Young Rock Casts Independent Wrestler as Steve Austin, Shows First Look at Classic Attitude Era Stars

Dwayne Johnson confirmed on Sunday that this week’s edition of Young Rock will feature The Rock’s tryout match with the WWE in 1996, which includes him meeting his future rival “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. “The Texas Rattlesnake” will be portrayed by Luke Hawx, who on top of running his own promotion and wrestling in companies like the NWA, has popped up in shows like Heels and movies like The Fate of the Furious and Logan. 

“I had never wrestled an actual real match in my life, so on this night in front of 15,000 rabid and wild pro wrestling fans – I was thrown headfirst into the fire to see if I could take the heat and survive,” Johnson wrote. “This night changed my life forever. Of course, I would eventually drop the name ‘Rocky Maivia’ (which I hated) and become known only as THE ROCK. And ‘The Ringmaster’ would eventually drop his name (which he hated) and become known as the one and only, STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN.”

Johnson’s other photos give a first look at other wrestlers who will be portrayed in the episode, including Triple H, Mankind and The Undertaker. Brian Gewirtz, the show’s executive producer and a former WWE head writer, talked with ComicBook ahead of Season 2 about the possibility of the show eventually tackling Johnson’s time in the Attitude Era. 

“Oh, definitely. 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. 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,” he said.