Dwayne Johnson and Joe Rogan explore how brutal, three-hour workouts—including cold plunges and progressive push-ups—build discipline and resilience, comparing it to their early struggles with poverty and insecurity. They critique tribalism in conflicts like WWII and modern polarization, warning social media and disinformation could escalate violence to nuclear or famine levels. Johnson’s wrestling roots, from Dallas’ Sportatorium to WWE’s "Attitude Era," reveal how authenticity overcame fan backlash, while they debate Ngannou’s MMA dominance and Tyson’s prime as generational talents. Ultimately, physical training and open-mindedness emerge as tools to cut through chaos—whether in the gym or global discourse—while Rogan’s platform amplifies their shared belief in breaking cycles of division. [Automatically generated summary]
And I, I, I, and I told some of the boys this, like, I miss that kind of stuff because it's been a while, you know, since I worked out with the boys back when I was wrestling.
We'd all work together because we were traveling together every night and going to the same gym every day and or different cities.
I get them in the cold plunge after the sauna because it's easier because your body temperature is already heated up and there's a certain amount of relief when you get into the cold water because you know in that 185 degrees for 20 minutes.
And then you hit this switch and it just like a raging river.
So you never get a thermal layer.
So the thing that happens in the cold plunge is like a minute in, your body develops sort of a thermal layer, and it actually is more tolerable after a minute than it is for the first minute, but not with that raging river.
When that shit's in there, like it's never tolerable.
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You just sit there the whole three minutes, just white knuckling it.
You know what I also loved I noticed about the guys is after the workout was done, they're spent, they're feeling good, they're feeling great about themselves.
And I think pretty much all of them said, hey, we're doing this tomorrow, right?
Because there's a few things that we did that are going to, their legs are going to be sore for sure for like the between the leg stuff and the windmill stuff.
And also, too, I feel like if you, especially for guys like that who are just getting into it and dipping their toes into it, feeling good, they know they have to do it.
Because they're going to add some years to their life, right?
And take care of their families.
But also, it was cool that you realize that as these guys are doing it, they're not, again, they're not giving up, but also you could see it kind of computing in their head, like, okay, two steps forward, maybe one little step back.
It's really hard to be disciplined and just to say, no matter what, even if I travel on the road, I got to get workouts in because I can't lose ground.
You know, if I'm just traveling a lot or doing something that's like very intensive and I have to get up in the morning or I have to handle something, family stuff or whatever if I have to get up early.
It's just that, that wrecks you.
That's the one that gets you.
And then you take a day or two off and then you're like, fuck.
I don't know why, but everybody that I've talked to says to avoid jet lag, one of the best ways is to not eat on the flight and to just sort of land, get a workout in, and let your body get back on its normal cycle.
It's that thing where I think like you learn about, especially when it comes to training and that kind of thing, where it's either you look at it like, oh fuck, this is something I got to do or I get to do.
There's certain things that get co-opted by the wrong, like the word God, I think, is the same way.
It's co-opted by some people.
And then people have this negative association with it.
But I think gratitude is one of those.
It is real and it's really important.
And if you could just appreciate your friends and appreciate your life and appreciate people and appreciate what you get to do, you can fucking change your whole tone of existence.
It's like, and I feel like I want to know about you too here.
I feel like it was a learned thing.
Like, of course, the concept of, oh, gratitude, sure.
I felt like I'm a pretty grateful guy.
But once I started realizing that a lot of the shit that I was trying to get after, and there's the North Star, there's that thing, whatever it is, it's always there.
But really, the shit that matters most is the stuff that's right here.
I realized when I was young, I got a development deal for Disney when I was, I think I was 25, 26.
And I got this development deal and all of a sudden they gave me like, I think it was like $100,000.
And I had money in the bank.
I was like, this is crazy.
Because I felt like I was like 26, I think.
And it was a development deal for a television show.
And all of a sudden, I had money.
Like my whole life, I was poor.
And my whole life I was like wondering how I was going to, when I was on my own, and it was like, how am I paying the bills?
How am I eating?
You know, I remember like taking like a loose jar of change and counting it all out so I could go to Subway and get a sandwich, you know, like that kind of shit.
And you said there was this great quote, and it was something like, it was martial arts, I think, that gave you the confidence to know that, oh, wait, I'm not going to be broke one day or something like that.
Martial arts was the first thing that I realized, like, oh, I'm not a loser.
Because I felt like I moved a lot when I was a kid.
We moved from New Jersey to San Francisco when I was seven, lived in San Francisco until I was 11, moved to Florida from 11 to 13, Boston from 13 to 24.
Well, we moved to San Francisco just to like experience something different and just get away from New Jersey.
Moved there.
And then my stepdad went to school in Florida.
And when we went to school in Florida, we had to go to the University of Florida at Gainesville.
So we were there for three years.
And then when we moved to Boston, he was going to the Boston Architectural Center.
So we moved there so he could finish it and get his architectural degree.
So we were just always going where we had to go.
And when we did that, I would have to make a whole new set of friends.
And so it was this thing about being insecure and young.
And, you know, life is kind of fucked up and chaotic.
And you're, you know, you're meeting these new people and kids are fucking cruel.
And I, you know, I always was insecure because we were always moving around a lot.
And my life was kind of chaotic.
My family life was chaotic.
And I just felt like a loser.
I always felt like I just had to hide from people.
I was like socially nervous around people.
And I just felt like there were certain people that were winners in life and I was not that.
I was a loser.
And then I started doing martial arts and I got really good at it.
Like I was obsessed and I got really good at it really quickly.
And I realized like, oh, I'm not a loser.
Like, I just have to find a thing and fucking really get after it in a way that I know some people that have had an easy life, they're not going to pursue it like it's going to save them.
And I was pursuing it like this is going to save me.
Because I knew as I kept getting better, I started getting this feeling like, oh, I'm good at something.
Like I'm good at something dangerous.
And then I got really good at it.
And then I started winning tournaments and competing and traveling all the road.
And so my whole life from 15 to 21 was just traveling around competing.
That's all I did.
I was kind of, it was kind of like socially fucked up because I wasn't hanging out with many kids my age.
I wasn't really partying.
I wasn't doing competing.
Training, competing, and teaching.
I was teaching at Boston University when I was 19 years old.
And I was like laying in bed with headaches after sparring.
And there's no money in it.
And I was like, what am I doing?
Like, I'm 21.
What am I doing with my life?
Like, I can't keep doing this.
And I had already started doing open mics.
So I had already started doing stand-up comedy, but I was kind of like just dabbling in it.
I thought I could do that too, but I still had these competition aspirations.
And then the brain damage thing was scary because I knew quite a few people around me that from the time I was 16 till the time I was 21, I saw them deteriorate, like noticeably slurring their words, forgetful, not knowing what you were talking about, like moments ago.
There's things in life that you, man, I think every kid should do something difficult, whether it's playing chess or whether it's soccer or whether it's wrestling, something that really fucking tests you because you learn that you can get better at stuff and you learn that you can overcome all those feelings of weakness that are inside of you.
And it acts as like a forcing mechanism for discipline and to work through that shit.
And also, I feel like it's like with you in martial arts and then transitioning over into comedy.
I feel like it also, for me, it forces also our kids to find their thing.
And even if you get a little older, you know, in your teens and in your early 20s, because fuck, dude, in my early 20s, I was still trying to figure out who I was and what I was going to be and even into my 30s.
But I feel like as you're searching for that thing, it's like with me in football, like I thought football was my ticket.
That was the thing that's going to allow me to, I'm going to buy my parents their first house.
Once you know the way broadly, you can see it in all things.
There's some real wisdom in those words because there's something about finding a pursuit or passion or something that you truly love that's engaging and challenging that is exciting for you and it advances you as a person.
And the lessons that you learn in pursuing that thing, you apply to everything in your life.
The thing was, there was a thing about loyalty in martial arts.
Like if you were a judo practitioner and you started training at a kickboxing gym, people would frown upon that.
Like, why are you training Muay Thai when you're a judo practitioner?
Judo is the way.
And the same thing was, I had a very open-minded Taekwondo coach who actually encouraged me to start boxing and doing some other things.
But most of the time, that's not the case.
A lot of like kung fu practitioners, they don't want you practicing karate.
They only want you going to a kung fu place.
What Bruce Lee said is use everything that's useful, everything that's useful.
And he put together a system of martial arts that incorporated everything that he learned from grappling from Gene LaBelle and karate from Chuck Norris and Tang Soo Do and Kung Fu from Yip Man, from Wing Chung.
He put it all together with Western boxing and wrestling.
He realized there's so many different ways to fight.
And that philosophy eventually became mixed martial arts.
Bruce Lee was the first true mixed martial artist because he was the first true guru that was shouting it from the top of the hills to use everything that's useful.
Like there's still schools out there that run like that, but they're not legitimate and they're not the good ones.
The really good schools, they, they're just teaching you something beautiful.
They're teaching you how to use your body in a way that is, is challenging and effective and it makes you so much more confident and it makes you, if a physical altercation happens, you have a massive advantage over almost anyone.
Just like, it's just your ego that keeps you there.
If it's one thing, if you have to defend yourself, someone's attacking you or something's or someone's attacking someone you love, but to just get into fights because you know how to fight is so crazy because like you think, oh, if I could do what you do, I'd be beating the fuck out of people.
And the spirit of learning how to protect yourself, right, in that anchor of learning how to protect yourself and then learning how to fight, learning how to throw a punch, learning how to do this, do this.
I always tell athletes, and I know you feel the same way, it's like the, whether you're on the football field, basketball court, in the cage, whatever it is that you do, whatever kind of athletics, it always, always starts in the gym.
These people that you don't know chiming in about everything.
The good part of that is there's a sharing of ideas and there's a way of communicating that never existed before.
And people are learning so much more about things than ever before.
Social media allows people to break news stories long before mainstream media.
It allows people to tell you about fascinating stories that maybe you would have never heard of and amazing archaeological discoveries and scientific advancements.
And it's incredible in that regard.
But it's also you're dealing with human beings in a weird form where they're not in front of you.
They're not talking to you eye to eye.
They can say the shittiest things and they don't feel anything.
I want to back up for a second because it's so important that people hear this too as well.
I think, especially coming from you and I, who are kind of in the public eye, and we deal with the shit and the noise and all that, but we also deal with the good stuff.
And like you were saying, and I am an optimist, I think, in my DNA.
So I like to look and search for the good stuff that's out there, the stuff that's going to make me better, help me stretch out my aperture up here, looking at things like, oh, I never looked at it like that.
Thank you for bringing that up.
That's great.
I don't know if I agree, but let's talk a little bit more.
Compared to the ones who are the experts, toxicity, and it's this interesting thing that some people have.
I'm going to go out of my way to try and make you feel bad and make people feel bad and shit on this whole thing and really not offer anything, I think, constructive.
And the problem is, a good percentage of the people out there are damaged.
And there's a thing about the kind of fucking interaction that people have on social media that just makes their life worse, whether they realize it or not.
Just fills their life with anxiety and this weird need to constantly check, see who responded to what you tweeted, and what are the comments on your Facebook post and reading them all.
And you're not living your life.
You're just wrapped up in this weird battle of opinions with strangers.
It's like living in that, in the just the clickbank culture, you know, and you want to raise the profile.
So let me ask you this.
And this is something you and I were texting about last week: is how can you tell the difference between the bullshit noise and the toxicity that's always out there compared to, oh, that's an opinion that is worthy of my attention.
And I just want to look at and look at this for a second.
You got to try to be objective and you got to try to be unemotional when you read something that someone's writing.
Like say if someone, someone's like Palestine and Israel is a great example.
Yeah.
Because it's the tension is so heightened.
And anything you say on one side or the other, people will attack you on it.
And so this is one that's if you have an opinion, a political opinion, a cultural opinion about the conflict and you post it, boy, you are opening yourself up to a world of people agreeing and disagreeing and chaos and fighting.
And some of those people are going to have points that make sense.
Like say if you are 100% pro-Palestine and you read something about Hamas and you read something, you go, wow, that's fucking terrible.
You know, you have to be willing to say, oh, there's both things.
There's the, you know, the fact that they live in what's essentially an open-air prison is fucking terrible.
Also, the people that are ruling them are terrorists.
That's terrible too.
Like, you can't ignore any aspect.
This is a complicated thing.
What some of the Israeli soldiers have done some evil things to Palestinians.
There's videos of them shooting people.
Also, what Hamas did is fucking insanely evil.
Like, what has to be done to fix that?
I do not know.
But to pretend it's binary and to pretend it's one side good, one side bad, that seems insane.
That's the thing that I think really grabs my attention because usually I think in I'm not saying a situation like this, but there's a lot of stuff that goes on where you feel like I think this is the path to finding a resolve, or at least maybe the first steps of resolve.
But speaking to what we were talking about earlier, you can learn from that.
That's where separating the noise from the intelligent perspectives.
I've read some very intelligent perspectives where people give you a detailed history and the conflict of the region, and you realize, like, oh, this is like incredibly complicated.
And to have a binary viewpoint or a very black or white viewpoint, it's dangerous.
It's not, it's not, and it's so easy for people to do.
People love to do that.
They love to other people.
It's a natural human trait.
It's a tribal trait that we have.
And that is what led to World War II and the fucking Holocaust, is that they othered these human beings because these human beings were Jewish.
And you're seeing people doing that now with Jewish people.
And you're seeing people doing that now with Muslim people.
There's people that are angry at all Muslim people because of what Hamas did.
All of it's crazy.
And what we need to do is realize that othering human beings is insane.
And if you could look at Earth from space, this is one of the things that all the astronauts have said, all the people that have gone to the space station, there's a moment where you are up there, when you look down on the earth and you see this magical thing that's floating in the heavens and you realize how insane these conflicts we have over territory of lines in the dirt and fighting over resources and it's so ridiculous.
We are one life form.
We are one gigantic super organism that needs each other.
The worst thing they can do to you in prison is put you in solitary confinement.
We need each other.
It's a part of what we are.
We're this one gigantic group of beings that are trying to live our lives all together on this fucking magical thing that's floating through space.
And we unfortunately come from tribal backgrounds, all of us.
We evolved in these small groups of hunter-gatherers thousands and thousands of years ago, and we carry that DNA still.
carry that fiercely loyal tribal DNA that allows us to look at people that aren't a part of us as something less than us.
And we've got to...
And other them.
Yeah.
And what I'm hoping is that as technology allows people to communicate far more freely and to translate languages more freely and/or information is going to get exchanged more freely and it takes a long time for this to happen.
But we'll eventually understand each other to the point where that's way more difficult to happen because it's so easy for it to happen if you don't speak their language, you don't follow their religion, they're bad, you're good, you know, and then you're othering people.
That's a fucking insanely ridiculous thing that's being done by world leaders.
They gather people together against other people that you don't even fucking know.
You don't even know.
It's one thing if you have a conflict with an actual human being that's like doing something to you.
But this is like, you don't even know these people.
And these world leaders have told you that somehow or another these people are bad and you're good and we got to go over there and fuck them up.
Like we're still doing that.
That's insane.
It's insane that human beings are still doing that.
And I'm hoping that as we get to know each other more through technology and through what has become the most connecting innovation, the most connecting technology ever, which is the internet.
I'm hoping that's going to continue to evolve and connect people further and further.
The problem is if it along the way, it can get co-opted by governments and it can get controlled and censored.
I mean, there's a real possibility we could nuke the whole world and there's no one left, except maybe some people living on an island somewhere that got lucky.
Super volcano coats the earth in ash and it's one of the things that kills everybody is the temperature drops.
No sunlight gets through.
Plants don't grow.
Everything's fucked.
And then, you know, you're cannibalizing.
There's a lot of that.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a high possibility that our ancestors were cannibals and that the people that had to survive through a lot of these things, they probably ate people.
Does something tragic, really tragic, not that anything that's already happened has been horrifically tragic, but something horrific at a large scale has to happen that really wakes people up.
Like a nuclear bomb hitting a city.
And people go, Jesus Christ.
Like we went from 1945 until today without doing that.
If we do that now, and then they retaliate, and then it's over.
Like you remember after 9-11, everybody had those American flags on their car, even in LA, which is super liberal, and they never would put a fucking American flag on their car.
And it made people realize, like, hey, we are literally a country.
We're all in this together.
And without that conflict, I think people start looking for conflict amongst the people that are around them.
I think human beings, unfortunately, have a natural desire to seek out conflict or to embrace conflict or to be a part of conflict and to go after people whose opinions don't align with theirs.
And if there's no real problem in the world, you find problems.
It's like that expression, like the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.
That's right.
If it's daddy taking away your Rolls-Royce because you drove drunk when you're 16, that's still the worst thing that's ever happened to you.
But if your life has been this fucking chaotic system of foster homes and drug-addicted family members and crime, and then you get free, something that would drive someone up a wall won't affect you at all.
It's just we're going through a very strange adolescence as a species.
And we're going through this like teenage process of like fucking up and figuring out who you are with nuclear weapons.
And like if you looked at the actual civilization on Earth itself, the human civilization, it's going through this chaotic period of trying to grow and get better while also engaging in ridiculous conflict.
And it's all happening in the blink of an eye.
It's happening so rapidly.
Things have changed so quickly from the time you and I were kids.
I mean, when you and I were kids, it was Russia.
Everybody was worried about going to war with Russia.
And then when the fall of the Soviet Union, there was just like, oh, this calm that went through the whole country.
Because I was the guy who was wrestling in flea markets looking for free corn dogs and hot dogs and shit, selling my headshots for five bucks trying to make money.
And then all of a sudden I'm having that conversation.
But no, it was just incredibly surreal and so wild, but also so incredible that they had all this data that they had said, if this happens, here's the result.
Oh, wow.
It was really fucking deep.
And then I started to think, again, surreal, because that's never been my goal.
Right.
I appreciate it, and I'm fucking honored.
Right.
Because I'm like you in here in our core.
Right.
But it made me think it's either this is an incredible thing and I got some pretty decent leadership skills or things are so fucked up.
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They're turned into the pro wrestling movie star that try to run the world.
So where are those people who are going to They don't want to be president.
They're running their own lives and they're looking on the sideline and wishing that someone with real leadership skills and real wisdom and real empathy and a real moral compass who's not governed entirely by money.
But if you're a person that has empathy, how do you conduct a drone strike where you know that a certain amount of civilians, 100% are going to die, but you know that a terrorist might be in this apartment building?
How do you green light that?
You know, because you kind of have to if you want to get rid of this terrorist.
I mean, but we know the consequences of drone strikes.
There's some insane number of people that are innocent civilians that get killed.
It's hard.
It's been explained to me by my friends in the military that it's very difficult to know the truth because oftentimes you get lies from either side.
Not just the reason for the orders, but the amount of people that died that were innocent.
But for sure, innocent people die.
The question is how many of them?
You know, when they say someone, they bombed a wedding party.
That's real.
That's happened.
Like, thousands of people have died that way all over the world.
Whether it's in Yemen or wherever they're conducting bombing raids, there have been many people that have not been a target that were killed.
But what are those numbers?
And what's the reality of it?
Because if you're on that side that get bombed, you might put out a press information.
You might put out something that says a thousand innocent civilians and they bombed a children's hospital.
But the reality might be it was actually 20 insurgents and 50 civilians.
Like, we don't really know what the real numbers are unless you're on the ground doing a census.
I don't know if we get accurate information from either side.
But if you're a president, you have to deal with that horrible reality that if you do an action, if there's some sort of a military action that has to be taken place, particularly like a drone bombing in a civilian area, you're going to kill some innocent people.
That is a crazy thing to have on your conscience if you have a moral compass.
It's crazy.
And what are the options?
To risk our service members and have them go in there and get gunned down and blown up and lose 50% of them because you didn't want to kill the same number of innocent civilians.
And then you get into that conversation.
It's like, what's the fucking, what's the solution there?
Before it escalates to the point of extreme violence.
But some people want extreme violence.
And that's the Eisenhower speech when he left office, that there's a military industrial complex that wants us to go to war.
They profit off war.
And they can, you know, if they're the people that are funding political campaigns and they have massive amounts of money that they're using as influence, they can make certain politicians make decisions that are not in the best interest of the United States or the people that are the citizens.
They can do things entirely to make money.
You know, like you see it and you see like the amount of money that's involved in something like Ukraine, whether or not you're pro us helping Ukraine or not.
Where did we come up with all that money and why don't we have that money to fix America?
There was one point in time we talked about this where there was $6 billion they accidentally paid to Ukraine.
They overpaid them $6 billion.
That's the exact amount of money it would take to rebuild every single house in Maui.
Instead, the Maui people get $700 a one-time payment, which is insane.
What are we?
Are we a community or are we not?
If we have the money to donate to some guy who is a fucking literally used to be a stand-up comedian, used to play piano with his dick, that's Zelensky.
He did a thing.
There's a video of him playing piano with his dick.
Like, hey, guys, why don't you fucking do this all the time?
Like, why isn't this always like this?
This is what San Francisco used to be like.
You ruined it.
Now we know that you could fix it and fix it quick.
Now we should be really upset.
As upset as people were before about the homeless problem in San Francisco, they should be fucking furious about it now because they always had the ability to fix it quickly.
And they brought San Francisco back quickly to safe and clean and no homeless people in the street.
Now, is this temporary?
Are you going to go right back to tents when Xi Jinping leaves?
And anyone who's verified, and you know, with Polynesian culture, there's a lot of people in the house at times, like aunties and uncles and grandparents.
So there's some houses that are getting $4,000, $5,000, $6,000.
Well, they do their very best, and especially like special operators, SEALs, Rangers.
I mean, they get pretty solid information for what their objective is.
But obviously, their objective is very narrow.
They deal with very whatever the situation is.
They have to go and take care of it.
They need to know how many enemy combatants.
They need to know who's in the house, what's there, how to get in.
You know, it's a very specific skill set that these gentlemen have, and they have to rely on accurate information.
And for the most part, they're the very best at getting their accurate information to those special operators.
But when it deals like with a worldwide scale, like trying to figure out what's real and what's not, and who's telling the truth and who's not.
It's like, fuck.
Good luck.
Because there's so much Russian disinformation and Chinese disinformation and American disinformation.
I mean, there's just entire groups of people dedicated to these troll farms that just go online and make things up and attack people and try to organize these campaigns against a certain idea or a certain political candidate.
And it's just organized.
And it's, you know, it's funded.
And it's hard if you're a person and you have a family and a job and interests.
And you check the news every, you know, once a day, twice a day, try figuring out what the fuck is actually going on.
And what's funny is, and I'm sure you noticed this too, and for a lot of people listening, is when you see the trolls and these campaigns that are funded, right?
And they look like they're legit and they got all their shit together, is what I always find interesting is the loudest shit talkers on there who are saying really like enough where it really stops you in your tracks.
Probably some sort of a wearable device initially.
And then for probably higher bandwidth applications, and especially for people that have neurological conditions and spinal cord injuries, they're going to start implanting like Neuralink.
And one of Neuralink's first goals is to try to bring people that have spinal cord breaks and people that have lost control of their muscles and to bring them back to mobility.
And they think that that's possible, which is amazing.
Wow.
Yeah.
What they're going to be able to do is bypass, I'm crudely phrasing this, or if you're a scientist, I'm sorry.
But they're going to be able to bypass the human neurological system in terms of how you move your arms and body and muscles and do it electronically.
And they think they can do that.
And they think that's going to be one of the first medical applications for this kind of a thing.
But the other thing that Elon said to me, he said, you're going to be able to talk without words.
Now, when most people say you're going to be able to talk without words, I'm like, yeah, man, that'd be wild.
But when Elon says it, you're like, for real?
Yeah.
You really think we're going to be able to talk without words?
This technology will be some sort of an implanted device that allows you to have constant access, probably to something akin to chat GPT and AI or the next level of it, along with some interconnectivity with other people that are wearing the same device.
And it'll probably initially be something that translates languages instantaneously.
And then as it advances, it will be able to read thoughts.
And you'll be able to transfer images, things you see.
I will be able to have this thing in my mind and show my friend Greg that I'm sitting here with the rock having a conversation and he could see that through my eyes.
We will have universal connectivity with all minds, all minds that have that thing.
The real problem is the haves and the have-nots.
Because just like if you go back and watch Wall Street, like Michael Douglas had that fucking big-ass brick telephone, he was walking on the beach.
I'm like, look at this guy.
He's got a phone.
He's walking on the beach.
What a baller.
Now anyone, you know, you can go to fucking T-Mobile and get a flip phone for like 50 bucks.
Like you get a cheap cell phone where you could talk to a person.
It's a tiny thing.
It sits in your pocket.
It's so much better than what Michael Douglas had.
And everybody can get it.
But back then, it was super expensive.
Nobody had it.
And the haves, like Michael Douglas in that movie, Greed is Good, they used that thing to advance their career.
Multiply that times a million, and you have the advantage of the initial adopters of whatever this thing is.
Because if they integrate with artificial intelligence initially and they integrate with some sort of a universal internet system, they're going to be able to accomplish things in business and in terms of like manipulation of financial markets and in terms of acquiring resources.
They're going to be able to do things that the people without those things are not going to be able to do.
And they will have massive amounts of wealth and power almost instantly within years.
It'll be a change, a giant shift that'll go over to the people that have these devices.
And that's fucking, that's the most insane have and have-nots because you essentially have superhumans.
You essentially have something that's almost like an alien that exists with these advanced primates, which is what we are.
I mean, he detailed the process of going from an initial concept, making a demonstration vehicle and then production, how difficult it is and how many things have to line up.
I think there's going to be three different tiers, he said.
There's going to be a beast mode, which is like the most insane, you know, 1,100 horsepower, three electric engines, 0 to 60 in under three seconds, which is insane for like a 7,000-plus pound vehicle.
And if you've never driven an electric car, you got to get past the fact that it doesn't make any noise because a lot of people love the rumble of a V8 and all that jazz.
And that was great, too, because that put a lot of pressure on American automobiles because there's a lot of people that didn't want to buy American cars for a while in the 80s because they fucking broke all the time.
He used to get me up and take me to the gym when I was five, sit in the corner.
And I just, that's how I get to, you know, really bomb my dad.
He didn't want me to do it.
And we got into the biggest fucking fight.
My mom's crying.
I'm crying.
And he said, what do you think you have to offer?
I said, I don't know.
Maybe I'm going to fucking suck, but I got to give this a shot.
And ultimately, it got to a place where I said, either you're going to help train me.
I'm asking you to help train me, or I'll go to somebody else.
And at that time, Brett Hart and that whole family had his dungeon up in Calgary.
I said, maybe I'll go to Calgary.
He agreed to train me, but I realized he didn't want to see that happen because he felt like, hey, look around.
And I was one of the successful ones in wrestling, but I got a little fucking apartment that I got to, I can't even afford to pay 500 bucks a month.
I don't want this for you.
So we got into a huge fight.
He eventually trained me.
I call a guy after three months of training, call a guy named Pat Patterson, who was Vince McMahon's right-hand man, very brilliant mind in the world of pro wrestling, first openly gay wrestler, tough motherfucker.
I call him up because my parents knew him and I said, hey, Pat, this is Dwayne Johnson.
Who?
Dwayne Johnson, Rocky Johnson's son.
Oh, yeah, what do you want?
Hey, I'm training to get in the business.
What fucking business?
It's a recurring theme.
Everybody's like, what fucking business?
The wrestling business.
Why the fuck do you want to do that?
You're just feeling like you're just getting bombed left and right by these OGs.
So I said, I'd love for you to come down and just watch me train.
And if I got anything to offer, just let me know.
And if I don't, just let me know.
That's all I want.
He agreed.
He came down, watched me train.
He said to me as we're training, he goes, can you work as a heel?
Which is, as you know, bad guy in wrestling parliaments.
I said, sure, I'd love to.
We start the match.
I work as a heel, more aggressive, dirty, cheating stuff, right?
He goes, okay, you're done.
Done.
And I had trained in a boxing ring.
And as you know, boxing rings are fucking hard.
It's like this, right?
I'm getting suplexed on the fucking table.
So it really hurt.
That's how I came up in wrestling.
He's smoking a cigarette.
I said, what do you think?
Do I have anything?
He goes, yeah, you just keep working.
Take care of yourself and leaves.
And I was like, did I just fuck?
Because he had a lot of, he had a lot of power.
He was like the vice president of WWE.
I said, okay, well, thank you so much for coming out.
And I said, just keep working.
He goes, just keep working.
Kind of blew me off.
Kept smoking a cigarette and walked off.
And I was like, man, I think I really fucked things up.
Or maybe I'll take his word for face value, take it for gospel.
I'll just keep working.
Little I knew, he went home and he called Vince McMahon.
He said, you got to see this fucking kid.
And Vince said, who?
Rocky Johnson's son.
He goes, all right, let me see him.
Bring him out this Monday on Raw.
And I'll throw him out in a match before the show starts.
And then he, by the way, he said, if you have a shred of opportunity to make it in this business, you're going to have to learn a lot of shit, but learn how to throw a great punch.
So the second night, I had a little bit of confidence, but the guy they put me in there with was a guy named Chris Candido, incredible wrestler, does a lot of acrobatic stuff, flying stuff.
He had me, he called the match, had me flying all around and doing all this stuff.
But it was a great experience.
After that, I met with Vince.
He said, you're not ready for WWE.
You're not ready for the big time.
I'm going to send you down to Tennessee, and that's where you're going to learn how to work.
And it was just a smaller company, minor leagues.
He said, but you're going to go down there.
You learn how to cut your teeth down there.
Learn how to work.
Learn the business.
And when you're ready, if you're ready, I'll bring you up.
I was like, thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
And I went to work.
So, dude, as I'm leaving Vince McMahon's office, he says, hey, by the way, I turn around.
He goes, don't go down there and cut your forehead up with razor blades.
I went, okay, got it.
Because in wrestling, there was a time where that's how you bled with razor blades.
Well, I was going to say, so we win this match and things are ascending.
The dream is coming true.
Like, this is it, man.
I finally feel like this is what I was born to do.
And man, it's feeling so fucking good.
Guys in the locker room, everybody take me under their wing.
There's some political bullshit that you always want to stay away from.
I've always stayed away from that.
But for the most part, everybody's supportive.
Because even though it's a cutthroat business backstage, you still need some guys who are going to show you the way.
So I wound up becoming the youngest intercontinental champion, beating Triple H, or he let me beat him.
Everything was doing this.
So at that time, this interesting thing was happening in the world of pro wrestling where it was fans were cheering the heels and anti-authority.
Fuck the boss, led by Stone Cold Steve Austin, giving everybody the bird.
Fuck Vince McMahon.
Fans were loving that, gravitating towards this.
That guy drives a pickup truck, drinks a beer, tells everybody to go fuck themselves.
Now, in wrestling world, that's supposed to be a bad guy, but now he's becoming a hero.
Then you have this kid who's 25 who's coming out.
Here we go.
You know, the fucking old school.
And Vince and the company always told me, hey, you can't smile enough.
I was like, what do you mean?
You go out, you smile.
I want to make sure everybody knows you're grateful.
Gratitude of attitude.
I said, no, okay.
And it started not to feel good to me because I said, well, you know, these nights I'm getting beat.
But I still want you to smile anyway.
So you have this thing happening over here, the rise of the attitude era.
And then you have this kid who's just smiling away.
Everything is good, even when he fucking loses.
And it never felt right to me here.
And then fans started to turn.
Booing every night.
Got to a point, dude, going into my first WrestleMania, Chicago.
I'll never forget it.
Every night they were chanting Rocky Sucks.
Whoa.
And I had to smile through it.
The bosses were telling me, no, you got to smile.
No, keep smiling.
Ignore it.
Ignore it.
Just ignore it.
If you're paying your hard-earned money as a fan, even though this world is fiction and it's not real, the best of the wrestlers always came from a real place.
So I was smiling away.
I get to WrestleMania, Chicago, sold out.
Stone Cold Steve Austin's on top in the main event.
I'm defending my title.
WrestleMania, 20,000 people start chanting Rocky Sucks.
So imagine that.
You're a kid, 25 years old.
You got the belt on you, pressure.
You're in there.
And the guy who I was wrestling, the Sultan, who was actually my cousin, Rikishi, from my Samoan side, he had me in a rear chin lock.
Whole arena's chanting Rocky Sucks.
He's whispering to me, don't listen to him.
Don't listen to him.
Now I'm like, fuck, this is my life now.
We get out of the match.
I go backstage.
Vince looks at me and Pat and just says, I don't know what we did wrong, but we have to make a change.
I know what that means.
Two days later, I dropped the belt to somebody else.
Now I'm getting beat every night, getting beat every night.
And then I get hurt.
I tear my PCL, a wrestling guy named Mick Foley.
Now, by this time, it's May.
Vince says, take time off, heal your knee.
I don't know what we did wrong or where we went wrong, but we got to really figure things out with you.
I don't know if this is going to work out.
Yeah, man.
And this is 1997, summer of 97.
Now, you'll appreciate this part.
In 97, during that time, while 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, right?
Yeah.
And at that time, I was making $150,000 wrestling 235 days a year.
So do the math of that and how much you're making per match.
We start hearing, hey, these guys over in Pride are making $250,000, $350,000, $500,000.
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's wrestling with us.
I run into Mark Kerr.
I start talking to him.
He told me a little bit about Pride.
And I have this idea in my head.
Oh, maybe I should, maybe I should train the MMA and go to Pride and make money, real money.
And then I don't have to smile.
I'm sure I'm going to get fucked up over there and knock one of my lungs loose, but maybe I could do something like that.
Find the right coach and train.
So I had this whole thing in my head.
I was talking to my wife at that time.
I said, I think that's the way to go because those guys are paying real money and these fans are booing me over here for $150,000.
I get a call from Vince and he says, how's your knee?
I said, it's healing up.
I don't tell him about this idea after I've talked to Shamrock and Kerr and all these guys.
He goes, I want to try and bring you back one time, see how it works out.
I want to turn you heel.
And we have a faction called the Nation of Domination, who DC loves, by the way.
That was his famous, his favorite, Daniel.
The black militant group.
He goes, I want to have you join them, and we'll see how it works out.
I come in.
I said, okay.
But I still got this MMA thought in my head.
Again, I just want to make money and I want to be myself.
When I get to the arena that night, I'm going to join the nation.
I went to Vince, and at that time, there was only just two hours of live show, Monday Night Raw.
Now there's six hours of show on two different programs.
So I said to Vince, hey, tonight when I go out there, could I just have two minutes on the microphone?
And he's like, I don't know.
He goes, it's live.
You know, all our time's accounted for, allocated.
I said, I just need two minutes.
He goes, why?
I said, I just want to be real and just tell the fans how I feel.
And I feel like I need to recalibrate things here.
He said, fine.
A minute.
You got.
Great.
Get on the microphone.
Now I'm walking out.
They're booing me.
Rocky sucks.
But now I'm a heel with this heel group.
I grab the microphone and I say something like, listen, I'm a lot of things, but sucks isn't one of them.
And joining the nation isn't a white thing.
It's not a black thing.
It's a me kicking your ass thing.
And I'm going to earn this respect one way or the other.
Dude, that was the most freeing thing for me in my career.
It was like, you know how you have these defining moments?
Even in that one little moment, I was just fucking ripping all this open.
So here I am.
Now you can fucking boo me, but now watch how I respond.
The fact that he's driven for so long, for so long, this guy's been just fucking getting after it for so long and just literally and breathes this idea of crafting narratives and figuring out who's the good guy and who's the bad guy and how to set up a storyline.
And paying attention to what's happening politically, what's happening, tapping into that, trying to always have his finger on the pulse of what's happening.
I think it was a separate thing that evolved on its own.
Well, I think everything evolved out of American wrestling that started off originally, started off in the carnivals, started off in catch wrestling and things like that, which eventually evolved to one of MMA techniques.
And so the thing that started going sideways, which required a Vince McMahon type, wait a second, they were not doing this right.
Because these guys who were just these fucking badasses, they go to the carnival, $10, $5.
You come in, try your luck if you could beat the champion.
The champion beat the shit out of all of these guys.
But every once in a while, you got a guy who came in out of the blue, off the street, who knew how to protect himself and hold his own, might have known a hold or two, and wind up beating the champion.
And this started to happen.
And before you know it, a promoter or promoters or some, whether it's the fighters, whoever it was, the wrestlers possibly, but someone was like, hold on a second, we need to work this because otherwise we're running a risk at us getting fucked up.
It's really interesting because wrestling itself is one of the most dynamic and difficult amateur sports, but they never really figured out a way to take actual competitive wrestling and make it a legitimate professional sport that's watched by people, which is really insane because it's so exciting.
And it became all these characters and Killer Kowalski and all these guys that were like, you know, I'm going to rip his throat out and shut down his neck.
And the crowd goes nuts.
And to try to have just actual like freestyle wrestling become a sport where you're, you know, you're competing for cash prizes like you would do with tennis or something else.
I never made it there, which doesn't make any sense to me because so many people wrestle.
So many people appreciate wrestling.
Wrestling is the cornerstone of MMA.
It's one of the most important.
I think the most important, because if a guy is a kickboxer and he doesn't know how to wrestle, wrestlers are just going to take him down and beat the fuck out of him every single fight.
Wrestlers can decide whether the fight stands or goes to the ground because once they grip you, you ain't doing shit.
And as you were saying, I think the cachet and the entertainment value just started to become more appealing, I think, to people.
And if you think about it back in the early 1920s and 30s and at that time where fucking times were tough and people were trying to stretch the dollar, what do I want to go see?
I want to go see this wrestling event.
It feels like.
And plus those matches, they would work those matches, whether fucking hour, hour and a half, like long matches too, as well.
But I will say one of the most important elements, which I know you'll appreciate and a lot of MMA fighters appreciate is the, as you say, the corner, wrestling is a cornerstone of MMA, but also for decades and decades and decades, and even still today, having a great base of wrestling is important.
Even though there's antics and showmanship and this guy's jumping off this thing and going to the building and bringing the car in and doing all this shit, there's still the basics of wrestling is always very important because as you know, with catch wrestling, like it taught a lot of wrestling, and myself included, because I came up old school, to have real respect for the holds and to be able to get out of holds, put people in holds, know how to work them or know how to apply them where you fuck someone up if you had to.
So I always appreciate that about the basics of pro wrestling.
So, especially in Pennsylvania, I got there in Allentown, the whole area in Pennsylvania, you know, like they're great wrestlers coming out of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
But I love pro wrestling.
So I was 15 years old, wrestling coach who was also the football coach, was like, yeah, would you come out for wrestling?
You come from a wrestling family.
I'm like, yeah, great.
Now I had this thought in my head.
I'm going to fucking kill this.
I've already got my, I've already, because my dad was working my ass out on the mats when I was five, right?
And the Von Ericss were working me out when I was five, right?
So I had this base, holds, lockups, everything.
And my first wrestling practice, I was like, fuck, this is the most boring shit I've ever felt.
And I told my guys, I was like, guys, I don't, because I was just so now conditioned.
Now, of course, it's the hardest fucking sport out there.
And the thing is, the level of competition today is so high that it's like there's more required of everyone.
But I feel like champions are a very unique breed of individual.
And champions would rise in any era because they would figure out what they need to do in accordance to like what's the competition and who's around them and they would rise to that occasion.
Some wild organization in Russia, I'm sure, is doing that right now.
There's always someone who's trying.
Japan did a lot of that.
They did some crazy freak shows.
That was the thing about Japan.
They love to put like Bob Sapp, 350 pounds of solid muscle, and they put him against Minotaro, who's the champion, who was like 220 natural, you know, just, but Minotaro won.
It was one of those cases where Jiu-Jitsu prevailed over a larger, scarier opponent.
But there's a moment in that fight where Bob Sapp at the beginning of the fight pile drives Minotaro.
There's a lot of characters in Russia that were connected to Fedor that wanted, they had some heavy requirements of what they wanted from the UFC, and the UFC wasn't willing to give it to them.
And, but in that time, when he, like when he beat Minotaro, Jesus Christ, this is, this is like when you could see the levels of competition as they pull up Kane Velasquez versus Minotaro.
Because this, in my opinion, this is prime Kane Velasquez when he just seemed unstoppable.
I mean, he knocked out Sergei, who's the scariest fucking striker in all of MMA.
And he knocked him out in the first round.
And the way he did it was just picture perfect.
And he did it with a fucked up back.
He fucked his back up and wasn't able to train for like, like, he fucked his back up in one of the sessions when he was, because he only got the fight call two weeks before that.
I mean, that was really the first big test of his career.
He had fought some good guys up until that fight.
But that is the first guy where you were like, boy, every fight before that, Aspinall was a heavy favorite in my eyes.
And then that fight, I was like, whoo, I don't fucking know.
I don't know what's going to happen here.
So for him to do that, what he did, and to perform that way under those situations, in that circumstance where your back is fucked and you can't really train.
To have that guy go over there with no one gave him any chance.
Terrence Crawford was sitting across where you are right now, and he's like, zero chance.
He's going to get knocked out.
Zero chance.
And then when he dropped Tyson Fury in the third round and then was battering him in the eighth, and then at the 10th round at the end of the fight, you're like, I don't know.
I think if he knows now what he's up against and he just boxes, just boxes with a real understanding of the consequences of making a mistake, I think it's probably a different fight.
If he doesn't engage and just uses that beautiful jab and movement and stays away from him and just does what he does when he's at his very best.
And one of the things you see from Tyson Fury is when he does have a rematch, he performs so much better.
Like the Deontay Wilder, example.
First fight, down to the wire, gets dropped in the last round.
And that's why I think with Tyson, it just feels like, like, just in here, you know, it's a fight that I need just in terms of as champion, but mentality.
But we were talking about Mike Tyson earlier, that Mike Tyson made his height an advantage because he would come in and bob and weave and you'd be like, oh, geez, where's this coming from?
This fucking tornado coming at you with punches that just moved way faster than any other.
So, when I started the nation turn, the heel rock, right, that you saw earlier, not a white thing, not a black thing.
You know, it's me.
It's a respect thing.
I started calling myself the people's champion just to piss people off.
Like, I'm your champion.
I'm the people's champion.
And the rock is the people's champion.
And we were wrestling down in Louisville, Kentucky, and Ali's family came to watch.
And his wife was there.
Family was a big group.
Afterwards, they were waiting to say hello.
Now, again, I'm going out there.
I'm grabbing the microphone.
And the people's champ says I'm just laying it all in.
So when I come back, I say hello to the family, his wife, and I say, hey, I just want you to know, if you could let Muhammad know, I call myself the people's champion in a way to pay homage to him out of respect.
But I'm going around the country saying it, and people are shitting on me because that's what you want as a heel.
And I said, I told his wife, so if you could please tell him, if he doesn't want me to use this, because I know what this meant to him, being the people's champion, I won't.
And, dude, she said, he told me to tell you it's yours.
That was one message he told me to tell you tonight.
He was such an important cultural figure in my career because he was the first boxer, a first like professional athlete of the highest regard who stood up and said, the Vietnam War is wrong.