The Rock thanks the NXT trio who helped him train for WrestleMania

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has talked quite a bit about how he trained to wrestle his first real match in more than a decade on Night One of WrestleMania XL.

In an ESPN piece leading up his tag match with Roman Reigns against Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins on April 6, it was revealed that at the ring WWE set-up in the Los Angeles area for Rock (there was also one in Hawaii), he simulated matches with the NXT faction Gallus (Joe & Mark Coffey and Wolfgang):

WWE worked with Johnson’s team to rent warehouses as training facilities. One of the rings the WWE shipped was set up in Los Angeles, where Johnson resides. There, he simulated matches alongside NXT’s Gallus — the Scottish trio that consists of Wolfgang along with real-life brothers Mark and Joe Coffey.

Since Johnson is competing in a tag-team match, he needed three wrestlers to push through in-ring sequences and hone his timing. Michael “P.S.” Hayes, a WWE Hall of Famer as part of the Freebirds and a longtime match producer for WWE, supervised those training sessions along with Bobby Roode, a former NXT, U.S., and WWE tag-team champion who is now working as a producer. Veteran referee Chad Patton officiated those sessions while WWE medical oversaw the rehearsals to make sure it was run safely.

Yesterday (April 25), Joe shared a photo from one of those training sessions. The elder Coffey brother got a response from The Final Boss thanking the trio of Scots for helping him get ready to make Cody bleed:

It’s not the first time Johnson & WWE tapped veterans from the WWE developmental system to get Rocky ring-ready. In 2011 and 2012 while preparing for the first of Johnson’s two ‘Mania main events with John Cena, he worked out with Joe “Curtis Axel” Hennig.

As for Gallus, they haven’t done much on NXT television since earlier this year. But former NXT and NXT UK Tag champs Mark Coffey & Wolfgang have had several matches on the Florida house show circuit, and made a couple appearance on Main Event in recent months, too. So we’ll see what the future holds for them.

Getting a rub from The Great One certainly can’t hurt.