On a recent episode of Something To Wrestle podcast, Bruce Prichard discussed the notion that The Rock was WWE’s answer to Goldberg. After all, The Rock’s rise in WWE coincided with Goldberg’s rise in WCW.
Steve Austin and The Rock were at the top of the company back then. Bruce Prichard said the WWE was confident in building around The Rock and Austin as the company’s cornerstones.
“Yeah. At this point, we took the two hottest babyfaces and flipped one of them heel against the other and felt that it was going to be our next four months. I bet around Summer Slam because Rock was red hot as well as Steve Austin, so we’re thinking, where can we go and what can we do? We wanted something fresh.”
Prichard discussed the idea that The Rock was WWE’s answer to WCW’s Goldberg and disputed it.
“Quite the contrary. The Rock was over and Steve Austin was over. ”It was during the time that when you listened to the audience and you did get feedback on the other guys, majority of the feedback was that we were young and they were old.”
Prichard said The Rock had proven himself to be the future of the WWE and a true main event superstar. He went on to become one of the best performers in sports entertainment.
“You had The Rock, first of all, he was older. He had been out on his own and was a third-generation wrestler. He was showing it every night. He had the poise and went out every single night to go out and command the crowd, take over and we were willing to take that chance on him,” Prichard said. “You are doing live TV so you can take it off of him any time you wanted to so the way they were writing television at the time you can flip the script any time you wanted to, which is the beauty of doing live TV every single week. He was worth taking the chance and he had demonstrated that he was reliable and that he really wanted it and the audience wanted him so why not take a chance on him? He was that new fresh face coming up.”
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h/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.
