The Rock Just Shared the Moving Eulogy He Delivered for His Late Father
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has shared a video on Instagram of the moving eulogy he delivered at his father's funeral service last month. Rocky "Soul Man" Johnson, born Wayde Douglas Bowles, was a wrestling champion and WWE Hall-of-Famer who bestowed the "Rock" nickname on his son when he started his own career. He passed away on January at the age of 75.
"I wish I had one more shot, just to say goodbye," Johnson began. "To say I love you, to say thank you, to say I respect you. But I have a feeling he's watching, he's listening."
"I know my dad would be saying 'kayfabe the tears!'" He continued, referring to the wrestling tradition of maintaining a persona in front of the public. "You know, you try to think 'What am I going to write?' You don't know what to write for a eulogy, it's your dad. You don't expect it. As you guys know, he went very quick."
He recalled how he was on set when he got the news, and how he went into shock, to the point where it all didn't seem real. "You know how you have those moments where you try to shake yourself out of it, and you're like 'No, it's not a dream, my dad's gone.' And in that moment, I thought 'Well, what do I need to do? What's the next thing I need to do?' And I heard a voice say, 'Hey, the show must go on.' And that was my dad, that was my old man who told me that... The wrestling community is a very tight community. It's a global business, but it's a very tight community. And they believe in 'The show must go on.'"
He went on to speak about his father's impact on the world of wrestling, particularly as a black man. "When he broke into the business in the mid ’60s and throughout the late ’60s and into the ’70s in the United States, where racial tension and divide was very strong, and in the ’60s and the ’70s you have a black man coming in, it’s an all-white audience and all these small little towns that eventually I would go on to wrestle in... but at that time, he changed the audience’s behavior and actually had them cheer for this black man... When you think of my dad’s name, you think 'hard work'. You think 'barrier-breaking,' you think being the hardest worker in the room, always working out... Hard work, discipline; those are things and tenets that are synonymous with my dad’s name."
"What’s amazing to me now, after a day like today after we come here and we give our respect and our love, he’s galvanized, he’s responsible for galvanizing families now," Johnson concluded. "Because through processes like this, we’ve all lost loved ones, but guaranteed when we walk out of these doors, we’re going to hold each other a bit tighter, we’re going to hug each other a bit harder, we’re going to kiss each other and we’re going to say, 'I love you,' and we’re going to be a bit more present."
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