5 Superstars who had real-life heat with The Rock in WWE

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is an eight-time WWE Champion who is an instantly recognizable figure all over the world. Nowadays, The People's Champion is highly focused on his career in Hollywood, and The Rock's likeable personality has remained constant ever since he became one of the most popular WWE Superstars of The Attitude Era.

However, the Sports Entertainment industry is certainly not bereft of controversy and backstage politics. The Rock is no different from virtually every WWE Superstar in this case, as there have been instances where he didn't get along with some of his peers in real-life.

With that in mind, here are 5 WWE Superstars who had real-life heat with The Rock.

#5 Shawn Michaels

Recently, Bruce Prichard revealed on his podcast that Shawn Michaels and The Rock weren't exactly the best of friends, and they didn't get along as peers backstage.

“They didn’t like each other. It was because of ego, especially back then. They were completely different people. I don’t think that Shawn saw a whole lot in Rock at the time. Rock didn’t really like Shawn so it was oil and water at the time. They did not mesh.”

This comes off as no surprise. In the 90s, The Heart Break Kid was a notorious backstage figure in terms of controversy. The Rock is definitely not the only one who had issues with Shawn Michaels back in the day.

When Michaels returned to WWE in the early 2000s, he was scheduled to work in a match against The Rock. Dave Meltzer noted that Rock refused to work against Michaels because of what the latter did to him during the early days of The Attitude Era.

Thankfully, HBK has turned his life around for the better since those days, and now he is a key figure over at WWE NXT. A dream match between both of these Superstars is something that every WWE fan has wished for at some point in time.

#4 Triple H

Triple H and The Rock had an encounter at WrestleMania 31

It is generally well-known that The Rock had real-life beef with most members of The Kliq. WWE Hall of Famer, Bret Hart, launched a web series called Confessions of The Hitman in 2020, and he shared stories of both Shawn Michaels and Triple H bullying The Rock.

When it came to the King of Kings, Bret Hart said he was glad that The Rock overcame the bullying and went on to become a huge star in WWE.

"Triple H was the same. He was always out to get The Rock. Shawn was out to get him and they just worked on him, and worked on him, and worked on him. And I left. [The Rock] was still in the doghouse with those guys. They wanted him [out] as bad as they wanted me out. Like, they were after him. And, for me, maybe a year later, he started getting his break and he started to take off in WWE." Hart added, "and I'm so glad he overcame their petty bulls--t."(h/t Wrestling Inc.)

Thankfully, both Triple H and The Rock have mutual respect for each other today, as the latter even sent a heartfelt message to The Game on the occasion of Triple H completing 25 years in WWE.

#3 Road Dogg

Again, it's no surprise that a WWE superstar who ran in circles with Triple H and Shawn Michaels as part of D-Generation X had real-life heat against The Rock.

Back in March 2020, Road Dogg appeared on Pete Rosenberg's ESPN podcast, 'Cheap Heat', and talked about various topics including his early relationship with The Rock in WWE.

“I was always jealous of him because I thought I was a good talker, he was [too] a good talker. But one thing I didn’t have was a good body compared to him”. He continued, “So because of that, I treated him harshly when we were both up and coming. We all had our fun with him when he was Rocky Maivia, with the pineapple head and those sorts of things, but what he had become was undeniable, with a great body, great talker, great entertainer”. (h/t eWrestlingNews.)

Fortunately, once Road Dogg cleaned up his act and got sober, The Rock was one of the first people he approached to make amends. Just like The Rock's relationship with Triple H in WWE, all seems to be good between him and Road Dogg right now.

#2 John Cena

The Rock and John Cena faced each other in two consecutive WrestleMania main events

Although both John Cena and The Rock are two great friends today, their real-life equation was quite different back when The Rock returned to WWE heading into WrestleMania 28.

The war of words between two of the biggest stars in the history of Sports Entertainment felt genuine and unscripted, but Cena got a little too personal during these promos, and The Rock didn't particularly appreciate that.

On Jimmy Kimmel's talk show in 2018, Dwayne Johnson even publicly addressed his backstage beef with John Cena heading into WrestleMania 28.

"In the world of wrestling as you guys know, it's fictionalized, it's a TV show. But we had our rivalry, and now we can look back on it, it was so real. Like we had real problems with each other. We really did, which, by the way, led to... [us] setting WWE records with our pay-per-views, but like, we had real issues with each other."

Cena once criticized The Rock for leaving WWE and establishing a solid base in Hollywood. However, he said he was ignorant and that time and was wrong about The Rock.

At the end of the day, Cena and The Rock's real-life heat in WWE is a thing of the past, and the reason why both men eventually became good friends is that they finally understood each other's perspectives.

#1 CM Punk

Speaking of John Cena, The Rock and CM Punk had a series of matches in 2013, but as everyone knows, the fallout of their WWE feud led to another WrestleMania rematch between Cena and The Rock.

Punk could have still been included to make it a Triple Threat Match at the Grandest Stage of Them All, and being left out from the main event of WrestleMania did sit well with the Straight Edge Superstar.

In a 2019 Q/A session at Starrcast III, Punk revealed that heading into the 2013 Royal Rumble match against The Rock, he was unhappy that his promos were being written by the same people who wrote material for The Rock. However, both sides did reach a satisfactory agreement later.

CM Punk has been very vocal about being unhappy that he had to lose the WWE Title to The People's Champion, but since then, both Superstars have made up and Punk even apologized to The Rock afterwards.

Edited by Alan John