The latest episode of Young Rock, titled “Corpus Christi” will center around Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s tryout match with the WWE in 1996 at a WWE live event in Corpus Christi, Texas. Both Johnson and NBC have released a few glimpses of the episode, showing that number of WWE legends will be portrayed. Johnson hyped-up independent wrestler Luke Hawx portraying Steve Austin and the cast list for the rest of the locker room has since been released.
Brock Dunstan will portray Mick Foley in his Mankind persona, Josh Rawiri will play the 1996 version of The Undertaker (still sporting his purple gear) and Miles Burris will portray Hunter Heart Helmsley (still in his Connecticut Blue Blood persona and a year away from becoming Triple H and forming D-Generation X). Other portrayals include Gawain Johnstone as Mantaur and Brad Burroughs as Michael PS Hayes.
Executive producer Brian Gewirtz confirmed in an interview with ComicBook prior to Season 2’s premiere that, should the show get a third season, the writers plan on tackling Johnson’s run during the WWE’s Attitude Era. Johnson, alongside Austin, would establish himself as one of the company’s biggest stars with four WrestleMania main events in five years and nine world championship reigns before leaving for Hollywood in 2003. Previews for this season have confirmed Johnson’s WWE televised debut at the 1996 Survivor Series event will take place at some point.
“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.