"How Dwayne Johnson went from being Warren Sapp's college backup to the biggest WWE superstar of his generation to a bona fide Hollywood movie star"

Grantland:

After college, he signed with the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League, but he lasted only two months before being released.

...

Johnson (as Maivia) won the Intercontinental title from Triple H, but the crowd wasn’t having it, even if by that point Johnson had fixed his hair and ditched his tribal frills. These were the last days of the innocent WWF, the days before ECW and the Monday Night Wars and postmodernism infiltrated everything, and Rocky Maivia was the least self-aware wrestler on the roster. When he needed time off to rehab an injury, WWF sent him home with no plan to bring him back. He was played as a hero, but he was “the most hated guy on the roster.”

...

When Dwayne Johnson returned to the WWF, it was as part of a bad-guy black-power faction called the Nation of Domination.