In years past, the main thing that mattered if an actor wanted to be a movie star is how good they perform on set. These days, however, it seems like famous people have to be on guard every hour of the day. For example, if a celebrity is caught on camera doing something gross, that one moment of their life will be chronicled in lists for years to come. On top of that, if a star slips up on a red carpet, the chances are that the public will never let them forget their mistake.
Before Dwayne Johnson became one of the biggest movie stars in the world, he was a famous professional wrestler. During Johnson’s first career when he was known as The Rock, he did several things in front of cameras that most movie stars would never want the world to see. However, there is no reason to bring up most of that stuff since Johnson was in character at the time.
Unfortunately for one of Dwayne Johnson’s former WWE co-workers, things went way too far one night when The Rock was in the ring. After all, Johnson absolutely brutalized a fellow wrestler and the footage was hard to watch. Since then, the world has learned a lot more about the consequences of concussions which has made the footage downright sickening.
An Unfortunate Event
At the WWE’s 1999 Royal Rumble event, The Rock and Mick “Mankind” Foley wrestled in an “I Quit” match for the WWE Championship, which was called the WWF Championship at the time. What that means is that to win the match, one of the wrestlers had to beat up their opponent so much that they quit the match.
Throughout Mick “Mankind” Foley’s career, he has taken part in some incredibly brutal matches. As a result, wrestling fans never expected The Rock to win since Mankind would never quit. In the end, The Rock was a villain at the time so he cheated to win by playing a previously recorded audio clip of Mankind quitting. Even though The Rock was going to cheat, he still destroyed Mankind during the match.
At one point in their 1999 Royal Rumble match, The Rock handcuffed Mankind’s hands behind his back. Later, The Rock would take out a steel chair and begin to hit Mankind over the head with it over and over again. For anyone who thinks that wrestling is “fake” so that wouldn’t hurt, if you heard the wet thud sound that could be heard every time the chair connected you’d know how wrong that is. Ultimately, The Rock hit Mankind in the head with a chair full force eleven times in mere moments. The footage of those blows landing is so brutal that when the WWE uploaded a video of the match on YouTube, no footage of the chair shots was included.
Wrestlers React
In the years since the 1999 Royal Rumble took place, The Rock and Mick “Mankind” Foley’s match at the event has become infamous for how violent it was. In fact, even in the world of wrestling where injuries are common, many performers clearly were disturbed enough by those chair shots that they continue to talk about the match.
Arguably the biggest wrestler of all time, when Stone Cold Steve Austin sits down for an interview, there are a lot of obvious questions to ask about his career. Despite that, when Austin took part in a 2021 interview, he was asked about The Rock and Mankind’s mind-boggling I Quit match. Once that match was brought up, Austin didn’t mince words when he called it “brutal” and “hard to watch”. Moments later, Austin stated that he can respect what Mankind and The Rock were trying to do but then he instantly transitioned to questioning how violent the match got.
In 2019, a WWE Hall of Famer named Sean Waltman talked about Mankind and The Rock’s “I Quit” match during an appearance on the WINCLY podcast. Instead of talking about his own take on the match, Waltman revealed that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was unsettled by the brutality of what he’d done. “I remember talking to The Rock and I remember him being really disturbed afterwards. He was not digging what just happened and not digging that he had just done that.”
For his part, Mick “Mankind” Foley has addressed the violence of the “I Quit” match several times over the years. For example, Foley wrote “I think @TheRock and I may have gone a little too far on this particular evening” on Twitter about the match in 2021. Foley apparently regretted that Tweet for whatever reason since he deleted it later.
Once you learn about how brutal The Rock and Mankind’s 1999 match was, it makes all of the discussion about Dwayne Johnson’s Vin Diesel feud seem extremely tame.
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