Not everyone could smell what “The Rock” was up to at the start of Dwayne Johnson’s WWE career. In the season 3 premiere WWE Rivals on A&E, a number of retired WWE wrestlers recalled feelings of “jealousy” during Johnson’s early rise to the top of the pro wrestling company.
Johnson, 51, and retired WWE star Paul “Triple H” Levesque, 54, were the subjects of Sunday’s episode, which looked at the two award-winning wrestling stars and what A&E called the “infamous feud between” them.[began] with their fierce World Cup rivalry in the early 2000s.”
And according to WWE Rivals, Johnson and Levesque’s rivalry didn’t end when the cameras stopped rolling. “There’s always been a competition between those two,” said longtime WWE producer Bruce Prichard. “There’s a reason you believed these two guys didn’t like each other: they didn’t.”
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Dwayne Johnson.
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Levesque wasn’t the only one eyeing Johnson early in his career. Johnson’s early push from top WWE executives at the time rubbed several wrestlers the wrong way.
Johnson, whose father Rocky Johnson and grandfather Peter Maivia were former WWE wrestlers, debuted with the professional wrestling company at one of its biggest events, the Survivor Series pay-per-view, in 1996. He pinned Levesque, a seasoned veteran, to help his team win their debut game.
“No one has ever achieved so much success so quickly!” a WWE announcer said in a flashback of Johnson leaving for a match during his first year. Just three months later, Johnson had already won his first WWE title, the Intercontinental Championship, defeating Levesque for the second time.
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“I’ll tell you, when he first came, there was a little bit of jealousy and people were like, ‘Why are they pushing this kid?’ ” Glenn Jacobs, who wrestled as “Kane” throughout the 1990s and 2000s, said in the episode. “He fought it.” Levesque said he remembers Johnson “taking a ton of s—” from wrestlers backstage and fans in the crowd, who quickly turned on him. Johnson said in the episode that WWE’s fan base “saw through” the company’s open support for him at the time, prompting the crowd to “boo” and chant him. “Rocky is shit!” when he appeared on camera.
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“Hollywood” Hulk Hogan and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
George Pimentel/WireImage
Soon, Johnson played on their tastelessness and created the character “The Rock”, whose rash trash talk finally won over the WWE audience. By November 1998, Johnson had won the first of his 10 world championships.
“It was a big deal at the time,” Levesque said in the episode. “The titles didn’t change that often and I remember being jealous of that.”
Regardless of his jealousy at the time, Levesque said he knew it was inevitable that Johnson would become a “superstar” in WWE. “The first time I saw him, I was just thinking, this guy is going to be a star,” Levesque said. “He just looked.”
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WWE Rivals airs Sundays at 8:00 PM ET/PT on A&E
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Source: HIS Education