I Smell It: The Rock Cooks Up an Interesting MMA Anecdote

Bullshit meter engaged

“In 97, I was still going out to LA and working out. We were crossing all the MMA guys. Pride just opened up in Japan. So I was seeing all these MMA guys going over to Pride. You remember that time, right? I think you might have been with UFC at that time. I was making a $150,000 wrestling 235 days a year. So do the math of that. How much you're making per match?

“We start hearing ‘hey these guys over in Pride are making $250, $350, $500.’ And I thought then ‘well fuck, I don't think I'm going to make it in WWE. People are booing me out of the arenas. I can't be myself. They're telling me to fucking smile. I don't want to fucking smile. It's not who I am.’

“I start talking to Ken Shamrock at that time, who was wrestling with us. I run into Mark Kerr. I start talking to him. ‘Hey, tell me a little bit about Pride.’ And I have this idea in my head. Maybe I should train to MMA and go to Pride and make money, real money. Then I don't have to smile.”

-The Rock

The Joe Rogan Experience, November 15, 2023

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Yesterday this interesting little fairy tale came across my timeline. Now, normally I don’t respond to this kind of stuff. After all, if you spent your time correcting every inaccuracy on the internet or fact-checking wrestler interviews, you’d never get anything else done and drive yourself crazy. The Rock, particularly, has become the kind of fantasist that makes a run in politics seem scarily possible.

But this? This was so specifically in my wheelhouse as an MMA and wrestling historian that I felt compelled to respond.

First of all, like all the great tall tales, this one is probably grounded in truth. The Rock was a big, strong guy and a former Division I football player. Like most guys who have spent their lives testing themselves in virtual combat, he no doubt watched proto-MMA and wondered how he’d match up. After all, in those times it wasn’t the sport we see on ESPN today. A rugged behemoth with an aptitude for kicking ass could still walk into the cage with a little training and potentially create a little mayhem.

Likewise, Pride Fighting Championship was immediately the biggest MMA show in the world. The top UFC fighters did all eventually gravitate there, including Shamrock, Kerr, Mark Coleman, Dan Severn, Don Frye and so many others. It was the grandest show in all of combat sports, combining the pomp and circumstance of an Olympic Opening Ceremony with the gritty reality of a no-holds barred street fight.

The connection to pro wrestling was also strong—the initial PRIDE event was built to showcase wrestling superstar Nobuhiko Takada and the promotion’s main characters over the years were a collection of pro wrestlers like Kazushi Sakuraba, Naoya Ogawa, Kazuyuki Fujita and Kiyoshi Tamura.

But the timeline here just doesn’t work. By the time PRIDE debuted on October 11, 1997, the Rock wasn’t a struggling rookie stuck in a smiling babyface role he didn’t care for. While he didn’t wrestle “235 days a year” as he claimed in Hulk Hogan-ish style, he was busy and thriving. Rock had joined the Nation of Domination as a sneering heel and was rising up the ranks, his path to superstardom already paved. When the second PRIDE event was held in March, 1998, the Rock was gearing up to face Shamrock at WrestleMania. Cameras, there to see Mike Tyson referee the main event, were everywhere. WWE was exploding in popularity and his potential was both limitless and obvious. The idea he’d leave WWE at this point for the uncertain waters of mixed martial arts is ludicrous beyond the point of belief.

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And, while PRIDE did pay more than UFC, it wasn’t competitive with the salaries pulled down by top wrestlers. Severn, who was poached from UFC to fight in the semi-main event at that first event made a reported $40,000. That’s a far cry from the fantastical sums Rock conjured up for Joe Rogan, who surely knew better. After all, the lack of pay in MMA is why Shamrock was wrestling Rock in WWE. Severn soon followed. Tank Abbott and Frye, the UFC’s other top stars, also made the leap to pro wrestling. Coleman, Kevin Randleman and many others dabbled with the idea of making the transition. Years later, Tito Ortiz thought hard about making the jump.

Fighters were seeking refuge in pro wrestling, not the other way around. Exactly one American wrestling superstar without a combat sports background ever made the transition to big-time MMA after 1997. That was CM Punk. It wasn’t pretty.

This isn’t the first time the Rock has fantasized about an alternate reality where he becomes a cage fighting superstar. In 2017, he mentioned an unrealized scheme to train with Greg Jackson for a run at UFC gold. The previous year he told the UFC Unfiltered podcast a similar story:

"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?’ I was relatively still young; I think I was 34. I thought, 'Oh, well maybe UFC. Maybe I should do something like that.'"

Now, perhaps because of his involvement in a Mark Kerr biopic, he’s moved up the timeline on his supposed MMA dreams. In the end, neither story really amounts to much. A man who has pretended to be a tough guy for decades wonders whether he could have done it for real.

Add it to the list of life’s many unanswerable questions.

Jonathan Snowden is a long-time combat sports journalist. His books include Total MMA, Shooters and Shamrock: The World’s Most Dangerous Man. His work has appeared in USA Today, Bleacher Report, Fox Sports and The Ringer. Subscribe to this newsletter to keep up with his latest work.