Things could have been a hell of a lot different for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had he not stuck with acting after leaving the WWE in 2004.
Arguably, the biggest star in the sport of wrestling back then, The Rock said that he had aspirations of, possibly, joining the UFC 12 years ago, as he told Jim Norton and Matt Serra on the UFC Unfiltered podcast Thursday.
“There was a time there where I thought, man, I achieved everything I wanted to achieve in WWE, my movie career is floundering a little bit, what do I do?” Johnson said. “I was relatively still young, I think I was 34. I thought, oh well maybe UFC. Maybe I should do something like that.”
“In my head, I felt like it was at least a two-year process for me to even get in the [cage], let alone the UFC,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t quite too sure what to do or what kind of people to put around me at the time, so the idea kind of fizzled out and I continued to stay on the path of movie making.”
“Anybody, by the way, who is successful in one area and then commits to MMA, I just feel like it’s the toughest f*cking sport in the world,” Johnson said. “I always take my hat off to those guys.”
“Still a big fan and love the sport,” Johnson said. “But at one time, I did consider it.”
Johnson would’ve been one of a handful of WWE stars who made the leap from the WWE to the UFC—with Brock Lesnar, Ken Shamrock and, currently, CM Punk trying to do the same thing.
Now 44 and one of the biggest action stars in Hollywood, it doesn’t sound like The Rock regrets his decision to try his hand at acting, but it would have been interesting to see what the 6’5″, 260-pound behemoth could have done inside the Octagon.