The Rock’s wrestling daughter
Dwayne Johnson’s daughter Simone joins the family business as a fourth-generation professional wrestler
SITTING on the floor of her granny’s living room, nine-year-old Simone Johnson was transfixed by the action playing out on the TV in front of her. Men with glistening, bulging biceps and legs like tree trunks fashioned from muscle were grappling and flinging each other around a wrestling ring as people cheered.
This, Simone decided, was what she wanted to do. And now, a decade later, she’s been signed by WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and WWE NXT.
Spending afternoons at grandma’s house watching DVDs of old WWE matches might not be the first choice of pastime for many young girls, but Simone is practically WWE royalty.
Her father is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who moved from wrestling to carve out a successful film career. Her grandad was Canadian wrestler Rocky “Soulman” Johnson and her great-grandfather was Samoan-American wrestler “High Chief ” Peter Maivia.
At 18, Simone is the youngest and first fourth-generation person to become a WWE athlete and her dad is immensely proud. “Dreams ain’t just for dreamers,” her dad wrote on Instagram with a picture of them hugging.
“Congrats to my #1 born, Simone Johnson on officially signing her wrestling contract with @wwe @wwenxt.
“Carry our family name proudly, but your road will always be yours to create, earn & own,” he continued. “So proud. Live your dream. Let’s work.”
She officially started training at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida, last month, and there’s speculation she’ll be drafted into NXT – the WWE series where amateur wrestlers compete to become the franchise’s next star.
She hasn’t forgotten that day at her grandmother Ata Johnson’s house.
“She was like, ‘Hey, I want to show you something’. My grandma used to have all the old WWE DVDs. She had like stacks and stacks of them, and we would just sit and watch those, and I remember watching everything, from wrestling in the 1980s, to the Attitude Era [the late 1990s to early 2000s], and then to present day, and just seeing the change in wrestling and how it’s progressed, to what it is now.
“She’s the one who got me into wrestling, and the minute I started watching it I fell in love, and I knew it was what I wanted to do.”
SIMONE is the eldest of Dwayne’s three kids, and the daughter of his exwife, Dany Garcia, a bodybuilder and Hollywood magnate who’s also co-founder of her and Dwayne’s production company, Seven Bucks Productions.
‘The minute I started watching it I fell in love, and I knew it was what I wanted to do’
Dany, like Dwayne, is proudly supportive of Simone’s career decision but they’ve insisted she continue with her studies. Here she appears to have taken a leaf from her mom’s book – she’s studying entertainment management at New York University. “My parents have always been really big on me going to college, furthering my education, and I want to make them proud and I also want that for myself,” she said in a recent interview. One of her greatest challenges is living up to the legacy of her wrestling royalty family. “My dad had the same thing when he started wrestling. He told me to always be my own person, that individuality is your greatest gift,” Simone said. She grew up knowing her dad as an actor and movie star, not as a wrestler. The first time she saw him in action was when she was 11 years old, at the main event of WrestleMania 28, when he returned to the ring to defeat John Cena. “I was so happy because I had always seen him act, but to see him do something I know we both really connected with, was amazing.”
Dwayne says when Simone made it clear she wanted to be a pro wrestler, they spent years discussing her career path.
“We had this big conversation, she came with me to Hong Kong and Beijing [ for the promotional tour for Skyscraper],” he told Good Morning America in 2018. “I said, ‘Honey, whatever your passion is, I support that’. And wrestling was good to me, I started my career in Madison Square Garden. So, yeah, bring it on. She’s going to be a champ.”
DWAYNE’S road to fame wasn’t easy despite the accomplishments of his father and grandfather. Peter, who was a descendent of the Samoan royal family, began his wrestling career in New Zealand. He moved to the USA in 1970 and joined the WWE. Outside the ring he trained future WWE stars, including Rocky Johnson, who would marry Peter’s daughter Ata.
Rocky began teaching his son to wrestle when he turned six, and continued to coach him for the duration of his wrestling career.
Dwayne is now the highest- paid movie star in the world – he earned $89,4 million (R1,2bn) last year – but his childhood was far from glamorous. His family moved frequently with his father’s wrestling jobs, and by the time he was in high school he’d lived in 13 states. His parents’ relationship was tense as work dried up for his dad. Rocky and Ata fought constantly as they battled to afford the basics, and were eventually evicted from their apartment. Frustrated and angry, Dwayne started stealing, getting into fights and getting arrested. “I had a hard time staying on the right track, staying in school,” he recalled. Sport gave him the break he needed, but injuries ended his football career and he turned to wrestling. He quickly became a WWE superstar, then a Hollywood megastar, but he was still dogged by depression, which intensified when he and Dany split in 2007. “I was just struggling, man. Struggling to figure out what kind of dad [I was] going to be. Realising I’d done a piss-poor job of cultivating relationships, and a lot of my friends had fallen by the wayside. “I was scared. Personally, everything was in a very bad and challenging place. Professionally, I couldn’t bet on myself. I wasn’t used to that.” Therapy helped him a lot, he said, and he and Dany remain friends, co-parents and business partners. For Simone, her family’s struggles and legacy “mean the world to me”. “To know that my family has such a personal connection to wrestling is really special to me and I feel grateful to have the opportunity to carry on that legacy.”