Was "The Rock" booed in Las Vegas for failing to help the victims of the wildfires in Maui? No, that's not true: The video of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is from a WWE event where he was playing a bad character, and the audience was chanting for his opponent. The video had nothing to do with the August 2023 Maui wildfires. Johnson posted on social media that the footage showed him turning "heel," which is "wrestling parlance for bad guy," and said he was "playing it up with our crowd as they boo."
The claim appeared in a video published by Nick Sortor on X, formerly known as Twitter, on February 9, 2024 (archived here), which read:
❗️ CROWD IN VEGAS BOOs "THE ROCK" DEMANDING HE FOLLOW THROUGH WITH AID FOR MAUI
Oprah and Dwayne @TheRock Johnson promised TENS OF MILLIONS to the victims of the Maui fires, but many victims still have not seen a dime.
It looks like the audience is fully AMERICA FIRST and is demanding The Rock and Oprah follow through with their commitment to take care of the people of Lahaina.
The crowd started booing and chanting "MAUI! MAUI! MAUI!"
MAKE IT HAPPEN!
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 19:56:48 2024 UTC)
The one-minute video showed The Rock standing on stage with the audience booing him. This footage is from the WrestleMania 40 event on February 8, 2024, where Johnson played a character who was the villain and the audience was booing him, as CBS Sports reported (archived here). The crowd is chanting "We want Cody" for Cody Rhodes, The Rock's WWE opponent. There was no connection between the audience booing The Rock and help for the Maui wildfire victims. Here is the longer video posted on YouTube where The Rock is introduced at 47:34, the booing starts at 50:17 and the chanting for Cody begins around the 52-minute mark:
Johnson posted a message on his X account (archived here) on February 11, 2024, and explained why he is being booed in the video:
This moment you're referring to is from our @WWE press conference this past Thursday where I turned 'heel' - wrestling parlance for bad guy. I'm playing it up with our crowd as they boo. It's what we do in our WWE universe, and we all love every second of it.I typically refrain from responding to toxic, false clickbait garbage like this because I hate dignifying bullshit with a response, but when you use Hawaii's tragic events to draw attention to yourself I won't stay quiet.
I typically refrain from responding to toxic, false clickbait garbage like this because I hate dignifying bullshit with a response, but when you use Hawaii's tragic events to draw attention to yourself I won't stay quiet.
-- Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) February 11, 2024
This moment you're referring to is from our @WWE press... https://t.co/z76m1Q7w1N
Johnson also wrote about the fund he and Oprah Winfrey set up to help the victims of the Maui wildfires:
For the record:
Our People's Fund of Maui has already DELIVERED over $50 MILLION DOLLARS to over 8,000 survivors who were affected by the fires, and I'm grateful to the bone that we've been the primary funders.
Johnson and Winfrey established the People's Fund of Maui (archived here) in 2023, with both donating $5 million and pledging to give victims $1,200 a month for aid after the wildfires disaster. They sought donations from others, which caused an uproar due to their wealth, as Hawaii News Now reported here (archived here). Johnson addressed the controversy on October 7, 2023, on Instagram (archived here), saying, in part:
I get it and I completely understand, and I could've been better. And next time I will be better. And I understand you know, money ain't falling out of the sky, and it's not growing on trees, and there's a lot of people out there who's living paycheck to paycheck. And I get it, and I know what that's like.
He continued:
The last thing you want to hear when you are living from paycheck to paycheck is someone asking you for money, especially when the person asking you for money already has a lot of money.
Sortor posted a follow-up about the post (archived here), writing, "Obviously the claim made in this post has been disputed by the Rock himself, which seems to have some validity," but did not take it down despite the message being false.
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 20:05:16 2024 UTC)
Other Lead Stories fact checks about the Maui wildfires can be found here.
