The Rock seemingly had a huge role in a current WWE champion’s career.
A part of WWE from 2017, Zelina Vega, also known as Thea Trinidad, almost gave up on her WWE career before The Brahma Bull stepped in. Before Vega finally joined the Stamford-based promotion, she had seen her fair share of rejections.
Recently, speaking on the Lightweights podcast, Vega revealed how The Rock helped her from giving up on WWE, and also secured her role as AJ Lee in the film, Fighting with My Family.
“Probably like three days before that happened, I had gotten an audition that just didn’t go the way I wanted. I got another no from WWE, so I had texted him and I was like, ‘Okay, I think I’m just done.’ There’s just so many times I got told no, it was like my eighth no at that time and I was just like, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ Like clearly, they don’t want me, they don’t want anything I have to offer.
I’m just not going to be able to be with WWE. He’s just like, ‘Don’t say no yet, give me a couple days, I’ve been working on something.’ That’s when he called me about the movie. It was just so mind-blowing, I just didn’t say anything for a second, I was still kind of processing it. He’s like, ‘This is usually where people say I’m so happy, thank you so much.’ I started crying cause I just had no idea. It was all this emotion kind of built up. He was like, ‘I trust you completely, I know you can do this, and you’re my Divas Champion.’”
She further said,
“Dwayne called me literally like three hours afterwards and he’s like, ‘Hey, I got this idea.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ But again, he just said, ‘You don’t even have to audition for it, I already know you can do it.’”
[H/T: Fightful]
Now, nearly a decade in the promotion, Vega has won multiple titles and is the current Women’s United States Champion.
A Former WWE Star Has Revealed The Perks Of Training With The Rock
Ahead of his WrestleMania 40 Tag Team match, The Rock held several training sessions with the former NXT stable, Gallus. Recently released from their contract, Joe Coffey of Gallus appeared in an interview on the Refin’ It Up podcast and revealed the special perks he received for his training sessions with The Final Boss.
It was the tag team match which it was Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes against Rock and Roman (Reigns). So we’re all playing the different parts. I’m Seth, Mark’s Cody, Wolfy is Roman Reigns and The Rock is The Rock. It was a lot of fun. It was just a lot of fun and we’re just helping and then, after the first couple days — we know our place and are very professional.
We’re not gonna touch into someone else’s match but to be fair, Bobby Roode and The Rock said, ‘If you guys have any suggestions, please feel free’ so, it was really nice professionally to be treated like that and you know, we did see a couple things which, little bits did get in the match which was really cool, and it was a great tag match and that whole storyline was just great.
We weren’t a part of it but it was just nice to be a part of helping The Rock prepare for that… I think Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, I think Paul Heyman and Seth were supposed to be there at some point but again, their schedules were so crazy.”
He further claimed,
“He’s as humble as he comes across in interviews. We got paid on top of our salary for it. We arrived home and there was three and a half thousand pounds worth of the new — I’m sorry — dollars of the new Under Armour Project Rock line, some case of Teremana, a nice note from him. You couldn’t ask for anything more. Just a top experience.”
In other news: Zelina Vega has opened up on a TNA return opportunity.