Former WWE Star reveals he allowed Dwayne Johnson to use the ‘The Rock’ name. He originally began his WWE career as Rocky Maivia.
Dwayne Johnson started out in the WWE as Rocky Maivia, a portmanteau of his father and grandfather’s in ring names. Presented as a clean cut face, the fans eventually rejected the character and so did Dwayne himself.
Also read: Jim Cornette reveals why Hulk Hogan had a black eye at Wrestlemania IX
He joined the Nation of Domination, turned heel and started calling himself the Rock. It wasn’t long before he became the biggest star in the company alongside Stone Cold Steve Austin. Today the name is synonymous with the star. However, he may have gone with a whole other name if his fellow WWE star hadn’t allowed him to use the name.
Former WWE Star reveals he allowed Dwayne Johnson to use the ‘The Rock’ name
While speaking to Casual Conversations with The Wrestling Classic, Ken Shamrock revealed that he owned the name “The Rock”. He used the name in his early UFC career and allowed WWE to give the name to Dwayne Johnson.
“Anything that had to do with the cage or Lion’s Den, they had to go through my approval, because I owned all that,” Shamrock revealed. “I have [it] in my contract, I own that. In fact, funny story is that The Rock, he was known as Rocky. [They] had to have my permission to use the name The Rock because I owned Ken ‘The Rock’ Shamrock.
“That’s what I was known as when I was first fighting in the UFC. They called me Ken ‘The Rock’ Shamrock so I had that carved out too but anyways, so the cage, the Lion’s Den cage and all that stuff so it had to be something that had to be approved by me which I was fine doing, but a lot of the creativity that went into that I think had to do with a lot of the creative writers and the people at the WWF with the weapons and all that stuff but, I came up with the actual slang of the actual cage itself.
“Instead of just being a straight cage, I wanted to angle a little bit because that gave us a chance to actually work off that cage, because if it was straight up, you ain’t shooting him into the cage because it’s — you’re gonna get stuck in there, right? So, by having an angle, you can run up on it, you do all kinds of gimmicky stuff on there so, there was a lot of creativity [that] went into that but I was a part of that creativity for sure.”
Ken Shamrock did not make anyu money from WWE using his name
Shamrock also revealed that he did not make any money off of WWE using the name. In fact, Dwayne Johnson didn’t even know about it until he told him.
“No [I didn’t make any money from ‘The Rock’ name],” Shamrock revealed. “You know what man? The Rock came up and started using it.
“Nobody even knew the issue at all. I didn’t because I was never kind of — I never liked that, right? Just like when they came up with the dolls that had the lion skin on it with the shorts on it, I owned that.
“They never asked me to do that, they didn’t ask to do that so therefore I own that, so I could’ve gotten all that too but you know what? I was fine with where I was at. It didn’t matter.
“So, and me and Rocky, we talked about it one time. He didn’t even know. He’s like, ‘Really!?’ I said, ‘Yeah. Don’t worry about it. No big deal.’ It’s like, ‘I’m not gonna do anything for that’ so it’s like, I’m known as The World’s Most Dangerous Man now.”
Click here for more Wrestling News
