attending the film’s premiere on Tuesday Cirque du Soleil ‘Auana at the Waikiki Beachcomber Hotel in Hawaii, the state where he lived during high school.

The actor attended the opening with his 9-year-old daughter Jasmine. He is also the father of daughters Simone Johnson (23) and Tiana (6).

“I think this Cirque du Soleil, we’ll call it aloha, Cirque du Soleil mana style, will be special,” he says. “It’s good to come home at this time and bring the little one here.”

Moana 2 it’s in theaters now, doc Red streaming on Prime Video.

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Source: HIS Education