The Rock Says… (Autobiography) (2000)

Written by The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) and Joe Layden
Grade: C

For those wrestling fans wondering about the timeline of this book, it goes from the beginning of his life to right when he lost his rematch against The Undertaker for the WWF Championship at King of the Ring in June of 1999. So, though this book came out at Dwayne Johnson’s absolute peak as a wrestler, it was finished well before he hit the zenith of his career in 2000.

Summary

Following a dedication to his mother Ata and two separate quotes from Shakespeare and Willie Nelson, we get a prologue describing the entrance of The Rock as he gets ready to face off against Stone Cold Steve Austin for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania XV. However, it’s told through the perspective of the character The Rock, not the real-life Dwayne Johnson. Because of this, he starts off most of the paragraphs speaking about himself in the third person, how he’s the “best damn champion there ever was”, and how Austin’s “candy ass belongs to The Rock”. For fans of the WWF/E, you are aware that this is typical of Rock’s shtick.

Following this blurb, Chapter One (“Royal Rumbler”) officially begins, and the actual Dwayne Johnson steps in, telling his story from the heart. Starting with when he was just 8 years old, his family moved to Hawaii, but this wasn’t huge deal for him because his father was famous professional wrestler “Soulman” Rocky Johnson. When Rocky was a star in wrestling, the Territory Era dominated the landscape and he had to uproot his family constantly. Because of this, Dwayne referred to himself as a “road warrior”. He recalls that by the time he started kindergarten, he had already lived in five states and enjoyed it. After praising his mother for being the rock of the family during troubling times, he talks about being able to get closer with his grandparents once they moved to Hawaii, including with his famous star wrestler grandfather “High Chief” Peter Maivia. After an anecdote explaining Maivia’s toughness as well as kind-heartedness (kicking the shit out of some guy who insulted him and then making sure he was okay after he proved his point), he mentions a bit about how Maivia and his wife Leah consistently bickered but would always make up in the end, usually because of Maivia’s ability to serenade with his ukulele, a talent which I did not know he had. In the “Family Feud” section, Johnson talks about how his family came together. Rocky Johnson and Peter Maivia knew each other from the wrestling business but weren’t necessarily friends. During a show in Japan, the two were teaming together in a tag match. Afterwards, Rocky didn’t have a place to stay, so Maivia offered to have him stay at his place. This is where Rocky met his future wife, Maivia’s daughter Ata. Unfortunately, Maivia was not happy with this because he didn’t want his daughter marrying a wrestler, as he was very aware of the situations wrestlers on the road find themselves in.

Rocky and Ata didn’t get Ata’s parents’ blessings, but they ran off and got married anyway. At first, things weren’t cool, but time healed the wounds. Then, when Dwayne himself was born, the love was back in check.

In “A Chip Off the Old Block”, Dwayne talks about watching his dad Rocky as a superstar in the 1970s. An accomplished boxer who sparred with George Foreman, Rocky Johnson got into wrestling in Nova Scotia after being approached by a wrestling promoter. Eventually, he became the first African American champion in both Georgia and Texas. In the WWF, he talks about how Rocky became the first African American to win the “Intercontinental title” (which is flat-out not true) and teamed with Tony Atlas to become the first black World Tag-Team Champions in the company’s history. He was a trail blazer and was even more so in his character, with Dwayne crediting him for being an articulate and professional performer as a character rather than being another “jive-talking caricature” (as Dwayne puts it) that was typical of many African American performers of that era. Rocky was a babyface, but Dwayne did like the heels (bad guys) from an early age. Even so, Dwayne was inspired by watching his dad perform and never grew out of loving professional wrestling. In “Like Father…Like Son”, Dwayne talks about protecting the business when he was a kid. Of course, this means to play it up as being real to casual fans. When Dwayne was a child in school, he felt he had to do this in the name of his dad when others would try to accuse the profession of being fake. Ever the one with a mean streak, Dwayne found himself in fights constantly as a way to show others why the business wasn’t fake. It was defending his family’s honor in a way. He’d win too, as he was almost always the biggest kid in class. One time, good friend Randy Ellis asked if wrestling was real in a respectful manner. To demonstrate, Dwayne gave him a piledriver. Not knowing how to take the move properly, Randy got hurt, Dwayne got suspended for a few days, and Dwayne got a whooping at home.

In “Good-Bye, Grandpa”, we open talking about Dwayne seeing Peter Maivia in the hopsital on his deathbed in the spring of 1982. Just a few years earlier, he retired but was still in the business running the Hawaii wrestling territory after purchasing it from promotor Ed Francis, father to All-Pro NFL tight end Russ Francis. As he built the territory back up, he dealt with cancer. Though there were signs of sickness, Maivia never got it checked out. Eventually, he passed. His final wish was for Dwayne’s grandmother to assume the responsibility of running the territory. She did and brought in Lars Anderson to be the booker. Soon after, the territory was flourishing. Leah Maivia ended being voted as vice president of the NWA, though Dwayne admits this “was more of a political move than anything else”. Along with doing monthly shows, she also organized the annual High Chief Peter Maivia Memorial Tribute Show, in which wrestling stars from all over the world would participate like André the Giant and Ric Flair. It was during one of these shows that we get the first taste of Dwayne’s temper, a frequent occurrence in The Rock Says…. On one of these memorial shows, booker Lars Anderson was also the Polynesian champion but was supposed to drop the title to Bad News Allen that night. Anderson refused, which everyone saw as an insult to the family. A 13-year-old Dwayne marched right up to Lars in the locker room and berated him in front of everyone for being so unprofessional. He thought he was doing the right thing, but everyone was pissed at the scene he caused including his dad Rocky and grandmother Leah.

Even as a kid, Dwayne understood the wrestling business was a work, but fucking Lars Anderson had to go and be a mark about it. What a clown.

In Chapter Two (The People’s Puberty), Dwayne starts with his years in junior high school and how he was ahead of the curve in talking to women. He always had confidence with women and referred to his thought process back then as being “The mack of all daddies”. As long as you talked the talk, women assumed you were experienced. This leads to a wild section of the book where Dwayne talks about when he was 10 years old and had his first girlfriend, a 13-year-old Lisa who was his next-door neighbor. At 14 as a freshman in high school, he lost his virginity to the 18-year-old senior Maria. Not a story I was expecting in a wrestling book, but here we are. Trying to play things up to Maria about his sexual prowess, he made it seem like he lost his virginity at 10 and women have been lining up ever since when this just wasn’t the case. It was all to make him look ready for the moment. Unfortunately, when it finally happened, it was in a public park and cops pulled up right after it was over. As his typical with cops, they asked Maria if she was being held there against her will. Once Maria cleared things up, they were told to leave, but mission accomplished I suppose. In the “Everyone Wants a Piece of The Rock” section, Dwayne gets into his penchant for getting into fights, including an important memory about a fight with some 16-year-old bully named Billy. Though Dwayne was still a 13-year-old in junior high school, he was still bigger than most and frequently found himself a target because of his size and being Rocky Johnson’s son.

Coupling this with his temper didn’t help matters much.

One day, he’s told of Billy’s intentions of wanting to beat his ass, so Dwayne waits for him after school. His friend Jose waited back with him, since Dwayne was staying with Jose for a few days because his mother was traveling with his father. They waited for Billy, and he ends up showing with an entire group of his high school friends. Jose skips out, but Dwayne decides to stay. What started as a one-on-one fight turns into a group beat down. One kid named James even threatened Dwayne with a switchblade during the mess. Eventually, they all ran away because some old lady drove by and threatened to call the cops. In “Checking Into Smack Down Hotel”, the message of what happened is relayed to his parents on what happened, as they were still on the road but called to check up on their son. Rocky responds vaguely but says they’ll fix everything when they get home, which puts Dwayne at ease. His father always gave him advice to walk away from fights because they are pointless, but he’s still a proud man who doesn’t back away when faced with a threat. For two weeks, Dwayne was taunted by Billy and his gang of assclowns. Every time, Dwayne would retort that he was down for a one-on-one fight anytime. Finally, Rocky tells Dwayne he’s picking him up from school one day. They drive to where Billy and his crew hang out, and Rocky went out to confront them. After scaring the hell out of them with a speech and berating them for attacking a 13-year-old at their age, he asked specifically who had the knife. They point out James, so Rocky threatens the kid with his own knife and dares him to do something. No one moves. Then, he challenges any one of them to face Dwayne one-on-one. Nobody dares, so they leave.

In “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, Dwayne talks about his first introduction to amateur wrestling in high school. He was invited in by the coach because of his size and because of his well-known father. Despite taking down the team’s top heavyweight, he found it boring compared to professional wrestling and decided it wasn’t for him after the first practice. He liked the idea of being an entertainer more than being a wrestler.

Next, we move into Dwayne’s early calling as a football player in “So You Want to be a Football Hero?”. He talks about his only experience with steroids being the summer after his senior year of high school, where he obtained an oral steroid from a friend of a friend. It did nothing after three weeks, so he dropped it. Unfortunately, when he started at Freedom High School in Pennsylvania, he was accused of being on steroids just because of his size. The rumors came from a newfound friend. When Dwayne confronted him about it, it turned into another fight, and he hurt the guy pretty bad. Of course, he got suspended for a few days and was labeled a troublemaker at his new school early on. Regardless, he got really good in his senior year. Though he always thought he’d end up being a professional wrestler, he started to have aspirations about playing in the NFL. As you would imagine, it’s hard to ignore those recruiting letters. The schools that recruited him the most was Florida State University, Clemson, and the University of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh dropped out of favor with him quickly though following his visit, as the coach was a dick to him for no reason. What seemed to be playful insults had a certain undercut of hatred along with it, and he didn’t like the vibe the coach was sending. Besides this, the recruiting process wasn’t what he hoped for. No parties, money, or hoes, though he was told each time by one of the assistant coaches that he would be “taken care of”. The only exception was the University of Miami, as they were cleaning up their reputation following the Jimmy Johnson years. Under his replacement Dennis Erickson, everything suddenly became strait-laced. Dwayne had to go out of his way to contact them to get some materials on the college to get the ball rolling. When he met with defensive line coach and known straight shooter Bob Karmelowics, he was honest with Dwayne by saying they wouldn’t offer money, only a chance to play in the national championship and an opportunity to get a degree.

With this, Dwayne became a Hurricane.

Not long after, he would rise up the depth chart and find playing time on a national championship team, he would meet the love of his life, deal with injuries and depression, and go through extremely trying times in the CFL before coming to the realization that his true path in life was that of becoming a professional wrestler. After some early training and a stint in Memphis, Dwayne Johnson gets a rocket strapped to his back as “Rocky Maivia” (a name he didn’t even want) in the WWF. Following some initial success, he fails to connect with the fans because of his tired and clichéd hero character, and eventually hits his stride as The Rock, an all-time gimmick that propels him into legendary status in the industry and helps him earn the moniker of “The most electrifying man in sports entertainment”.

My Thoughts:

When the WWF was all the rage during the late 1990s and early 2000s, they capitalized on every outside opportunity imaginable. They had the merchandise deals, the endorsements, and some of the wrestlers themselves even ventured into book writing. At the time, The Rock was one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling (and still is). Once he settled into the persona we know and love, everything he touched turned to gold. Whether it was a media appearance, an interview, or an acting gig, The Rock was primed and ready for any and all avenues to make a name for himself, transcending sports entertainment itself. For Vince McMahon and company, the limelight on their superstar kind of backfired on them since he ended up leaving for years, but it was worth the investment at the time to grow the juggernaut that was the WWE. With all of this being said, was this autobiography a worthy best-seller for The New York Times, or was it because this was the peak of The Rock during the height of the WWE’s most profitable era and fans just bought it since it was about him?

The latter seems likely.

The curated co-writing of Joe Layden and whoever else helped ghostwrite is evident from the jump. Obviously, the stories told from Johnson are true, but it’s not from his writing voice. That much is clear. When you compare the word choice used in The Rock Says… to the real-life documentaries and interviews we’ve seen Johnson participate in over the years, I’d wager that he didn’t write a single word of this book. If anything, he either wrote down notes at the bare minimum or he just told his story aloud while Layden or someone else transcribed whatever he said the best way they could and filled in the rest of the blanks. The heart is there, the humor is there, and his feelings are written down well, but it’s just too obvious that Johnson isn’t writing this on say, a level of a Chris Jericho or Mick Foley. As cool as it was to read the inner details of Johnson’s early life and the backstage details of his first few years in the WWF, this was a very serious case of the “Right place at the right time” regarding its Best-Seller status. The book gets into a good groove early, explaining important life events of Johnson from his formative years, his relationships with family members, his early love of football and professional wrestling, and his well-documented temper, which I didn’t realize was that serious of an issue. Most of the time, we hear celebrities talk about this and we pass it off as something the star would eventually channel into their performances as an adult. However, a young Dwayne Johnson was at a constant battle with himself and dealt with some serious mental health struggles when football wasn’t working out like he’d hoped. In one particular drunken incident worth noting, Dwayne recalls flying in for his uncle’s wedding when he was sidelined with an injury during college and wasn’t doing well in his classes.

The night before the wedding, the family had a big party and a woman he didn’t recognize started yelling and pointing in the direction of his father. She was smiling as she did this, but Johnson interrupted this as arrogance since he was drunk. When Rocky Johnson told her to keep her voice down, and she responded with a hearty “Fuck you”, Dwayne stepped in and started legitimately choking her in front of everyone while demanding she apologize for what he saw as disrespect towards his father and mother. His mother calmed the situation down once she explained how they’re friends and everything was cool, but this regrettable moment seems even more shocking to reveal in retrospect. These rougher details of Johnson’s life before wrestling really opens our eyes to how much Dwayne has changed over the years, and it’s welcomed from a storytelling perspective because it’s not something he or anyone else for that matter has touched on since. Moments of weakness like this are cool to hear from Johnson’s point of view, as he doesn’t shy away from admitting things like special moments in his puberty years or how he was forced to snatch a soiled mattress from an alley to sleep on when he was dead broke in the CFL. For the record, the description (which was surely the work of writer Joe Layden) of “streaks of semen and urine and menstrual discharge paint a foul mosaic” regarding the mattresses in the alley is a sentence I may never forget, though this colorful description only adds to my main point of Dwayne not actually writing this book, as you know damn well he didn’t describe it this way when speaking to the ghostwriters. Regardless, stuff like this could’ve been omitted entirely to protect his image, and no one would have batted an eye, but these troubled and humbled beginnings show how much Dwayne Johnson struggled in a short time span, despite looking like he jumped to the top of the wrestling world at such an early age from an outsider’s perspective.

Though for everything he reveals about himself, Dwayne does conveniently leave out a lot of crucial details about his problematic father. In The Rock Says…, he’s painted in a positive light, and we understand this because a lot of us see how our parents in the same manner. However, we have to be a bit realistic when talking about our parents if they’re public figures and a minute of research can change your entire perception of someone. Even when they talked about Rocky Johnson’s alcoholism and Dwayne’s struggles with dealing with his father during this timeframe, Rocky comes out of it relatively unscathed. There is no mention of part of the reason he started drinking was when he was accused of raping a 19-year-old in 1987. It just talks about how Dwayne was mad that Rocky started drinking more heavily because he was aging out of the business in 1990 and 1991 and was barely working independent shows. In reality, he was blacklisted for legal troubles, which is why he was barely working indy dates. Nothing is mentioned about Rocky’s first wife either. In reality, he cheated on his first wife with Ata and divorced her to marry Ata. In this book, it just talks about how Rocky Johnson met her when hanging with Peter Maivia after a tour in Japan, and they fell in love with no issues. Did Dwayne really expect everyone to not look into any of this further?

*For those who are more interested in the wrestling side of things, he doesn’t begin this part of his journey until Chapter Eight (“The Making of a Professional Wrestler”). There’s also one hilarious bit about Steve Austin and Rock watching the infamous Bart Gunn/Butterbean boxing match at WrestleMania XV, with Stone Cold hilariously stating “I’ll be you right now Bart knocks that sumbitch out”. If you didn’t read that in Austin’s voice, we can’t be friends. Also, the hindsight of this statement knowing the outcome of the match is even funnier. *

The Rock Says… starts to lose me around Chapter Eleven (The People’s Champion)”. In accordance with the timeline being told, this is when Dwayne Johnson’s character switches names from Rocky Maivia to The Rock. From this point on, they randomly switch the style in which the book is written with every other chapter. One is from the voice of Dwayne Johnson, and the other becomes an entire section or whole chapter of Dwayne telling the story in the voice of “The Rock”, as if he’s cutting a wrestling promo while telling the story. Though it’s written in the voice of the character well, it’s just not what we came for. If I wanted to hear The Rock cut a promo on a storyline I’ve already witnessed, I would just watch YouTube highlights or my many VHS tapes and DVDs regarding the era he’s speaking of. Anyone who decides to check out this book are fans of the WWE, the Attitude Era, or The Rock himself. The fanbase is very aware of his persona when he turned on the fans, his feud with Faarooq, Ken Shamrock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mankind, and The Undertaker. The fans have dedicated countless hours to WWE television during this timeframe, so the last thing we need is the character recounting all of these feuds in-character or transcribing the promo we saw on television word-for-word. Not only do the jokes and the verbiage get repetitive, but it just doesn’t fit what the rest of the book is about. It made sense to do it in the prologue, as it’s a good opening to reel in the fans before going back to the beginning. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to read a book entirely from the in-character perspective as The Rock, though this could be an entirely different book that has potential, all things considered.

What was advertised was an autobiography. I know the promos and the storylines. In fact, we all do. An autobiography is supposed to be about the “insider look” on how the real-life person Dwayne Johnson helped shape what was put on TV through his own ideas and inspirations and how things happened behind the scenes to help his ideas come to light. There still is a lot of this in The Rock Says… but having even an iota dedicated to all of the TV stuff we’re already aware of is just squandering precious page space. It’s not just a small blurb either. Once’s it’s reintroduced in Chapter Eleven, they waste whole chapters and sections on what basically turns into The Rock cutting a promo on a wrestler and retelling an entire match from the character’s perspective, and it’s starts to become a borderline waste of time if you’re well-versed in wrestling lore. The last part of the book flip-flops back and forth between both voices and makes the last 30% of the book a bit of a chore to read.

One thing I did like was hearing about the lead-up to his big feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1999 and the camaraderie they share as performers backstage trying to make the best television possible together while collaborating with Vince McMahon, Pat Patterson, and others to try and work on this “group project” of sorts to entertain in the best way they see fit (see sections “Game Night” and “Ready to Rumble”). You find your blood pumping as Dwayne describes in detail the calm before the storm that is WrestleMania. It’s a total eye-opener to what goes on behind the curtain, especially post-match like in the section “Brothers in Arms”. It makes wrestling seem more like a theatrical performance rather than a fight. Though this is totally true, it still feels strange. In the modern age, this isn’t that big of a deal because the proverbial curtain has been opened on so many occasions in the WWE Universe that they don’t care if the fans think it’s a work or not. However, revealing this in 2000 is very cool to read as a wrestling fan in what I’m sure was a real eye-opener for a lot of first-time readers on the time of its release. When you try to reconfigure your mindset and imagine the timeframe back to when this book was published, The Rock Says… is a very cool nostalgic trip when he goes into detail about his time as a singles star in the WWF. I just wish Dwayne got their sooner, or at least talked about the locker room more in 1997 and 1998. Him recalling the time he met his future ex-wife Dany Garcia at a club in Miami during their college years and how they persevered through some tough financial times before Dwayne made it big was very thoughtful and more than made up for this oversight, as well as his recalling of a time when the Hurricanes got into a fight with San Diego State on the field, which led to Dwayne chasing the mascot on national television.

Learning about how wrestlers only work the left arm in the process of a match is something I didn’t know as a fan though, so this was a very cool detail thrown in to explain the basics of learning the profession. Owen Hart accidentally “working” Dwayne as a result of his fake cast was amusing as well.

The foreshadowing in the final part of the book is nothing short of amazing. Say what you want about Dwayne Johnson, but he predicted virtually everything that was going to happen in his life. He talks about getting advice of riding the wave and getting out while he could, but he’s adamant in saying that he wouldn’t do that because of his passion for professional wrestling. He straight-up says, “In some form or fashion, I’ll be involved in this business for the rest of my life because I absolutely love what I do”. Even when he left wrestling for a bit, he always returned and now he’s a partial owner of the WWE. I can’t knock him. Just when he looked like he was done with wrestling, he still found a way to keep his promise just like he said in 2000. On an even more eerie note, he admits he will pursue outside interests by directly asking himself, “Does that mean I wouldn’t consider branching out and accepting other challenges (acting)? Absolutely not”. The defining quote is what follows:

“Will The Rock be the next James Dean or Cary Grant or James Stewart? I don’t think so. But he could be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger…only better looking.”

Wow. After reading that last section of The Rock Says…, I felt as if I was holding a historic artifact. The man made this happen to an absolute “T”.

The Rock Says… gets off to a great start, but there are too many holes in the overall book to praise it as a top-notch autobiography. He’s been consistent about his recounting of stories, there are a lot of funny anecdotes and quotes, and you do learn a lot about the path that made the man, including how he created his persona and the origins of his catchphrases and such, which aren’t as exciting as you would think. It’s just bogged down by the writing style, which is clearly written by others, the switching of perspectives later on that only wastes time and stretches the book for no reason, and the barrage of out-of-focus and blown-up pictures that a lot of the time, are just action shots that don’t have anything to do with the story written. It’s a great piece of nostalgia for wrestling fans and those who are big fans of Dwayne Johnson the person, but it’s not the greatest example of “Literary excellence” on the level of some of his contemporaries who have ventured into the same field.