The Rock Says: The Most Electrifying Man in Sports-Entertainment - Hardcover

Rock, The

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007105576 ISBN 13: 9780007105571

Publisher: Willow, 2000

Synopsis

The autobiography of the youngest and coolest World Wrestling Federation champion in history and the most electrifying man in sports entertainment.

In this action-packed, revealing and outrageously funny memoir, the WWF superstar The Rock recounts his life in and out of the ring with honesty and inimitable style. From his boyhood days travelling around the world with his father (professional wrestler Rocky Johnson) to his years as a football player at the University of Miami to his meteoric rise through the ranks of the Federation, The Rock Says...chronicles the life story of one of sports-entertainment’s most innovative and best-loved personalities.

After an injury-plagued football career at Miami and a subsequent unsuccessful foray into Canada where he lived in squalor, he decided pro football was not for him and he set his sights on following the path of his father and grandfather, High Chief Peter Maivia, and become the world’s first third-generation professional wrestler.

Performing first as Dwayne Johnson, then Flex Kavana and later Rocky Maivia, he quickly became one of the WWF’s hopefuls. But it was only when he adopted the brash persona of The Rock – a spitting, snorting, swearing son-of-a-bitch with the soul of a smart-ass comic and the body of an Adonis – that he found his true calling as the People’s Champion.

The Rock takes the reader on a guided tour behind-the scenes of big-time professional wrestling, a world which has long been shrouded in secrecy. He provides a breathtaking first-hand account of WrestleMania, the Super Bowl of pro wrestling.

Filled with genuinely touching stories of love and strife, hilarious anecdotes, revealing inside accounts of the workings of the WWF industry, and dozens of previously unpublished photographs, The Rock Says... is sure to blow the minds of all WWF fans.

About this title

Review:

Hot on the bleeding heels of Mankind's Have a Nice Day!, here's another memoir edited by the same prose coach, the clever Jeremie Ruby-Strauss (and co-authored by Joe Layden). Dwayne Johnson, aka the Rock, gives you plenty of colourful, jumbled action photos and the growling accounts of staged mayhem that made Mankind a bestseller. But actually, his story is more interesting than that of Mankind, his occasional ring rival. The noisy action chapters alternate with passages of more reflective conventional autobiography. The Rock is a third-generation pro wrestler and his book amounts to a history of the sport. His grandpa, High Chief Peter Maivia, was a Samoan important enough to be buried in Diamond Head's crater, and his dad, Rocky Johnson, was George Foreman's sparring partner and the first black American World Wrestling Federation Intercontinental champ. The Rock is candid about the battles his family faced outside the ring: the marriage-testing road lifestyle, his dad's most important win (over the bottle) and the author's own dangerous temper. There's something touching about the Rock's unpromising debut in his Uncle Tonga's old trunks, in his reverence for his elders--and something scary about his reaction when he thinks people lack such respect.

What, you say? You'd rather hear about the Rock's "schmozz" (free-for-all) with Mankind, or Faarooq and the interracial Nation of Domination, or that Budweiser-popping piece of trailer trash Stone Cold Steve Austin, or the Undertaker, whose skin is "the colour of bad meat"? You want to hear how he started out sleeping on a pungent mattress retrieved from a garbage dump and wound up wearing Versace shirts and chatting up Gennifer Flowers on TV at Wrestle Mania XIV? You crave the secrets of the Frankenstein, the Gorilla Position and Jake the Snake? That's all here too. Just hop in the ring--The Rock will show you around. --Tim Appelo

From the Back Cover:

In this action-packed, revealing and outrageously funny memoir of the WWF superstar The Rock recounts his life in and out of the ring with honesty and inimitable style. From his boyhood days travelling around the world with his father (professional wrestler Rocky Johnson) to his years as a football player at the University of Miami to his meteoric rise through the ranks of the Federation, The Rock Says...chronicles the life story of one of sports-entertainment's most innovative and best-loved personalities.

After an injury-plagued football career at Miami and a subsequent unsuccessful foray into Canada where he lived in squalor, he decided pro football was not for him and he set his sights on following the path of his father and grandfather, High Chief Peter Maivia, and become the world's first third-generation professional wrestler.

Performing first as Dwayne Johnson, then Flex Kavana and later Rocky Maivia, he quickly became one of the WWF's hopefuls. But it was only when he adopted the brash persona of The Rock – a spitting, snorting, swearing son-of-a-bitch with the soul of a smart-ass comic and the body of an Adonis – that he found his true calling as the People's Champion.

The Rock takes the reader on a guided tour behind-the scenes of big-time professional wrestling, a world which has long been shrouded in secrecy. He provides a breathtaking first-hand account of WrestleMania , the Super Bowl of pro wrestling.

Filled with genuinely touching stories of love and strife, hilarious anecdotes, revealing inside accounts of workings of the WWF industry, and dozens of previously unpublished photographs, The Rock Says... is sure to blow the minds of all WWF fans.

About this edition

• Publisher: Willow
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0007105576
• ISBN 13: 9780007105571
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304