Pro wrestling, which requires great athleticism despite its wider reputation as a “fake” spectacle, is punishing for its participants. The list of performers who’ve died before 50 makes for sobering reading: heart attack, heart attack, suicide, liver failure, heart attack, drug overdose.
As Dan O’Sullivan wrote in his definitive essay on the wrestling industry, wrestlers’ lives are riddled with “lingering physical ailments, screwjob employment contracts, and chugalug drug abuse”, mainly steroids. As for the wrestling-industrial complex: “Its only business model is fear.”
Insecure and exploitative workplaces like this destroy the body, but they’re also breeding grounds for toxic male resentment. As Mickey Rourke’s character in the 2008 film The Wrestler broods, pointing away from the ring in which he makes his trade, “The only place I get hurt is out there. The world don’t give a shit about me.”
This is what makes the career of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson such a joy to watch. In some sense he’s a “survivor” of that world; he avoided steroid use after his teen years, so his heart will be in better nick, and his career-ending injury – when his adductor and abdominal muscles were ripped from his pelvis during Wrestlemania 29 – fortunately happened after he was well-established as an actor.
But more than that, The Rock experiences his success – which was by no means a done deal – as a gift. He’s such an inspiration, and a model of masculinity that transcends the resentment clearly on show everywhere, from the deposed politician who spends his time plotting and brooding, to the vindictive journalist, to the laid-off factory worker humiliated by his lack of power.
On Wednesday The Rock posted on Instagram that his longtime girlfriend, musician Lauren Hashian, is expecting a baby girl. He thanked the women in his life, thanked his fans, and cracked a few jokes:
I was raised by and live with amazing and strong women, so the universe felt we needed one more... IT’S A BABY GIRL!! THANK YOU guys so much for the awesome support and love you’ve sent ... #BringOnMoreEstrogenInOurHome
You can feel the love beaming out of the photo. Same with the video of The Rock with a young fan who had been waiting in a parking lot to meet him.
Or when he posts about running a boot camp for young men in prison that has reduced recidivism rates:
Very proud of this program, its staff and the impact it has on our prison system and more importantly, caring about young lives that matter.
Or when he encouraged another fan with terminal cancer to keep working out. Or when he trained with a young woman living with a disability, whose mother revealed her daughter’s mantra: “I gotta be strong cause the Rock told me to be strong!”
His response was, as always, to say thanks: “Moments like this with Lexi will always be the best part of my fame. We all play a part in it ya know? And I appreciate I can share it with y’all.”
This stuff goes beyond conspicuous “Fitspiration” and becomes an endless expression of gratitude. It’s utterly infectious. I challenge anyone to watch this video of The Rock’s dog licking his face and resist the desire to become a better person.
The Rock’s status as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time led him to Hollywood, where in 2013 he took the title of highest-grossing actor in the world. In an interview with Fortune the following year he said that his father, also a wrestler, had discouraged him from going into the ring. The Rock’s reply was revealing:
“Looking back, ... I understand that he was thinking, ‘Man, I wrestled for 40 years, and this is what I have to show for it: a tiny apartment in Tampa. I don’t want this for you.’
The disappointment and emasculation came through so clearly. As Rourke says in The Wrestler: “I’m the one who was supposed to take care of everything. I’m the one who was supposed to make everything OK for everybody. It just didn’t work out like that.”
More sadness: as a 15-year-old, he and his mother were evicted from their Hawaii home because they couldn’t make rent. The Rock resolved to do anything to avoid that again, and disciplined his body in the model of movie stars like Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It was also moral discipline, a turning-away from the petty crimes in which he had previously been involved. Every facet of his being – the moral self, the physical self, the performer, the will – is the product of hard, happy training.
He took this attitude to his 2013-14 reality TV show, The Hero, which pledged to challenge contestants’ “brains, brawn, and morality”.
“I wanted to make a show that brought out the best in people,” he said in an interview. “When they succeed, when they’re kickin’ ass, it’s awesome ... but when they fail, those moments are powerful too.”
The show was a flop, not that it seemed to bother Johnson overmuch. Whatever his setbacks, he doesn’t let them get him down. That included his first marriage to Dany Garcia, which ended on good terms and continues in a “loving partnership” of friendship and business. He dotes on his daughter with Garcia, Simone Alexander, saying earlier this year that “Long ago I recognised how cool and special the daddy-daughter relationship is”.
Obviously The Rock isn’t perfect (I have to remind myself of that). But his ability to persevere and overcome is not rooted in the kind of hard, sullen, antagonistic masculinity of many of his fellow action stars’ personas. It’s founded in gratitude – something much more difficult to persist in, when the lives of the powerful and powerless alike are so full of doubt and suffering.
That’s why, despite being a huge nerd who hasn’t watched wrestling since I was a teenager, I was cheering for The Rock when I found out he and Lauren Hashian were expecting a baby: there’s nothing better than seeing grateful people receive a gift.
- This article was amended to note that The Rock, in interviews, has said he used steroids in his teenage years.
