Before Amassing a Fortune of $800 Million, Dwayne Johnson Had to Work Extra Hard In Between Matches Just to Earn a Mere $5 in His Struggling Days

Life is not a bed of roses and no one knows that better than The Great One himself. Dwayne Johnson’s success story is one that everyone wants to emulate. From being a struggling wrestler making just $40 a night, to becoming part of a $7 billion movie franchise. Johnson’s journey is truly a story of rags to riches.

In his early wrestling days before he joined the WWE, Johnson used to wrestle at a promotion in Tennessee called USWA. Fellow WWE Hall Of Famer Jerry Lawler also had his humble beginnings from there. But making extra money every night was no easy task for the Hollywood megastar back then.

Dwayne Johnson worked really hard to make ends meet

On a recent appearance on The Pivot Podcast, Dwayne Johnson talked about his hustling days in USWA. He mentioned how no matter where you were on the card that night, you were guaranteed a sure shot $40 if you wrestled. Not one dollar more, not one dollar less.

When asked how he would make any extra money other than the guaranteed $40, Johnson talked about something called ‘The Gimmick Table’.

He elaborated, “We’d go to what’s called the gimmick table and we’d have our polaroids if we were wrestling on the card and say we already wrestled for the night, you get your 40 bucks, that’s guaranteed, we can stay till intermission, the four of us as wrestlers would go out to the gimmick table, we’d have our polaroids, and anyone who wanted to take a polaroid with you, you’d sign it, 5 bucks. Take it, 5 bucks, sign it 10 bucks, so that’s how we made our additional money. So on a good night, I could make maybe 80 bucks.”

But after all these years, now that Johnson has finally become the biggest action star of the 21st century, the hosts asked him how he felt about this journey. To which he replied that being in Hollywood was never his goal.

It was never The Rock’s goal to be a Hollywood star

We might all think that Dwayne Johnson had his entire career well planned beforehand. Right from his in-ring gimmicks on the mic to bagging his first major movie role as ‘The Scorpion King’ in The Mummy Returns in 2001. But that was never his end goal.

He explained in detail, “No, never. My goal wasn’t to be here, in Hollywood, making movies, hopefully with a little bit of longevity, that was never my goal. And to be completely honest with you guys, complete transparency. My goal was just not to be broke and I used to tell myself this all the time, and I think because I struggled a lot growing up and I saw how hard my dad was working.”

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And indeed with that unwavering work ethic, Johnson has left his struggling days far behind. He is not just one of the biggest Hollywood stars today but also owns many successful businesses like Teremana Tequila and the XFL. With the sky being the limit, we will just have to wait and watch to see what other pinnacle The Rock will conquer.

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