Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson called in to The Dan Patrick Show to talk Ballers, wardrobe malfunctions and college football, and revealed a surprising note from his glory days in WWE. According to The Great One, he almost teamed with former NFL great Ray Lewis at an unspecified WrestleMania. Also, Warren Sapp almost got a wrestling gig? It sounds like the Monday Night Wars almost featured a battle to top Steve “Mongo” McMichael and Kevin Greene.
Here’s Rock’s full appearance on the show. Jump to the 2:35 mark for the question that starts the conversation. “Who would’ve been a better WWE guy between Warren Sapp and Ray Lewis?”
“Both of them have, you know, they’ve got big personalities. Both of those guy would’ve done a great job. There was a time when … WWE was at its height during a certain era, what we call now The Atttiude Era, when I was there, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, and guys like that. There was a time where we were actually recruiting both those guys to come in and have a big match, and we’d gotten very close with having a big match, bringing in Ray Lewis. And we were gonna have a big tag team match with myself, Ray Lewis, as tag team partners against whoever the top heels were at the time, probably Triple H, I think, and somebody else? And it was gonna be a big WrestleMania match but we could never … it had nothing to do with the creative, just more-so scheduling, but we were very, very excited, so we came very close to that. But both those guys would’ve done great in the ring. And just really, really exceptional athletes.”
Hey, Lawrence Taylor main-evented WrestleMania once. Stranger things have happened. He already had a WWE-style entrance dance.
Between this and the news that Justin Bieber almost main-evented SummerSlam against The Wyatt Family, you’ve got to wonder how many marquee WWE pay-per-view main-events were just placeholders for celebrities that dropped out. We’re gonna find out pretty soon that Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III only happened because Kirby Puckett and Richard Marx couldn’t make it.
(via YouTube)
