There are not too many people around who at this point are unaware of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s football past. Johnson played college football at Miami with guys like Warren Sapp. Johnson is known to be quite the physical athlete who has an internal drive to succeed in everything he does (which, of course, he does to this day), and that was a trait that nearly led to Johnson making sure a teammate with a big mouth might never speak again.
In a featured profile piece and cover story for Sports Illustrated, Johnson reflects back on the moment he got into a heated confrontation with Miami teammate Kevin Patrick. After having enough of the ridicule from Patrick as Johnson felt he deserved more playing time (even though that would have meant less playing time for Sapp), Johnson unloaded on the trash-talking Patrick in the coach’s office and then started rumbling with him as if this was a backstage scene at a WWE event.
At one point, Johnson claims he actually thought about and tried to rip Patrick’s tongue straight out of his mouth.
From Sports Illustrated;
“I was always running hot because I wasn’t getting the playing time that I thought I deserved,” says Johnson. “The truth of the matter is Warren Sapp was just a better player, but when you’re young, you can’t see that. Me and Kevin were in a coach’s office, and he was talking s—, as always, but this time I just lost it. It was like a movie fight—the desk got turned over, stuff was flying all over the place. We spilled out onto the weight room floor, still going at it. He wouldn’t stop talking, so I decided to pull his tongue out. I stuffed my big ol‘ hand into his mouth, and I had a couple of fingers around his tongue, but it was so damn slippery! I was quite serious about pulling it out, but I couldn’t quite get a hold of it.”
I’d like to think it was a moment like this that would eventually lead to Johnson’s many catchphrases in the ring. I choose to think of this story and imagine a young Johnson was countering the smack talk from Patrick by asking “Is that what you think?” Did he also throw in a “jabroni” at Patrick too? again, I’ll choose to believe he did just that.
Fights between players happens, and Johnson made sure to let us all know that they both let cooler heads prevail in the end.
Well at the time trying to rip my teammates tongue out during a fight was a good idea. 😈 We hugged it out after. https://t.co/3XdikN1dPS https://t.co/SNz8zBwEle
— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) November 30, 2016
And now, some classic Rock moments, just for the heck of it. Be careful, you might fall down a WWE rabbit hole as a result.
