The Rock recently discussed his relationship with his father, Rocky Johnson, in a recent profile by GQ. Here are the highlights:
On having his father on the road all of the time: “It was tough love with him. Very little patience with s**t. And he came up in an era where he had to fight for everything. [He was a] Black pro wrestler at that time in the ’60s and ’70s, mainly throughout the South.”
On how Johnson raised him: “[He] raised me with a tough hand. [He] didn’t beat my ass or anything like that, but just our bonding was — at a very young age — ‘You could come to the gym with me at five and six years old, but you just gotta sit.’ So I sat in the gym and just watched him and his wrestler workout buddies work out.”
On Rocky being kicked out of his home at 13 as his mother sided with her alcoholic boyfriend over her son: “That’s a hard place to come back from. That will inform how you love people and what you care for in life and how you care about people. So it was really f***ed up — that really damaged my dad. So his limited capacity to love is what raised me.”
On the impact of his father’s death on him: “We still had a contentious kind of complicated relationship when he was alive. He dies suddenly four years ago, and you don’t get a chance to say goodbye, you don’t get a chance to right the s**t that you want to [make] right. … You look at things differently.”
