Young Rock‘s Season 2 finale, “Let The People Decide,” airs tonight on NBC and will feature Uli Latukefu portraying a young Dwayne Johnson as he wrestles in Jerry Lawler’s United States Wrestling Association as Flex Kavana, the persona he portrayed in 1996 before getting called up to the WWF at Survivor Series that November. Photos from the episode dropped ahead of time via TVLine, showing Johnson square off with Lawler. The two only ever wrestled in tag team matches in USWA, with Johnson and Bart Sawyer dropping the USWA Southern Tag Team Championships to Lawler and Bill Dundee before winning them back a month later.ย
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Brian Gewirtz, the series executive producer, talked about how impressive Latukefu looked in the ring during an interview with ComicBook prior to Season 2. He said, “Uli, who plays 23-year-old Dwayne, he’s really just an athletic freak. He took to wrestling so quickly that if Vince [McMahon] wanted to take a look at him and bring him into WWE, I’m sure he would achieve success really quickly. I don’t think he’s going to do that. But if he wanted to, he probably could.”
The previews for the season confirmed that it will include Johnson’s debut as Rocky Johnson at Survivor Series. Gewirtz also confirmed a third season would cover WWF’s Attitude Era and the show was recently given the green light for a third season to premiere later this year. Stay tuned for full coverage of tonight’s season finale and Young Rock Season 3!ย
“We strategically put just a quick little second of a clip in there in the new trailer, kind of like Princess Leia in The Force Awakens trailer. We just wanted to give a quick, ‘Oh my God, what was that?’ moment of seeing Rocky Maivia making his grand entrance at Survivor Series ’96. We get to that and potentially more stuff this season without really giving anything away. Hopefully Season Three and beyond, at least in that timeline with Uli (Latukefu), we could really explore that,” Gewirtz said.ย
