My Stumble into the Rock’s WWE World
So, thinking about The Rock and his time in WWE really throws me back. It wasn’t like I was a massive wrestling fan from the get-go. Nah, I kinda just stumbled into it. It must have been late nineties, maybe early 2000s? I was probably flipping channels, bored, looking for something, anything, to watch after school or maybe late at night.
And then, boom, there was this guy on the screen. He wasn’t just big muscles like everyone else seemed to be. This dude could talk. Seriously, the way he held the microphone, the eyebrow thing, the catchphrases – it was something else. You couldn’t ignore him. I didn’t even know the rules of wrestling, didn’t know the storylines, but I knew I wanted to hear what this guy, The Rock, had to say next.
Pretty soon, me and a couple of buddies were hooked. We weren’t exactly setting up rings in the backyard, not that crazy. But yeah, we definitely tried mimicking the catchphrases.
- “If you smell what The Rock is cookin’!”
- “Know your role and shut your mouth!”
- “It doesn’t matter what you think!”
We’d drop those lines randomly, thinking we were hilarious. Probably annoyed everyone around us, looking back. I remember trying to do the People’s Eyebrow in the mirror. Couldn’t quite nail it, always ended up looking confused instead of cool.
Watching the Big Matches
It became a bit of a thing, catching Raw or Smackdown, whatever night it was on back then. Especially if The Rock was advertised. It wasn’t even just about the wrestling matches themselves. It was the whole spectacle, the drama, the back-and-forth on the mic. Pure entertainment, really. A good way to switch off from homework or whatever else was going on.
I specifically remember gathering at my friend Mark’s place to watch some big Pay-Per-View. Might have been Wrestlemania, the one where Rock faced Hogan, maybe? Or was it Austin? Details get fuzzy. Anyway, Mark’s parents were out. We had snacks piled high. Right at a big moment, I think Rock hit the Rock Bottom or something, Mark jumped up and knocked over a massive bottle of orange soda. All over his mom’s light-colored carpet. Absolute panic stations.
We spent the next half hour frantically scrubbing that stain, missing the rest of the event pretty much. Used half a bottle of weird-smelling cleaner we found under the sink. Pretty sure we just made the patch cleaner than the rest of the carpet, which wasn’t much better. His mom totally noticed when she got back. That’s the memory that sticks out more than who actually won the match. Funny how brains work.
Yeah, so that was my brush with The Rock’s WWE era. Good times, mostly. Haven’t watched wrestling regularly in ages, but you still hear the echoes of those catchphrases sometimes. Hard to forget that level of charisma once you’ve seen it.
