Never one to pass up self-promotion, Dwayne Johnson turns his earliest failure into a TV series

It sounds hard to believe, but the young Dwayne Johnson didn’t dream of being either following his father’s footsteps and joining the family business as a professional wrestler, or becoming the highest-paid movie star on the planet who earned the nickname of “Franchise Viagra” up to a point until the hierarchy of power came crumbling down around him.

Instead, the fresh-faced (but still gigantic) future actor, producer, tequila magnet, and self-promoter extraordinaire had big dreams of making it in the NFL. Johnson won a national championship with the Miami Hurricanes during his college years, but couldn’t make enough of an impact to put himself on the radar of scouts keeping an eye out for the league’s next wave of talent.

Instead, he was signed by the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League, but was cut two months into the 1995 season. From there, he opted to head into the grappling industry, and the rest is history. However, The Rock has never been one to pass up an opportunity, with the 50 year-old revealing that a combination of his own failures and his relaunch of the XFL marked the perfect time to anchor a docuseries about his contributions to the gridiron outfit’s third attempt at success.

Not only did filmmaker Peter Berg helm the Friday Night Lights movie and executive produce the acclaimed TV show, but he’s also worked with Johnson as either a director or producer on The Rundown, Hercules, and Ballers, so the dynamic duo sound like the perfect partnership for a deep dive into whether or not third time will indeed mark the charm for the cursed XFL.