10 Great Wrestlers Who Totally Reinvented Themselves

There was a time when no one wanted to smell what The Rock was cooking.

Debuting as a considerably more straight-laced, mild-mannered babyface, ‘The Blue Chipper’ Rocky Maivia just seemed a bit lame compared to edgy antiheroes like Steve Austin and The Undertaker. Smiling, high-fiving and saying very little of interest, Maivia was in dire need of a serious re-tooling less than a year into his WWF run.

The audience disdain got so bad he began getting pilloried with chants of ‘Die Rocky, Die!’ The chant just made his nice guy act comical, as if he was oddly detached from anything beyond the security barricade in the arena. Despite his obvious potential, Dwayne Johnson was not going to set the world on fire as Rocky Maivia.

A move to the controversial Nation of Domination faction allowed Rocky to channel his inner jerk to increasingly humorous effect. Shedding the nice guy image, Maivia was fast becoming a riotous, can’t-miss rising star by the start of ‘98.

Reborn as The Rock, Dwayne Johnson’s charisma and crowd control reached a level almost never seen today. The comedic, super jock persona became so popular that he gave Steve Austin a run for his money as the leading star of the Attitude Era.

In 2022, Dwayne Johnson’s a more famous entity than The Rock. One of the most active and sought-after movie stars in the world, it all started with his reinvention as ‘The People’s Champion'.