Recently on E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness, World Wrestling Entertainment legends Edge and Christian got in-depth on the subject of pro-wrestling gimmicks. During the podcast, Christian recalled almost becoming a copycat character based on The Rock.
Christian revealed after the Rock left WWE to make his journey towards the Hollywood, WWE creative wanted Christian to play a parody character of the Rock. Christian had an amazing heel run back in 2003. He had a couple of Intercontinental championship runs, tag team championship runs along with Chris Jericho and other exciting things.
According to Christian, back in 2003, as The Rock’s stardom in Hollywood began to rise, ‘Captain Charisma’ found himself in the role of The Rock’s stand-in while he was away from WWE.
“I remember I had almost in WWE, this is pretty funny actually, so The Rock had been going off doing movies and stuff like that. Yeah, I think he’s doing alright for himself, from what I understand. So he was starting to go off and do movies, so he was taking extended periods of time off. So he was doing a little thing with Goldberg and I can’t remember exactly how it came about, but they kind of slotted me in to be Rock’s spokesman, I had a little one-on-one backstage meeting with The Rock and he kind of anointed me, like, his favorite wrestler, trying to pump me up, but unbeknownst to me, he was trying to get me to take a bullet for him with Goldberg, was the backstory. Right? So when he wasn’t there I was kind of doing his talking as ‘The Rock’s Favourite Wrestler’ and I took upon myself to do The Rock’s work for him.”
Apparently, WWE creative wanted Christian to play the parody of the Rock and he would have been named ‘The Lock’, alter his look in homage to ‘The Great One’, and start adopting The Rock’s classic catchphrases. Christian also had a funny gimmick as ‘the Captain Charisma’ in 2005 when he used to be accompanied by Tyson Tomko. His feud with Shelton Benjamin was pretty fun during that time.
“One day, I get home and I get this call [from WWE creative]. They’re like, ‘hey, they kind of want you to do this thing where you think you become The Rock.’ And I was like, ‘what?’ ‘Yeah, so basically, we want you to kind of do the eyebrow thing, maybe cut your hair real short,’ and, I had long hair at this point. Did I? Yes, I did. ‘What if you cut your hair real short? And, you know, The Rock wears black, so you’ll wear white and you’re going to use all of his catchphrases and you’re gonna act like The Rock and pretend you’re The Rock and you’re going to be The Rock, but we’re not gonna call you The Rock.’ I was like, ‘okay…’ No, [they were not going to call him The Boulder as Edge asked]. They were gonna call me, are you ready or this? Wait for it, wait for it, they were going to call me The Lock. The L-O-C-K, Lock because anytime I went to the ring, it was a lock I was going to win.”