Way back in 1996, a young blue chip go-getter by the name of Rocky Maivia made his WWE debut at Survivor Series, as part of a truly unstoppable team that consisted of him, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Marc Mero and THE STALKER. 20 years later, a mountain man who happens to be the world’s highest-paid actor, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, looks back on that first match (at Madison Square Garden) and cringes along with it. The end result: PURE GOLD.
My ONLY nitpick with this wonderful video is that he doesn’t actually call his entire debut match, just his entrance and from the point at which he becomes the sole survivor for his team. But there are still a TON of wonderful nuggets (shined up real nice, turned sideways and) crammed into the nine minutes or so where The Rock is dishing freely.
Among the highlights from the People’s Commentary:
- Addressing the elephant in the room about the “f*cking Chia Pet on top of his head”
- Pointing out that he didn’t know where the hard cam was and kept screwing it up
- He didn’t know what the finish of the match was going to be until an hour beforehand
- The Rock believes Vince McMahon is “one of the greatest of all time” on commentary and wishes he would still commentate. WHAT A MANEUVER.
- When he gets the pin on the late Crush, he is profusely thanking him for letting him go over.
- His family had no idea he was winning the match and they were all moved to tears watching at home
Rocky won that match for his team, of course. It may seem like it was a Chia Pet-wearing, camera-unaware sh*tshow, but a win is still a win in the box score. (Be right back, inventing a box score for pro wrestling.)
Let’s hope The Rock does a lot more videos like this in the future, because we’ll always be here for them.
This is an updated version of a post that originally ran on October 5, 2016.
