The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin are forever linked – but their WWE story started long before it hit TV.
On March 11, 1996, Austin stepped onto Raw with a new name, having performed solidly but unspectacularly as The Ringmaster for the first few months of his WWE career.
wweThe WrestleMania-rich history of Stone Cold and The Rock is one of WWE’s top rivalries of all time[/caption]Readying to battle Savio Vega in a bout that helped shape a rivalry that led to Austin’s WrestleMania debut, The Ringmaster was gone and in his place was ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin.
It was the debut of the character that would rip through the Attitude Era and turn him into one of the industry’s biggest stars.
That same night in San Antonio, another future icon was in the ring. But while Austin’s tussle remains firmly in television archives, his match never made it to air.
In a dark match – a wrestling term for an untelevised clash – before the broadcast, Skip of the Bodydonnas beat a 23-year-old rookie called Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson was only one match deep into his WWE career on the night in question. Just 24 hours earlier he had given the Brooklyn Brawler a scare when revealing his in-ring inexperience, admitting it was the first match of his entire life in front of an audience. San Antonio was only his second.
The Freeman Coliseum crowd of 9,364 saw plenty more that evening. Shawn Michaels beat Hunter Hearst Helmsley in another dark match, fascinating given the two were cemented forevermore by the tail end of 1997 as D-Generation X, and in 2025 effectively run WWE’s on-screen product.
Such non-televised affairs were standard for a time when WWE’s weekly Raw show lasted just an hour on television.
Bret Hart defended the WWF Championship against The Undertaker after this episode went off the air, but for those watching on TV the memory was Austin, reborn as Stone Cold.
That is the contrast that makes the night so striking. Austin’s new persona was tested on national television, his career already well established before he joined WWE.
A fresh-faced Johnson’s loss stayed hidden, another step in his development that most fans never knew existed.
Dwayne Johnson effectively served as a warm-up act before a 1996 episode of RawWWE The Ringmaster gave way to Stone Cold Steve Austin on a night that saw The Rock buried on the undercardWWELooking back, the symmetry is remarkable. Within 15 months Austin would cut the Austin 3:16 promo that defined a generation.
Within the same timeframe Johnson would arrive at Survivor Series in Madison Square Garden, introduced as the smiling, tasselled Rocky Maivia. He would survive to the end of the elimination match, a push that showed how quickly WWE saw his potential.
Momentum carried them both forward. By 1997 Austin was Intercontinental Champion, breaking through as the anti-hero fans were waiting for. By 1998 Johnson had turned heel, joined the Nation of Domination and was starting to show the charisma that would make him The Rock.
By 1999 they were colliding in WrestleMania main events. WrestleMania 15 in Philadelphia, WrestleMania 17 in Houston, WrestleMania 19 in Seattle. Three stadium showdowns that became the defining rivalry of the Attitude Era.
Looking back on that trilogy, Johnson called it the greatest box office feud of all time.
Writing on Instagram in 2020, he said: “There has been no feud that has been a greater box office draw and that, in my opinion – so totally bias – that actually had more x-factor heat and electricity and sometimes you can’t write it or put your finger on it, but it happens and it explodes and it is an emotionality that you can’t deny.
The Rock went from dark match rookie to WWE icon in a flashWWE The Hall of Fame icons conquered the wrestling world after their relatively steady beginnings in WWE“Lucky enough for myself, Steve, Vince McMahon, WWE; we saw this, embraced it, and we were off to the races.”
None of that was obvious in March 1996. Austin was a proven veteran waiting for the right character. Johnson was an untested newcomer trying not to slip under the radar.
The Raw itself delivered a 2.9 rating for USA Network – a million miles away from the record-setting ratings of the Attitude Era they’d both go on to set.
Wrestling is full of sliding-door moments. For Austin, Raw’s 150th episode was step one on the path to superstardom. For Johnson, it was a second rehearsal match most fans never even knew happened.
Five years later they were headlining WrestleMania together as arguably two of an era’s fiercest rivals.
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