The Rock Vs. Steve Austin | Wrestling Timelines

March 10, 1996 - The Great One Debuts

Wrestling archive site Cagematch.net lists Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s first ever match against the Brooklyn Brawler. It’s a tryout booked before a taping of Superstars at the urging of Jim Ross and Pat Patterson, who see a lot in him. He’s a stud of a former football player with, as a third-generation guy, the business in his blood.

Johnson, obviously, is nowhere near Austin, and faces a much more difficult path than his career-defining rival. He can’t get reps, not really. He can’t get over in the almost secret way the pro wrestler once did, by learning how to defy and win over a hostile crowd. Austin was the last of that kind.

A national embarrassment awaits Johnson.

The territory system has all but collapsed; Johnson is dispatched to what little remains of it by the WWF for further experience. In this primitive form of WWE developmental, the Memphis-based United States Wrestling Association, Johnson performs as ‘Flex Kavana’: a tall, ripped, good-looking stud, as green and as bland as a cucumber.

Already, though, one parallel is drawn between both men. Austin wrestled his very first match for the exact same promotion, which at the time - 1989 - was unaffiliated with the WWF and shared between the merged territories of Dallas and Memphis.

Rock is sent to the dying embers of the USWA, to supplement his in-house training under Dr. Tom Prichard, as a contracted WWF guy who needs looking after.

In a different USWA, so poor that he subsisted on a diet of potatoes, Austin had to look after himself.

An early contrast arises, even if neither man knows about it.