Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is one of the most prominent names in the history of the WWE and part of a long line of professional wrestlers on both sides of his family.

Johnson was a third-generation wrestler, with his father Rocky Johnson and grandfather Peter Maivia both being extremely popular names during their eras.

The next generation of the family lineage is now involved with wrestling and making her own name, literally, in the WWE.

The Rock’s daughter, Simone Johnson signed with the WWE in 2020. However, she has been sidelined with injuries while training at the WWE’s performance center.

It appears that she may now be ready to debut, but it will not be under her legal name or related to her dad’s Rock nickname. She has changed her social media handle to Ava Raine, which will be her WWE name going forward.

This news has many around the wrestling world confused about why she and the WWE have decided not to take advantage of her built-in lineage.

It appears that Simone Johnson wants to make her own name in the wrestling industry, as she explained her reasoning for the name change on Sunday.

“I probably sound like a broken record & hopefully this is the last I’ll mention this but I don’t understand why people being portrayed as separate individuals from their family name is such a heated topic. A name doesn’t discredit any prior accomplishments from any family,” she wrote on Twitter.

While some may be upset with WWE’s decision to use a different in-ring name, pretty much everyone has their name changed when they enter the WWE for copyright reasons. It’s a fairly normal thing.

There have been instances in the past where they have used a wrestler’s lineage as a storyline piece like the WWE did with Randy Orton, being the son of Bob Orton in the early 2000s. There’s also Charlotte Flair, daughter of Ric Flair. But there are plenty of instances where a name change was made in spite of someone’s lineage, such as with Bron Breakker, son of legendary wrestler Ric Steiner.

Regardless, Simone Johnson seems pretty determined to make her own path in the WWE going forward, and we will see if that hurts or harms her as her career progresses in the future.

[AvaRaineWWE, Yahoo.com]

About Reice Shipley

Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.