Young Rock Season 2 Finally Reaches The Rock’s Pro Wrestling Career

Young Rock Season 2 finally reached the beginning of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s pro wrestling career during this week’s episode. Set in 1996 following his departure from the Canadian Football League, the episode sees Johnson in his early 20s (played by Uli Latukefu) debating over whether or not to get in the family business. After declining to return to the CFL, Johnson announces that he wants to start wrestling much to the delight of his mother and grandmother. But his father, Rocky Johnson (Joseph Lee Anderson), initially declines in training him. He later explains that he doesn’t want his son to have to deal with the same problems he had in the business, but eventually relents. 

We then see Rocky and Rock training in a boxing ring, where “The People’s Champ” learns the importance of taking bumps and selling for all of the fans in the crowd. After some debating over “old school” vs. “new school” pro wrestling, Rock eventually calls Pat Patterson and asks him to fly down and see if he has any talent. Patterson watches him work with his father and tells him to keep working. The episode then ends with Patterson calling the Johnson house to tell Rock that the WWF wants to give him a tryout match in Corpus Christi, Texas. That match, taking place on March 10, 1996, would see Johnson beat The Brooklyn Brawler. He’d then compete in one more dark match before going to work for Jerry Lawler’s USWA promotion in Memphis throughout the summer of 1996. 

In an interview with ComicBook before the start of Season 2, executive producer Brian Gewirtz talked about how the show was going to address the complicated relationship between Rocky and Rock. 

“It all starts with Dwayne himself and wanting to be truthful about the situation and the truth is Rocky wasn’t immediately into the idea of Dwayne entering the business, the wrestling business, for a variety of reasons. Ultimately, his mindset was, ‘Well, if I can’t stop you, I’m sure as hell not going to have someone else train you. We’re going to do this together and we’re going to do it my way.’ Yeah, obviously too for the purposes of the television show, that real-life conflict creates a lot of drama, creates stories and creates some pretty humorous situations as well. You’ll see. Joe [Lee] Anderson who plays Rocky, is so innately charming and likable. It’s not necessarily the easiest thing on paper to have Rocky be so combative and almost like an antagonist, but we want to stay true to the real story,” he said.