"It's a natural conduit and a natural bridge. "Football is a big thing to have on your resume in this business," Ross said.
"We just had one of the best guys to ever play that position (Sapp) playing in front of him."īut by the time The Rock was captivating WWE audiences with his combination of power and charisma, he took a back seat to no one.
"The kids on the team loved him, and he was always ready to go and full of personality," Orgeron recalled. LSU defensive line coach Ed Orgeron was the Miami defensive line coach at the time and jokes that Johnson's biggest problem was that Warren Sapp arrived at The U the year after Johnson did. He finished with 77 career tackles and made one start before graduating in 1995.
Johnson was known as "Dewey" to his Miami Hurricane teammates before he was "The Rock." He was a top-flight defensive line recruit and played as a freshman on the 1991 national championship team. Reigns' two older brothers, Rosey and Matt, also wrestled along with another uncle, Eki Fatu, and Reigns' most star-studded relative of all, cousin Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, also cut his teeth on the football field before morphing into one of the most explosive box-office draws in wrestling history. His father, Sika, is a WWE Hall of Famer and one-half of the Wild Samoans tag team with Reigns' uncle, Afa. Growing up, everywhere Reigns looked, he had wrestling all around him. He played an entire season in the CFL in 2008 with the Edmonton Eskimos before following his family's calling and making the transition from the gridiron to the squared circle. Reigns signed with the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2007, but was released after injuries prevented him from passing his physical. As a senior, Reigns earned first-team All-ACC honors and was one of the Yellow Jackets' top players along with Calvin Johnson. Before he was Roman Reigns, he was Joe Anoa'i and a starting defensive tackle at Georgia Tech from 2004-06. Roman Reigns, for instance, will tangle with WWE champion Triple H in the main event. Before taking the WWE by storm as Roman Reigns, Joe Anoa'i was a standout defensive tackle at Georgia Tech.
A few even dipped their toes into the professional football ranks.
When WrestleMania 32, pro wrestling's largest annual spectacle, is staged Sunday night before 80,000-plus fans at AT&T Stadium, many of the grapplers appearing, including some of the headliners, were once college football players. He took sabbaticals from the NFL just to wrestle because he was making more money from wrestling." "Nagurski was a football star, a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but he was also a wrestling star. "There was no Nike, no endorsement deals or any of that other stuff back in those days," explained WWE Hall of Fame wrestling announcer Jim Ross.