The Rock went on to share that this reality check turned out to be a defining moment in his life. When he went home, he had time to reflect on what he truly wanted to do. This led him to realize that his dream of making it to the NFL wasn\u2019t as realistic as he once thought.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why when his CFL coach came calling, asking if he wanted to come to training camp, Johnson respectfully declined.\u00a0 \u201cI said, \u2018Coach, I appreciate it, but I\u2019m going to have to close this chapter of my life,\u2019\u201d Johnson remembered.<\/p>\n
Naturally, this gave The Rock some closure on his football journey. His old coach thanked him for his time and wished him the best in life. Little did he know that Johnson would one day become a Hollywood star.<\/p>\n
However, Johnson still had to break the news to his parents about his decision to walk away from football. He told them he wanted to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps and pursue professional wrestling instead, but that conversation quickly turned into a heated argument.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHe hated it. Oh, we got into a huge fight that night\u2026 But that became very defining for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Johnson\u2019s dad eventually came around to the idea. And thank goodness that he did, because The Rock would soon become a sensation. He first debuted under the wrestling name Rocky Maivia, a combination of his grandfather\u2019s and father\u2019s ring names. Then, after transitioning to the WWE, his eventual \u201cThe Rock\u201d nickname stuck with audiences.<\/p>\n
All in all, it\u2019s a good story that shows sometimes what we think we\u2019re meant to do isn\u2019t always the best fit. Moreover, if you stay open-minded and driven, you\u2019ll eventually find your true calling. For Johnson, it took two failed attempts at making it to the NFL, but he went on to become one of the most famous wrestlers of all time \u2026 and later, an even bigger Hollywood star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnson could have been an NFL player had Warren Sapp not taken his job at…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":300797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[12338,185,107253,171,67,132,68,153006],"class_list":{"0":"post-300796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-canadian-football-league","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-dwayne-the-rock-johnson","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-warren-sapp"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115368741127750968","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}