Hulk Hogan walked so WWE stars Dwayne Johnson, John Cena and Dave Bautista could run

What is WWE if not scripted entertainment that requires precision timing, theatricality and emotional outbursts?

It’s not quite the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but it’s not nothing. In fact, it has been a fertile training ground for some of the biggest Hollywood stars working today.

Dwayne Johnson was mooted, by some, as a serious contender for the US presidency thanks to his one-time enormous and broad-appeal popularity, John Cena is one of the sharpest comedic actors around, and Dave Bautista has branched out from his deadpan humour to decent dramatic chops.

None of that would’ve happened without Hulk Hogan, who died yesterday at the age of 71.

Born Terry Bollea, Hogan was the main draw for a then-bourgeoning American regional wrestling league in the 1980s. In 1982, he had a role in Rocky III as “Thunderlips”, a wrestling champion Rocky fights in a charity match.

Other roles included the stinker Suburban Commando, in which he played an interstellar warrior who crash lands on Earth and causes all kinds of problems. It also starred Christopher Lloyd and Shelley Duvall, and had originally been intended for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, but they decided to make Twins instead.

Suburban Commando bombed, and Mr Nanny, two years later, didn’t do much better.

Hogan never rose to a massive Hollywood career, partly to do with Vince McMahon’s control over his time, which was very valuable to the WWE, then called the WWF, and partly because he didn’t have the acting chops to play roles that wasn’t the persona he was best known by.

It was also early days, so the movies and TV business didn’t quite know what to do with him in terms of the right projects to capitalise on his high-profile.

But it opened the door for those that followed, who could leverage the skills learnt from a rigorous schedule of performing in WWE in storylines that had good guys and bad guys (babyfaces and heels), clear narrative momentum, and exacting choreography.

Here’s how the three most successful WWE exports managed to crack the transition.

DWAYNE JOHNSON

Johnson came from a family of wrestlers and he was, at one point, billed as the first third-generation fighter. After a middling and failed football career, he joined wrestling and by the turn of the century, became a superstar of the league.

He appeared in Wyclef Jean’s video clip for his 2000 song It Doesn’t Matter, played his own father, Rocky Johnson, in a 1999 episode of That 70s Show and a wrestling alien in a Star Trek: Voyager instalment.

That was his entry and Johnson took full advantage of the interest in him, most notably as The Scorpion King in the 2001 sequel The Mummy Returns.

It wasn’t the most challenging of roles but he held the screen with his presence and the next year, broke a Guinness World Record for the highest salary paid to a first-time leading actor when he opened spin-off film The Scorpion King.

Johnson did what you’d expect from a WWE crossover and made a bunch of action movies including Doom or sports-adjacent stories such as Southland Tales. It was when he did the family comedy The Game Plan, when the industry took notice of his multi-generational appeal and ability to play softer characters.

The likes of San Andreas and pop-ins to the Fast & Furious followed, but when he starred in Central Intelligence with Kevin Hart, audiences realised how funny he could be, a skillset he put to use in the likes of Jumanji.

Jumping behind the scenes as a producer, Johnson was able to guide his onscreen persona as an affable, decent and action-driven, albeit sexless, marquee star.

JOHN CENA

John Cena may still be tearing up the stage in the current season of WWE but he has for years become a mainstay in the Hollywood studio comedies.

His timing is impeccable, he never fails to land the joke, and along with his irrepressible charm and a seeming guilelessness, Cena has been an asset to any screen project.

Cena too played football at university and then embarked on a career as a body builder, before moving to California in 1998 to train for a rival wrestling league. He made his WWE debut in 2000 under the name The Prototype. He lost his first match but by the mid-2000s, was one of the biggest names on the circuit.

His first film, the 2006 actioner The Marine, was a WWE Films production that was produced by Vince McMahon. The league even faked an injury as part of a concocted feud to explain Cena’s month-long absence from WWE.

More action movies followed but Cena really found is groove when he jumped over in 2015 to comedy, including in Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck and Tina Fey’s Sisters.

That’s where Cena does his best work, and he’s lit up the screen in the likes of Blockers, as an anxious, protective dad of a teenage daughter and going toe-to-toe in a trio with the very funny Leslie Mann and Ike Barinholtz, plus Vacation Friends, Jackpot! and, most recently, Heads of State.

DAVE BAUTISTA

Of all the wrestlers-turned-actors, Dave Bautista actually has the most impressive filmography when it comes to working with acclaimed filmmakers.

He’s been hired by Werner Herzog, Denis Villeneuve, Sam Mendes, Rian Johnson, M. Night Shyamalan, James Gunn, and Zack Snyder (of course, whether the latter could be counted as acclaimed depends on who you’re talking to).

Bautista has a deadpan calmness that makes him very, very funny, and which Gunn used to full effect when he cast him as Drax the Destroyer in The Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, a mix of dry humour and profound sadness.

Like his compatriots, Bautista got his start in Hollywood playing wrestlers but since his break-out in Guardians, he has managed to branch out, especially more recently.

He said in a 2021 interview that he’s not interested in being the world’s biggest action star, his aspirations are aligned to walking in the footsteps of Leonardo DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey.

In 2024, he had a small dramatic role (no action, no comedy) in The Last Showgirl opposite Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis. He was the best performance in that film.