The Rock Says He’s Blown Away by Daughter Simone Johnson’s WWE Career

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson appeared on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon via video chat this week, and at one point the subject of Johnson’s daughter, Simone Johnson, came up. The daughter of “The People’s Champ” officially signed a WWE contract back in February, though she had already been training at the WWE Performance Center on a regular basis since she was 16. Johnson admitted that the fact that she’s looking to blaze her own trail in the business simply “blows my mind.”

“She signed her contract with the WWE, and you know, it’s just — it blows my mind,” Johnson said. “I mean, first all, what an honor that my daughter wants to follow in my footsteps, but more importantly…she actually wants to create and blaze her own path which is just so important.”

“At 16, she was working her a— off quietly under the radar, in the ring, getting thrown around, and you know, all the bumps and bruises that go with pro wrestling.” he later added. “…I’m very, very proud of her.”

Simone appeared on the Swerve City podcast back in July, where she talked about what advice Rock has given her.

“He basically just told me what I just said, ‘You are your own person. Regardless if other people compare you to your parents or to anyone else, or if you compare yourself to your parents or to anyone else, you are still your own person,” she explained.

“I just have to remind myself, that pressure only exists when I start comparing myself to my parents,” she later added. “… this idea that I want to keep getting into my head is that I’m not my parents. No one is their parents. And Individuality is a gift and I just have to keep remind myself of that, that no matter what pressure, not matter what circumstances, no matter what comparisons are, I love my parents so much. I’m so proud of everything that they’ve done, but I am my own person. And I just have to remind myself of that, no matter what the circumstances are.”

Johnson made his debut for the World Wrestling Federation in 1996 as Rocky Miavia, and over the next five years he would reinvent himself as The Rock and become one of the defining personalities of the Attitude Era.