As much as we love The Rock and are absolutely certain that he’s the nicest and best and goodest person currently walking the face of the planet, one thing you’ve gotta keep in the back of your minds is that he is still a 196cm-tall, 118kg mountain of granite-like muscle. And as such he is not now, not ever, to be fucked with.
Though he’s a much calmer head these days, in his more precocious days of youth the man born Dwayne Johnson had a mild temper that often saw him in scrapes and donnybrooks in the various schools he attended; particularly after kids caught wind of the fact that both his Dad and Grandad were pro-wrestlers.
But this yarn from Rock’s days as a college football star just about takes the cake.
During his time playing for the University of Miami Hurricanes in the early 90s, the not-quite-Rock almost pulled off a feat that would’ve made Mike Tyson‘s ear-biting incident look like a gentlemanly handshake. At least, if a tall tale from the man himself is anything to go by.
Rocky is the subject of this month’s Sports Illustrated cover story, and among the many revelations from his time playing football comes the tale of the time he apparently tried to reef a teammates tongue square out of his mouth during a locker room brawl.
Yes. You read that right. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson insists that he put his fingers inside another human being’s mouth in an attempt to sever and remove that man’s tongue.
The damning quote from the story reads a little something like this:
“Johnson’s frustration at not being an impact player boiled over one day after practice, when he was heckled by his friend and fellow linemate Kevin Patrick. “I was always running hot because I wasn’t getting the playing time that I thought I deserved,” says Johnson. “The truth of the matter is Warren Sapp was just a better player, but when you’re young, you can’t see that. Me and Kevin were in a coach’s office, and he was talking s—, as always, but this time I just lost it. It was like a movie fight—the desk got turned over, stuff was flying all over the place. We spilled out onto the weight room floor, still going at it. He wouldn’t stop talking, so I decided to pull his tongue out. I stuffed my big ol’ hand into his mouth, and I had a couple of fingers around his tongue, but it was so damn slippery! I was quite serious about pulling it out, but I couldn’t quite get a hold of it. Eventually I gave up, the fight ended, and two minutes later we were hugging each other. It was so dumb.”
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For what it’s worth, the owner of the tongue-in-question disputes Young Dwayne’s account of events, insisting that if fingers actually did enter mouth, then Rock’s career would’ve taken a very different path.
But just to be safe, let’s all agree to maybe try and stay on the Rock’s good side, yeah?
Who knew The Rock was perfecting the Mandible Claw literal years before the Rock n’ Sock Connection was a thing.
Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty.
