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Normally, the only time we at The Drive pay the gossip magazines and their ilk any attention is when we’re standing in the checkout line and our phones have died. But a story from a tabloid claiming the feud between Fast 8 co-stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Vin Diesel may have been a hoax? Yeah, that’ll convince us to click.
According to Life & Style (now there’s an attribution we never thought we’d be writing), while there is a bit of friction between Johnson and Diesel, the feud has been intentionally exaggerated as an attempt to build publicity for the eighth installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, which reaches theaters next April.
“[Diesel and Johnson] are playing a huge prank, and it’s all for publicity,” the gossip site’s source is quoted as saying.
And things get more bizarre from there. Life & Style says their inside source claims that The Actor Formerly Known as The Rock and The Man Formerly Known as Mark Sinclair plan on taking this dispute to the WWE wrestling mat. Based on the actual quote provided by the magazine’s source, however, we can’t help but wonder if this part of the story is a case of the tabloid confusing metaphor with fact.
“The Rock convinced Vin to amp up the drama between them so they could turn it into a WWE match to help promote the April 2017 release of Fast 8,” the source reportedly said.
Considering Johnson’s background as a professional wrestler, we could see him climbing into the ring for a dramatic faux fight with his co-star, who was recently revealed was the “candy-ass” Johnson complained about in a social media rant earlier this month. Then again, based on the context, it seems equally likely that Johnson is simply referring to developing a WWE-style rivalry between the two meaty co-stars in order to gain attention. So much as we would love to see Johnson wallop Diesel over the head with a folding chair in front of 20,000 screaming people wearing screen-printed T-shirts, well, we’ll believe it when we see it.
