The Rock did not tell Vince McMahon about his plans to compete on the independent show.
Back in May of 1998, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson competed for the Border City Wrestling promotion in Canada while he was under contract to WWF. BCW was co-founded by former TNA President Scott D’Amore.
D’Amore detailed the story of The Rock’s independent appearance while on Wrestling Observer Radio. It ended up being a tag match with The Rock and D’Lo Brown versus D’Amore and Larry Destiny. Johnson being on the show almost did not happen because he suffered a knee injury at a WWE house show days prior. The company wanted to pull him off of upcoming dates which also meant he would not be able to do the Border City show.
Rock was able to convince Vince McMahon to allow him to stay on the road with WWF, but he did not tell him about his plans to make his way over to BCW. Due to the injury, Rock had Mark Henry fly in to do the wrestling portion of the gig while he would sell autographed photos and do a promo for the live crowd. Before the show began, Johnson approached D’Amore and said he was still interested in wrestling. D’Amore added that he has a tape of the match.
Well, it’s pretty funny when you look at it in history. I think the only person in the wrestling business to pay Dwayne Johnson other than WWE is Border City Wrestling, right? And I used to, if I was doing TVs for WWF… because I didn’t have a lot of dough. I’d usually see where D’Lo was — D’Lo Brown — and we’d ride together and Rock and him rode together so they graciously would let me hop in or if they came to town and it was like, somewhere where I drove, even if it was from a different city. I mean, Toronto, whatever. I’d pick them up and that way, they didn’t have to rent a car, and got to know Rocky a little bit and we chatted about it and pitched the idea and he liked it and somehow, somebody signed off on it and he came and did a show for Border City which was huge at the time (and) the funny thing about this is, you know, the show was on a Friday. I don’t remember the dates. It was May-something, May 29th. The Saturday before that show, I’m in SkyDome, I’m in the press box. I’ve got my back to the ring. There’s 40,000 people or whatever there and I’m just so happy because we’re already sold out having The Rock and I hear 40,000 people go from cheering to dead silence in almost aghast and I was talking to Michael Landsberg who’s a famous Canadian sports personality and I go, ‘What happened?’ And he goes, ‘You don’t wanna turn around,’ and as I turned around, Rock is on the mat and rolling, clutching his knee and screaming. He had hurt his knee that night. Because, you know, they had the Toronto house show there, then I think they were going to Buffalo or something for Raw… He was with me Friday and I think they had a Saturday Detroit house show and then a pay-per-view Sunday in Chicago and Rocky called me one morning, a couple days later and said, ‘Look, they’re trying to pull me from the shows. They want me not to go to the Detroit house show which means I wouldn’t be there for you.’ He goes, ‘And just have me fly right in to Chicago for the pay-per-view’ so instantly, I almost started throwing up in my mouth because I’m like, I’ve got a thousand tickets sold which had never happened and we’ve got The Rock there, and I’m just like, ‘Oh my God.’ I think it was the pay-per-view where him and Farooq fought and I’m sitting there and he goes, ‘But…’ He goes, ‘Scott, Scott, The Rock took care of ya. The Rock talked to Vince and explained the best thing was to go on the road, just hang with the boys. If I’m at home, I’m gonna end up doing yardwork. The wife’s gonna ask The Rock to do something. It’s best for me to just go on the road.’ I go, ‘Oh, so he said you can do our show as well?’ And he goes, ‘Well, no dammit. I didn’t mention it. I just said I wanted to go to Detroit.’ So, Vince (McMahon) said, ‘Yeah, whatever you think is best’ and Rocky had said, ‘I’m not gonna wrestle. But I’ll still show up. That way, the fans know that I’m there’ and he actually got Mark Henry to fly in and be a part of the show and the whole idea is that Mark Henry would take Rocky’s spot and then Rocky would be there, appear and cut a promo. Well, Rocky, because he’s a good brother as we say, gets to the show, sells a bunch of polaroid’s and comes to the locker room before the show and goes… ‘I got a question. How would you feel if The Rock wrestled tonight?’ And I go, ‘Well, I think it’s great, but I think you’re crazy’ and he goes, ‘Oh! I’m here, I’m feeling it and if the people want it’ so we put together a little tag match with Rock and D’Lo where Rocky didn’t do a lot but he got in the ring, dropped a People’s Elbow or two and had fun and I always say that if the people here in Windsor, the amount of people who say they were there the night The Rock wrestled, then there would have been 40,000 people. Not a thousand, and then for the second part of the question, the footage exists. The last I saw, I saw about 15 seconds of it. It exists somewhere in one of the boxes that we gotta sort through and we’ll keep sorting through it but, I saw a clip on social. It just shows him doing a People’s Elbow so, the tape’s there somewhere in among the piles and shame on us. We gotta go through and search through it and hopefully find it.
Johnson is back in the mix of WWE programing on the road to WrestleMania 41. He is aligned with John Cena and they are targeting Cody Rhodes and the Undisputed WWE Championship.
Cena is challenging Rhodes for the belt at WrestleMania.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Wrestling Observer Radio with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
