Finally, The Rock’s daughter has come to WWE television.
Nearly 26 years to the day after her dad’s debut at Survivor Series in 1996, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s daughter made her first appearance on NXT’s TV show on Tuesday night. Simone Johnson, whose wrestling name is Ava Raine, was revealed as the newest and fourth member of Joe Gacy’s faction the Schism.
It was the payoff to several weeks of storytelling that saw a masked figure in a red hoodie appearing in the crowd and eventually doing Gacy and the Schism’s bidding against their opponents. That person turned out to be the 21-year-old Raine, who signed with WWE in February 2020 and had been training at the company’s Performance Center in Florida. Her reveal brought an audible gasp of surprise from the crowd. She is the company’s first fourth-generation superstar as she gets the call-up to WWE’s developmental brand.
Simone Johnson using Eva Raine and not a moniker with a nod to her famous father, one of the all-time great in pro wrestling, came under scrutiny from fans when she made the announcement in May. She seemed to address that in her promo after the reveal. Johnson has family ties to the wrestling famed Samoan dynasty.
Simone Johnson debuts as Eva Raine with the Schism faction in NXT. WWE
Simone Johnson and her father Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The Rock/Instagram“The love and acceptance the Schism has given me defies any preconceived notions of who am supposes to be, this family completes me,” Raine dressed in a black dress with red highlights in her hair and a nose ring.
The spotlight likely will crown even brighter on Raine, the daughter of The Rock and his first wife Dany Garcia, as she get set to begin the weekly-television portion of her pro wrestling career as part of a heel faction with Gacy, Rip Fowler and Jagger Reid.
