The Rock reveals he almost left WWE in 1997 for MMA

After making his presence known in a major way on SmackDown, announcing to the professional wrestling world that he was heading to the Elimination Chamber in Toronto and was out for Cody Rhodes’ soul, the “People’s Champion” had a special press conference with the assembled media to talk WrestleMania 42, his love of rap, and… almost quitting WWE in 1997?

It’s true, while discussing the biggest moments of his career and some of the setbacks that made him stronger along the way, The Rock noted to fans and reporters alike that after being borderline booed out of the building at WrestleMania 13 following his win over Rikishi – who was going by The Sultan at the time – the man formerly known as Rocky Maivia considered leaving the sport entirely for a chance to fight MMA in Japan as part of Pride.

“After that night, I had a meeting with Vince, he said ‘things aren’t working out, I’m gonna take the title off you.’ A week later, I got hurt, I tore a ligament in my knee, he said ‘you gotta go home,’ and I went home for the rest of the summer, and I didn’t know what I was gonna do, and in that summer, I thought ‘man, I’ve got really no money, and I’m getting booed out of the building, I went to WrestleMania, I don’t know what to do.’ Maybe, at that time I thought, ‘maybe I should consider a career in MMA,’ and at that time, there was a company called Pride, at that time in Japan, and they were making a lot of money, and I thought ‘maybe I should do that.’ I hate getting punched in the face, I don’t like it, but maybe because I don’t think wrestling is gonna work out for me, and I’m wrestling 225 dates a year, and I’m making 150,00 dollars, that was my guarantee, you guys do the math of what that is every match, after you pay Uncle Sam, and I thought, and I knew a lot of MMA guys at that time, Mark Kerr, Mark Coleman, and I thought ‘maybe I should do that.'”

Alright, while it has been pretty thoroughly debunked that Johnson ever had any sort of concrete offer to join Pride during the 1990s, as Dave Meltzer made it a point to break the situation down in incredible detail, the idea of The Rock quitting WWE because he didn’t like being booed by the crowd before he actually became “The Rock” has to have a nugget of truth to it, otherwise, he wouldn’t have brought it up on multiple occasions. Fortunately, Vince McMahon decided to turn the “Soul Man’s” son heel, give him a place in the Nation of Domination, and the rest, as they say, is history: The Rock became an international megastar and is now one of the biggest stars in the world. Would that have happened in Pride? In a word, no, no, it likely would not have.