Original subtitles

Who is Steve Austin the man and who is Stone Cold Steve Austin the performer?

The difference between Stone Cold Steve Austin the man and Stone Cold Steve

Austin the performer is basically Stone Cold Steve Austin is exactly that.

I don't even know what the difference is really.

Steve Austin is one of the biggest superstars in the history of the

business because of his passion for it.

He had this

meteoric rise that burnt hot and fast and

changed an entire industry.

Talk about your Psalms. Talk about John 3 .16.

Austin 3 .16 says I just whipped your ass.

Really, this separation between Stone Cold and Steve Austin is only a matter

the surrounding that I'm in.

The character was a real person.

The look in his eyes told a real story.

And you know why?

Because it was a real story.

He went from being a guy from Texas to a pro wrestler to a pop culture icon.

He was the defining character of a generation.

The disruptor of the status quo.

The pivotal player in the complete reimagination of the industry.

I've been retired for so long.

I don't miss it anymore.

I don't crave it.

You can never replace it. I try to say that you can.

But I wouldn't say there's anything about the life I used to live on the

that makes me yearn to go back in time and relive those days.

But I do what I want, what I want, right here in this damn ring, and can't

nobody stop me.

The whole world knows my name is Stone Cold Steve Austin.

And if I'm going straight to hell, you're damn sure coming with me.

A storm called Steve Austin. His reign on top was second to none.

Steve Austin changed the way the game was played.

There will never, ever be anyone like him.

He's the man responsible for making WWE more than we thought it could ever be.

People gravitated a lot to the energy that I brought to the business.

Steve didn't have a long career being on top, but he had that one peak that was

like, well, no one will come close to that.

Stone Cold is the showbiz guy.

Steve Austin is the regular guy. They just happen to be rolled up in the same

package.

I was born in Austin, Texas, but we didn't stay there long.

I grew up in a little town called Edna.

I'm proud to be from Texas. You know, born, bred, raised.

You know, it's tough, it's cowboy country, and it's rugged.

I think the reputation of Texas kind of precedes you in the fact that you're

from that state.

You know, it's not a one -stop light town, but we just have a few stoplights.

And it's a town where everybody knows everybody.

We had a huge house, our yellow house. It was on half of an acre.

It was great growing up in a big family.

Scott's the oldest, then Steve, then Kevin, Jeff, and then me.

As a kid, Steve was very shy.

Yeah, he was shy.

Oh, just shy enough that when we called down to Dairy Queen to order three tacos

or whatever.

You know, hell, I put my sister on the phone. Jeannie, could you order my food

for me?

So he's seven years old with me, and he would literally call me into the kitchen

and hand me the phone to Dairy Queen and have me read off his order.

I broke out of shyness when I found football in junior high.

I used athletics to help me find confidence.

I noticed him when he was in junior high.

I was the high school coach. He was a physical specimen, I guess you'd say.

When he started seventh grade football, as long as I can remember, that's all he

wanted to do was work out, eat right, and just build his body.

We're eating Little Debbie's and Captain Crunch cereal, and he's over there with

the blender with his protein stuff and putting raw eggs in it. And I'm

what? Who does this? You know, he does.

I was running back, and I wasn't very fast.

I weighed about 205 pounds, and my line averaged about 165 pounds, so I didn't

have a whole lot of blocking.

And I ran north and south because I wasn't fast enough to run east and west,

I ran over people.

Straight -A student, National Honor Society.

Steve never drank beer or raised hell during high school like I did.

So every weekend, all my buddies would come over. We're sitting on the back

patio drinking beer, raising hell, having a good time, and Steve would open

his bedroom window.

Y 'all shut the hell up. I'm trying to sleep.

He was popular, but he just had such bigger dreams and goals for himself.

He used to actually practice signing autographs back in the day.

We'd be in the kitchen. He'd be writing his name different ways, trying to check

out what's best.

He'd ask my opinion. What are you talking about, man? Yeah. At first, you

I wanted to be a rock star, but I can't sing, play any musical instruments, so

that's out the door.

Channel 39 presents Houston Wrestling.

One day, my mom was in her chair reading a Red Book magazine, and I was flipping

channels, and I came across pro wrestling. It was Houston wrestling. For

reason, the lighting, the smoke -filled arena, the rope banister around the

ring, one of the guys was just bleeding like a stuck pig in a ring, and it just

resonated with me. I was like, holy cow.

I fell in love with it that day.

Growing up, we only got three channels here, and Houston Wrestling was on every

Sunday. Steve always watched it.

If I want to watch anything else, he says, man, you can have the TV after

wrestling's over with. And apparently, yeah, he told, I guess, friends and my

brothers that he was going to be a wrestler one day.

He said those words.

Well, I'll be doggone.

You know, coming from a small town, you don't really get noticed.

You have to put in a whole lot of work, and you got to kind of get yourself out

there. And he was able to do it.

Coming out of high school, I went to Wharton County Junior College, and they

offered me a full ride to North Texas State University.

And football at that level was more serious.

This is the young man we talked about.

That was a real good play.

Yeah, real good play by Steve. He played very well, gotten better every game.

I really didn't enjoy the process anymore.

As far as the education process goes, I had had an absolute gutful of doing

research papers.

Algebra II and calculus were kicking my ass. It just wasn't my cup of tea.

I was through with college, and I wanted to drop out, so I did.

We had a connection from the athletic department at North Texas to Watkins

Lines. With 17 hours to go, I just said, man, I'm out of here. Let me go work on

a freight dock and make that $400 a week. I love driving a forklift. I could

pull your tooth with a forklift.

But watch this motor line. We were 30 miles from the sport tournament in

So, man, me and my buddies would ride down there. We'd drink beer and throw

stuff at the wrestlers and raise hell.

Man, the sport tournament was the greatest building in the world. The

personified.

And I'll never forget, man, we were out there, me and my buddy Rob.

And he's giving me the elbow.

He goes, man, you're as big as him because you've got to get in this. Man,

ought to be a wrestler. I said, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm

going to do it. And so I'd wanted to for a long time.

And I'd be damned if I didn't go home a couple days later. And I was changing

channels. And there was that commercial that Chris Adams put on for his

wrestling academy.

And I said, that's it.

That's my way in.

Hello everybody, this is Gentleman Chris Adams here bringing you exciting news

about our May 3 -day pro wrestling camp.

You'll spend three full days working out in the same ring that you see on your

TV here at the world -famous Sportatorium.

One thing that surprised me when I showed up that first day, I just thought

there was going to be a bunch of monsters in there that looked like me.

Killers that wanted to get in the business of pro wrestling, but they were

regular people off the street.

I don't know if I met Steve as much as I saw Steve.

I was injured during a match, so I went up in what's known as the crow's nest,

where family and friends could watch the matches.

And that happened to be the first lesson that gentleman Chris Adams was giving

for his new wrestling school.

And me and a couple of guys were laughing about how bad...

all of the trainees were, all of them except this one guy with long blonde

and definite, you know, gift of athleticism. And it was clear that he

whatever it is, he had it right away.

By the time he started wrestling, mid to late 1989,

Austin started wrestling for the USWA, which was the United States Wrestling

Association. So he was wrestling in Memphis and in Texas and all points in

between that the USWA was running.

I rolled into Nashville, and I needed a place to live.

I didn't know where to go, and they said, hey, man, try the Congress Inn out

Dickerson Pike.

So I rolled in there and checked in, and, man, I didn't have no money. So

week or whenever I had enough money, I would pay my rent.

Times were really, really lean, and I didn't have a hot plate. I didn't have a

microwave. And I remember I went to the grocery store.

I bought some tuna fish cans. I bought some potatoes.

And for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I'd eat tuna fish and potato.

And, you know, after a few days, I ran out of them.

So for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I'd peel a raw potato and eat that.

A lot of guys ended up living with dancers, and a lot of guys knew where

buffets were.

Any kind of all -you -can -eat thing, they knew where they were.

You had to figure out a way to survive back then.

There was a time period there where I actually spent nights in my car.

I think I'd made $11 ,000 in a year and put 10 ,000 miles on my car.

You were barely getting by.

And so you're paying your dues, traveling 400 miles to make $10.

I'm making $15 and $20 a night, making 400 -mile round trips. You can't afford

to eat.

I remember calling my mom, where she called me and asked me how I was doing.

I said, Mom, is there any way for my birthday this year you could just send

$40? And it's the only time I ever asked my parents for money.

And sure enough, a couple days later, my mom sent me two $20 bills, and it meant

the world to me because I could afford to get something to eat again.

That's part of paying your dues, and I just figured, you know, starving or

whatever it takes because I didn't have a plan B.

I wanted to be a pro wrestler, and so if that's what it takes to be one, this is

what I'm going to do.

I showed up to my first match in Memphis.

And Dutch Mantell was the booker. I go introduce myself to Dutch Mantell. I

said, hey, man, I'm Steve Williams. I'm here to wrestle.

He goes, your name is Steve Williams?

He goes, you can't be that here.

There's already a Dr. Death Steve Williams. There'd be confusion on the

And he goes, you got 15 minutes to come up with a name.

And he walks away.

And I'm just two months in the business, new territory, don't know anybody, and

don't know what the F to do.

Master's about to start.

And, you know, I'm making a life -changing decision.

And he goes, what did you come up with? I said, I ain't got nothing. He goes,

you're Steve Austin.

And I started calling myself Stunning Steve Austin. I had a red robe with

sequins on it.

All I did was wrestle, you know, go to the gym in the morning, get in the car,

go out somewhere, drive back. That was life.

I was a sponge, and I was absorbing all this information from these great minds

who would teach me information that they got from generations before them.

You watch the matches and you listen to the crowd and put the two together and

watch what they're doing and listen to the soundtrack.

Oh, that works. That doesn't work.

A place like USWA at that point, it gave those wrestlers an opportunity

where even if they were only making 10, 20, 30 bucks a night, the payoff was

maybe someone from the WWE or World Championship Wrestling at the time might

me. and they'll bring me up, and they'll be my guardian angel, and suddenly I'll

be making way more money. Well, I think stunning Steve Austin definitely has a

fantastic future ahead of him in this sport.

At that time, I was on the booking committee at WCW World Championship

Wrestling.

We were all challenged and compelled to try to find some new faces, some new

young. athletic talents that we could build that had potential.

Gosh, he checked all those boxes.

Back in the day, the standard deal for WCW, and this is crazy, you made 75

grand, you know, guaranteed.

You go from getting anywhere from 20 to 60 or 100 bucks a night to 75

,000 a year.

It's like the motherlode.

You know, again, this is 92, 93.

That's a lot of money, especially coming from where I came from.

WCW, it was a little different level.

Bigger television opportunities, bigger chance for national exposure.

Welcome back to World Championship Wrestling, and I'm Missy Hyatt. And now

would like to introduce stunning Steve Austin and vivacious Veronica.

WCW, I think it's my first appearance in a ring.

and Missy Hyatt's going to interview me, and I'm walking down the aisle, and I'm

just, I'm in another world, right?

And I hear the announcer over the crowd going, and from Hollywood, California.

I'm like, man, who the fuck is that guy talking about? I'm walking to the ring,

stunning Steve Austin.

I'm like, when did my Texas ass with this accent, you know, become from

Hollywood, California?

World Championship Wrestling.

So I get out there and climb in the ring and I'm doing this interview with Missy

Hyatt and of course I got the biggest burger you could have hanging out of

nose and I was like, really?

It wasn't a great first appearance.

Steve always had great natural intensity.

It wasn't prefabricated.

It wasn't manufactured.

It was real.

You can see that he could tap into his athletic background to bring a reality

in the fight that very few other people could match.

He had a solid run throughout his time in WCW. At one point, he was part of a

tag team, the Hollywood Blondes.

They were this young, vibrant, arrogant tag team spitting in the wind against

the veterans of that company at the time.

But he was always one of the secondary performers in the company.

I don't think anyone in WCW ever visualized Steve Austin as being the

top guy.

I was keenly aware that there was that upper level, and I wasn't a part of it.

And unless something happened, you could not break into that next tier.

Aesthetically, I didn't have the right look. I didn't have the right gimmick or

persona. They didn't think I was marketable.

Get out of my face!

From the land of the rising sun.

We was over in Japan on a three -week tour, and the third night of that tour,

jumped off the top rope to splash a guy, and he moved, and I tore my right

tricep off my elbow.

And so I wrestled for two and a half weeks with torn tricep. And as soon as I

get back to the United States, it's my first major surgery.

And I remember getting a call from Eric Mischoff, who was running WCW at the

time.

And he goes, Steve, I'm just letting you know that you're getting fired.

And so that's how it went down. Got a FedEx the next day, and I was out of a

job.

I'm sitting there trying to heal up now.

Money's going to stop coming in.

I got bills to pay and my family to feed.

I'm like, man, what am I going to do?

In September 1995, I was the owner of ECW and was in charge of all the

direction. Someone from WCW buzzed me that Steve was being let go.

So I called Steve and I said, hey, I heard you got fired. Right off the bat,

phone rings. It's Paulie.

Paul calls me. He goes, kid, he goes, why don't you come over here and start

working for me?

I said.

I said, I can't work. I said, I've got a torn tricep. Oh, hell, kid, I'm hurt. I

can't do anything.

Can you talk?

Oh, hell, kid, I can talk all day long.

Come on up and talk.

And I said, man, what do you want me to talk about? He goes, just talk about how

you feel.

If you're pissed off, come and vent.

Let's talk about that. I wanted that.

authentic outrage on my television show.

Sure enough, I am flying up to Philly. We go to, I got named ECW Arena, which

was a complete ho.

ECW was, well, it was purgatory, basically.

Probably closer to hell than purgatory.

ECW is Extreme Championship Wrestling, and I dare say they earned the extreme

moniker.

In ECW, we were obsessed with delivering performances that were going to

redefine the industry.

With doing things that had never been done before.

They were tables and barbed wire and blood and guts and people flying into

crowd.

We took in misfits. I mean, if there was an island for misfit wrestlers, it was

ECW.

I'm the new guy in the territory. What's my mission? What's my goal? Who am I?

What am I? You know, you're kind of lost.

I'll never forget that night when I cut this promo.

It was about seven or eight minutes long, and I just started talking, and it

a one -take promo, and everything I said was how I felt.

You know, a couple of weeks ago, when Eric Bischoff told his secretary to tell

her secretary...

to leave a message on my answering machine for me to call Eric Bischoff.

And then I called Eric Bischoff, and he proceeded to fire me over the phone.

We're going to put the U .S. title on you, and then we're going to take you

here, and then you're the number one contender, so then you get this world

shot. Well, all that never happened.

When I wrapped up that promo and they shut off that light, everybody in that

room started clapping.

Standing ovation, and rightfully so.

He was able to express himself in a way that you just could not do or that we

were not allowed to do in WCW.

Man, after being held down or kind of restrained in WCW or no one believed in

me, I knew that I had to take chances on myself. You could tell that he was

energized and that he had an axe to grind and he was grinding it really

And a lot of people say that's kind of, maybe that was the genesis of what Stone

Cold would come from.

Steve Almedia is going to run wild on the ECW, brother. I'm not going

to do this anywhere, not even in

ECW.

Well, Jim Ross was always an admirer of Steve's talent.

So I knew ECW was always vulnerable that Jim Ross would recruit Steve into WWE.

Once Steve did that interview on ECW, Jim Ross came after him.

And rightfully so.

How could he not?

I didn't realize how fast it was going to happen.

WWE was subsidizing ECW when Steve was there.

So we had our eye on him for quite some time. At least I did.

I just had to wait for the right place at the right time to get him to WWE.

So I made a phone ring, and it's a maroon phone.

And I pick it up.

Hey, Mr. Mann.

Hey, Vince, how you doing?

Hey. I want to bring you as the ringmaster, master of the ring.

From a creative standpoint, the character of the ringmaster was the best

-ring performer and could do it all. And to me, that was Steve Austin.

And I'm sitting there listening to Vince make this pitch, and I'm like,

ringmaster?

First of all, it sounds like shit.

But more importantly than that, I need more money than I'm making from ECW, and

I ain't got no other options.

I said, sounds good, let's do it.

When I joined WWE, I know the territory was down.

Things weren't great.

They were getting by.

But we'd go out and, I don't know, it seemed like a house would be like a

quarter full.

But I was willing to be a part of the system, just because it's so new, it's

big. And I'm so far low down that - I ain't got no reason to act like a big

because here I am as a ringmaster, a new gimmick, a bad gimmick, and you

don't know who and what you are.

He's all business, man. He's not in there trying to impress anybody with how

good he looks or how pretty his hair is or anything. He just wants to beat up

people and win matches.

This character is a stretch because I don't know what it is or what it's

supposed to be.

As a ringmaster, I didn't know.

who and what I was or how I'm supposed to do things, so it was very confusing.

And after a while, I just stopped wearing a green t -shirt because they

paying attention to me. So I'm thinking, I don't think they really got plans for

me.

Vince looked at Steve, saw an average guy, said, I don't know what to do with

him in that accent.

It's just, I can't relate to him. There's nothing about him I can relate

My initial impressions of him was he was wasting my time.

There was no way to go with the ringmaster to make it marquee. I don't

damn who was doing it. There's nothing there.

And I said, man, this gimmick ain't worth a shit. And after six months or

Vince was kind of like, I don't care what he does. If he's not happy and he

wants to come up with another name, let him.

I was living in a log cabin on 10 acres right outside of Georgia in

Douglasville, and I was over there in my log cabin, and I was drinking some

beer, and that's when they had that special on HBO about Richard Kuklinski,

Iceman.

Well, Richard Kuklinski was a hitman, you know, for the mob.

He's cold -blooded, he's remorseless.

I was glued to the set.

When you're sitting there watching and you've got a couple of beers flowing,

it's like, shh, man, this could be something.

And I pitched that, and, you know, that was when all the ideas started flowing.

That's a tricky situation, where you're fairly new in the company, Mr.

McMahon has agreed to give you a character change, and you were given a

from Creative. The fact that I can rattle off more of Stone Cold's names

the terrible names that I was given speaks to just how bad they were.

I'd just gotten those three pages of names, like Fang McFrost, Snowman.

Otto Von Ruthless. Mr. Freeze.

Ice Dagger.

Ice Dagger. Cool Luke.

Fang McFrost.

Cool Cat.

Chili McFreeze. Chili McFreeze. I mean, some of the worst names you could ever

imagine. Even given everything else in the Austin package, if he's Fang McFrost

or Chili McFreeze, we're not having this interview right now.

And my wife at the time made me a cup of hot tea, and she goes, drink your tea

before it gets stone cold.

And she looks at me, she goes, that's your name?

Stone Cold Steve Austin.

You know, I'm not a rocket scientist, but when she said that name, I knew that

was the one.

And I said, okay, this is a good name.

And I wanted it to be from Victoria, Texas, because, you know, I just thought

had a good ring to it, a good sound.

But okay, now who is this guy? Who and what is Stone Cold Steve Austin?

I got me some black boots made.

I always thought black was badass and menacing from Darth Vader, Oakland

type stuff and it fit my persona.

I remember one time we were in Pittsburgh and we were about to work

and there I was with that buzz haircut and I looked in the mirror and I said,

man, what are you doing?

So I buzzed it all off with a razor and then that's when I started messing with

the mustache and finally turned into a goatee.

Once I got that goatee down, that's when things started getting a little bit

more menacing.

and picked up the visual that I needed.

I believed in the character because the character was a real person.

Steve totally embraced the presentation of Stone Cold Steve Austin.

He loved it.

He owned it. He created it.

He was bold enough to bet on himself and push and push and push until a big man

almost threw his hands up and said, okay, okay, let's go, let's try it.

He just needs a chance.

Give him a reason to be a main event guy.

1995 to 1996, Stone Cold starting to find himself as a character, and then

had the 1996 King of the Ring tournament, which would take place in

The King of the Ring is a one -night pay -per -view.

Wrestlers all go through this tournament, and the winner is pretty

earmarked to be the next great star.

That's the message from the company.

We're going to try and push them and promote them and move them up behind the

scenes. It had already been planned Triple H was going to win King of the

But before that, Triple H ended up punished for this role with something

the Curtain Call.

Did a big no -no in the wrestling business where all of us came together

Madison Square Garden.

Myself, Triple H, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall.

What? Oh, my God!

Oh, my God!

We were expressing a real friendship out there that had really nothing to do

with whatever was going on in the WWE at the time or from a storyline

standpoint. We were pulling the curtain back.

more so than anyone wanted the curtain being put back.

It's very frowned upon, and Triple H got in a lot of trouble.

Did you know you were on the trajectory to win King of the Ring? Oh, yeah. It

was already,

Vince had sat me down, talked to me about it, here's where I want to go,

the Ring.

For me, that was the next level, right?

You know, that all went away.

So in the pecking order, as you looked at it, you looked at who needed that

boost and who needed...

Maybe just a nudge.

Steve was the guy.

I'm walking in the building, dragging my suitcase behind me. I hear this voice.

It's Vince.

He goes, Steve, I just want to let you know, in two weeks, you're winning King

of the Ring.

I was pretty happy.

Because, you know, when you win the King of the Ring, you're going to get a big

shove after that.

And before, there were no future plans for me.

I go to Milwaukee, the Mecca Arena, and I go out there and I'm working with Mark

Merrill. And we do this thing, we're having a match, and he kicks me in my

mouth.

And we finish the match, I beat him.

My mouth was buckled open pretty bad, so they take me to the ambulance to the

hospital. And so I get stitched up 14 stitches or whatever with my upper lip,

and they bring me back.

Because I'm going to wrestle Jake the Snake Roberts in the finals, and I'm

to beat Jake and become the king of the ring. When I come back, my mouth is

stitched up, and as soon as I get out of the ambulance, There's Michael Hayes.

We're in the back of the Mecca Arena, and he came out. He was going to the

to go take on Jake. I mean, literally going to the ring. And I said, Jake just

cut a promo. He says, what did he say? And I said, you know, he just used some

Bible quotes and, you know, that he was going to win.

My soul was purchased by the blood of the Lamb. So how could I lose if I just

out there and know the power above is reaching down and lifting me up? And

he told me that.

I immediately thought of the football days back in the day when they're

the field goals a point after. They always had John 316 signs behind the

goal. So anyway, we go out there and we have the match, myself and Jake. And

because my lip was busted up, we had a real short match.

After the match, I go over there to do the interview with Michael Hayes, who

smartened me up.

You thump your Bible and you say your prayers and it didn't get you anywhere.

Talk about your Psalms. Talk about John 316.

Austin 316 says, I just whipped your ass.

Austin 316 says, I just whooped your ass. Austin 316 says, I just whooped

ass. I just whooped your ass. I just whooped your ass.

And a franchise was born.

There was a vibe of like a rocket ship igniting its engine to take off.

That was the moment where the character really became a star.

That's the epicenter of the explosion that eventually happens.

I remember thinking halfway through this promo, like, I'm watching this guy get

made. And part of me was like, holy, that should have been me. But also,

wouldn't have cut that promo.

But I think the stitches in his lip and coming back only added to the aura of

that interview.

I just got back from the hospital, so.

I just kind of put that together in my head, and I didn't know what kind of

moment that was, but it was. And then on the backside of it, I knew I needed to

wrap it up. I needed to put a button on it. And that's the bottom line because

Stone Cold said so.

And that's the bottom line because Stone Cold said so was on the spot.

I went to bat twice, and I hit two grand slams.

Out of any event, I was never supposed to win.

Next night, we showed up. All of a sudden, there's the Austin 316 signs,

realized them.

There might be something here.

Next night on Raw, you saw all these Austin 316 signs

all over the building.

I remember thinking to myself at that time, man, everything happens for a

because this guy is going to be massive now.

One day, I'm talking to our merch guy.

I'm sitting in the arena.

He goes, Stephen, office finally wants to come up with a t -shirt for you. You

got any ideas?

I said, you're goddamn right I do.

I said, put Austin 316 on her front, put a skull in the back, and carve in Stone

Cold. Okay, Stephen.

And sure enough, we came up with that shirt, and it sold like a sumbitch.

From that point on, when he got the chance to speak, there was an intensity

there that you couldn't help but want to watch that segment.

The way he walked, the way he stalked opponents, the way he looked at people,

had that icy glare. Because he was in the zone at that level, you couldn't

but be like, got to see what he's going to do.

Why do you keep asking me stupid questions?

No second thought I'll whip your asses right now.

Shut up. Stone Cold never gave a rat's ass about anybody.

I don't know what pressure is, fat boy.

I got a big bunch of bananas, and I can tell you where to stick each and every

one of them.

You ain't worth the sweat off of my... Hey.

My mommy's coming. Steven, if you were on TV, I wouldn't let you watch you.

You're a piece of garbage. Oh, no. See, take your camera and stick it, son.

I ain't leaving yet. And you can stop counting me down because I done told you

once, son. We got a damn problem. Hey, wait a minute. No more.

There's a production assistant.

He is now the guy in the eyes of the audience.

Like, he can do no wrong.

They want to be part of that chaos. They want to be part of that energy.

They want to go and experience someone called Steve Austin, the act, live.

You really start feeling that momentum because you're finally getting the

desired response that you want from these people. So now that I'm getting

feedback, I can feed it to you.

Throughout that period of time, I'm trying my hardest to entertain you or

your heartstrings to make you feel what I'm feeling, channel that.

I'm doing my damnedest to try to affect you.

And I guess I was effective at making people feel emotions.

But there's a perception that Steve just came out of nowhere that that's a

misconception on a lot of people's parts.

Stone Cold lived within, and it took 10 years to come out.

If you look at that time period, WWE was at its lowest point. The only way they

could have gone any lower is going out of business or for the company to fall

apart.

He dragged them into success.

Austin's ascension is tied intricately to the ascension of WWE.

We're coming back to life. The flame isn't dead.

By 1997,

Stone Cold's the hottest he's ever been.

The company's building him as one of the biggest stars in their company.

He's driving revenue. He's selling merchandise. He's making money.

But up next, ladies and gentlemen, the Intercontinental Championship matchup.

It's Owen Hart in a title defense against Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Me and Owen, we're going to have a hell of a match.

And we had had this plan where he'd end up hitting me with a tombstone

piledriver.

And I said, go down to your knees, right, because I'm looking for

He goes, no, I got on my ass.

I said, but it seemed like you got to go down to your knees. He goes, no.

And when Owen said, this is how I do it, I trusted him because he's Owen Hart.

And so anyway, we get out there and things go like they did.

And man, he goes to his ass and my head is sticking out about six inches below

his ass. And boy, I got spiked in the mat and it was not good.

Yeah,

it was gnarly. You could tell immediately.

the thief was you know that he was injured it sounded like someone

hit a big gong and it was my skull you know striking that damn ring dead center

in the middle and then i didn't feel anything because i'm laying there and

paralyzed and i was like man on one hand i could have freaked out and got scared

but instead i remained calm it was like don't touch me i can't move And so he

starts buying time, because I think I'm never going to move again.

As soon as he got injured, I called his wife up.

I said, did he really get hurt, or was it just a show?

He said, no, he really got hurt.

It was 1997 to this day.

I cry about it every time I hear about it.

I'm thinking, I got to get out of this match. I got to get out of this match so

we can go back.

And Earl Hebner's a referee in that match.

And I told Earl, I said, tell him roll up for the win.

I thought I could start moving my arms and legs. And when I tried to, if you go

back and watch that, it's like my knees are creaking to get in a crawl position.

And I can't crawl like this because my hands don't work. So I had to crawl

my forearms.

And I give him the initial thing, and he goes with me, and he doesn't try to

fight it. It's the worst roll -up in the history of the business.

And, man, I am gone.

I've been quadrupling for 60 seconds, and my world has been turned upside

The referees come to the ring, and three of them help me up.

I got my arms around their shoulders, and I pull them off because I want to

up, and I want to address that crowd and hold up that belt. And the only reason

I held up that belt was to signal the crowd that, hey, man, I'm cool.

And, man, when you look at that, my eyes are open, but I'm rolled away.

The referees help me to the back, and as I'm walking, this leg is dragging

behind me quite a bit because of my nerve damage.

I watched Steve stand up on legs that he couldn't feel.

I don't know how in the hell still that he was able to get up.

That's a will that supersedes what the body can do.

Everybody thought I broke my neck. I didn't break my neck. I bruised my

cord. I'm a pretty tough guy.

On that night, I was 1 % tough and 99 % lucky.

And that's why I get a little bit emotional about it because if anything

have went any differently.

I'd have been in a wheelchair.

I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. Nothing that ever happened after

would have happened.

Everything was on the line.

Get the ambulance people. Where are the ambulance people?

Ambulance. You want to just call 911 or what?

Get the medics.

I'd put the pair of shorts on, and I was sitting up there against the wall, and

I was like, well, I was shaking. I kind of started crying a little bit because

it scared me so bad.

I think an injury of that magnitude makes us question our own mortality, and

that's not something we're often faced with.

And I remember I passed the test in the hospital, but the doctor said, you know,

you're pretty... Initially, Dr.

Torg said, man, you're not getting back in the ring.

And it's easy for a doctor to sit there and tell me, maybe you ought to think

about doing something else.

But this is what Steve Austin has done for a living.

I've done it for eight years.

Austin 316 started a year and a half ago, and I ain't ready to give that up

nobody. And no one's going to run me out of wrestling, and there ain't a doctor

in the world that can make me quit.

It took me long enough to get to the top.

And you get to the top, and it's like, man, you're riding a lightning bolt, and

you're going 100 miles an hour.

Then all of a sudden, man, out of nowhere, you come to a screeching halt.

Here was this opportunity he worked so hard for, and like that, it could all be

over.

After that bad injury, my anterior delts were on fire for like a couple of

weeks. I mean, like someone put icy hot on them. It was the weirdest thing, and

I didn't think it was ever going to stop.

And it turned into an itch, and then finally it went away.

When I took that pile driver back in the day, when those reps would carry me

out, you'd watch my left leg kind of dragging behind me.

So, like, if I get cold, you know, that leg will kind of, it just doesn't

respond the same. And, you know, just when you bruise your spinal cord and

stuff happens, it just, it does a reverse.

So, I've got some atrophy and stuff like that.

Coming out of pro wrestling, I ask the guys that are five years older than me

and ten years older than me, hey, man, how you feeling?

So I kind of know what's next or what they're going through because I know

they've been through the same that I have.

I've never had any neck pain.

Everybody always thinks, hey, man, Steve got dropped on his head and he got a

fusion, his neck's all jacked up.

Man, I feel good.

You know, every now and then if I'm sitting around too long, I'll get a

gimped up, just got to stretch it a little bit.

But I really can't complain about anything.

Through all the surgeries and just the wear and tear of the road, for what it's

worth, through all the stuff, I feel good.

To WWE's credit, Steve's credit, they managed to take that injury, and he

even bigger.

It has been said that anything can happen here in the World Wrestling

Federation, but now more than ever, truer words have never been spoken.

This is a conscious effort on our part to open the creative envelope, so to

speak, in order to entertain you in a more contemporary manner.

For me, the start of the Attitude Era was the day in late 1997 when Mr.

addressed the roster, admitted that the old days were gone, and that if we were

going to succeed, we would have to put our own...

personal emphasis into these characters.

The Attitude Era is a point in time in pro wrestling history where WWE got a

edgier.

It becomes violent. It becomes chaotic.

They pushed sexuality with women. They pushed storylines that were blatantly

over the top.

Everybody felt this interesting shift that was happening in wrestling, and

seismic shift now was away from the cartoon era, the superhero era, if you

in pro wrestling, into an edgier, reality -based program.

The Attitude Era was the era of reality, the era of pushing the limit as far as

we could.

It's the golden era.

The Attitude Era, a lot of it...

It was blending reality and fiction. It was more real and more versions of

ourselves just with the volume turned way up. Suck it!

I would imagine doing the suck it probably caused more suspensions and

detentions in school than any other thing in the history of school in

We saw the very best in what people had to offer.

And Steve happened to have been the best of all of us at bringing that to the

plate. He was in a different stratosphere.

It was the era of holy shit.

Steve's Glass was the soundtrack to holy shit.

No matter what was happening, holy shit, right? Like that was

the moment.

I'm getting goosebumps right now talking about it.

whether it's arena of 2 ,000 or 20 ,000 or 100 ,000, they know when that glass

breaks, there's a summits coming out there to deal out a can of World Pass.

When that glass broke, here he came with his whole, you know, head bouncing, you

know, and he's saying whatever he's saying under his breath, and you just

that attitude.

I remember...

The first time I heard that glass break and I saw him walk down to the ring, it

was the first time that I ever got goosebumps in my entire life. 20 ,000,

,000, 60 ,000 people were going absolutely insane.

I said, I want to be like that guy. In that moment, I said, I need to be a pro

wrestler. That was the walk of a guy who had been down the road, paid his dues,

learned the business, got over despite what anybody else thought about him.

guy's not marketable. He's never going to draw no money.

The company finally picked me, and that's the guy walking to the ring.

The character of Stone Cold Steve Austin was a very reality -based persona,

which is not what this industry was built on. So the whole attitude era that

ushered in was ushered in as an extension of the personality that was

brought out by Stone Cold Steve Austin.

And that makes him, in many ways, the most pivotal human being and

character in pro wrestling history.

Now we have to go a little bit higher. Now we have to go a little bit bigger.

Stone Cold's success in the Attitude Era can be attributed to many people.

But in order for your star hero to become successful, he has to

have real, viable villains.

Vince McMahon was the greatest villain in the Attitude Era, bar none.

Vince would show up in some way, take away that thing that you definitely

as a fan, and it drove me insane. And that's why the Attitude Era was so

popular, was that Vince versus Stone Cold rivalry.

Vince and I were tailor -made for each other to work together.

Vince was unique because he was the owner. Now he's feuding with me. It's a

storyline. You can kiss my ass!

All of a sudden, it wasn't just about wrestling.

It was about this guy who was an employee against his boss.

And everybody's an employee that has a boss.

And a lot of times, the employee has not liked what the boss has done or said to

him. Screw you!

You're fired!

Vince is crazy.

He really is.

That stuff is not far from what Vince would do as to what Mr. McMahon did.

Mr. McMahon is a character that is no way in the world like me.

We'll start with that.

But he's arrogant.

I am a handsome...

A fluent entrepreneur.

He's rich.

I said black tie.

You can treat people like crap.

The thought of you, Austin, makes me physically ill, makes me want to vomit.

Everyday people saw something of themselves in Steve, and they saw Mr.

McMahon as the system that was holding them down.

Nobody, especially Vince McMahon.

Tell Stone Cold Steve Austin what to do, and that's the bottom line.

It was the consummate working class hero, Stone Cold Steve Austin, against

machine.

Steve was the rage against the machine.

The rattlesnake is here. Oh my God, I don't believe this.

That's one of the corvettes from Mr. McMahon's collection. At that time,

everybody wanted to be Stone Cold Steve Austin.

It captured everybody's feelings perfectly.

You are the world's dumbest son of a bitch!

Vince was like a kid in a candy store getting to work with me because he

wanted to be a wrestler.

He finally got a chance to perform, not just oversee and give instructions.

If you go back, man, you watch some of the blue jeans I wore, some of the

I wore. We'd get ringing tight.

I couldn't physically pick my leg up high enough. Always the target is the

But when you can't pick your leg up high enough, right below the stomach is the

testicles. He didn't know where those kicks were coming.

He really had no idea. He had no idea. He was going to make contact with

something that was in front of him.

So many times, I kicked him right in the jewels, and he hit physical.

Steve.

You know, if Steve kicks you in the Netherlands or something like that.

It's easy to sell that.

We had to keep upping the game a little bit, so what could Stone Cold do to up

the ante? We had boards of stuff.

What the hell can Steve do? Something crazy. I don't know, drive a Zamboni to

the ring.

Seriously, that's how it happened?

It was a Zamboni incident. We did, then from the hospital.

There you see Mr.

McMahon via satellite.

I want apple juice.

Oh, man, that was a great one. So I go out there. How about you, doctor?

Oh, I'll take it from here, nurse.

No, no!

Listen, man, I'm worried about hitting you with that bedpan.

It was almost a stainless steel bedpan, man. That sumbitch, it was hard.

So goddamn, Steve, it got to you. And I'm watching Steve as he's walking up

down the hallway.

Hospital. And he's hitting his head with the damn bedpan.

I was kind of just bouncing it.

When you hit people with objects for a living, you become an expert at hitting

people, you know, with objects for a living. So when I swung it, boy, I just

reached up and grabbed it and nailed him with it.

It ain't ballet, as the expression goes, you know.

I love Vince. The guy would do absolutely anything

for me.

And I would for him, too.

Again, every now and then someone very special will come along.

And Steve's that.

Man, there was a period there where everything we did was a home run and a

slam. And if you had a double or triple, that was a bad day.

At his peak, Steve was one of the most recognizable faces in the world.

Austin 316 shirt.

We're now in Spencer's Gifts and Hot Topic and Walmart, and you go in Foley's

Macy's, and there's Austin 316.

It was everywhere.

And, of course, you know, he had one quarter where he even had a million

Southern T -shirt.

If you look at any sales chart, Steve Austin's T -shirts are still amongst the

best sellers in WWE to this day.

Well, it first hit me when me and my wife were living in Las Vegas.

Every single person I saw walking the streets, everybody.

Has Steve Austin t -shirts on. It's crazy.

If you turned on the TV, all of the night shows.

Please welcome Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Man, it's good to be here.

Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Any show like that, he was on it.

Commercials.

Can I get one more of those?

Sure.

Wrestling just came in like a tsunami.

Thanks, Dad.

What else?

SportsCenter wasn't embracing wrestling back then.

And I just remember this tidal wave of whether you're accepting us or not, here

we come.

I wasn't even a wrestling fan.

But he was so big, he crossed over into mainstream.

We'd like to welcome back Stone Cold Steve Austin.

He was bigger than wrestling. People who aren't wrestling fans or don't care

about wrestling, even they knew who Stone Cold was.

When you cross over like that, that's when, you know, you've made it. Hey,

Nice to meet you, too.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

When Austin 316 became so hot and everybody had heard about it, that we

in an airport and I'd get preachers and priests and religious people.

They'd say, hey man, is it okay if I get your autograph?

And I'd say, sure. I thought you'd be mad at me for inventing the Austin 316

thing. They'd say, oh no, we don't care.

Steve's legacy is one that kind of makes it hard for us to be WWE

superstars. His impact is felt in a way that none of us can kind of compare to.

You know, we certainly try, but there's always going to be somebody somewhere

that's going to say, pretty good.

Not phone call, though.

When it was at its peak.

During the Attitude Era, it was mob city.

It's like the Beatles just landed. It was amazing.

It sounds glamorous, but you're choosing to be on the road a lot. You have to

love the business to put yourself through that. That's where you really

evaluating your entire life.

Man, when you're running like I was, at my peak, it's hard to do anything other

than be a pro wrestler because it consumes everything about you. You are

mode 24 -7, 365.

You are a slave to the road, and you never want to come off the road because

you come off the road, you get soft.

Soft was never home.

That's a recipe for disaster.

It all looks fun when you're seeing it on TV.

But it ain't always TV.

TV is a very small part of the life that you live when you're doing that job.

The pressure was immense for him.

And part of that was, I think, because he had so much going on.

As the pressures mounted around him work -wise, he had a lot of pressures at

home and a lot of pressures with his family.

And it's a lot.

It was a lot. You know, that's the thing about the business.

You've got all the personal problems that everybody else does.

I've got two daughters.

Stephanie Britt's the oldest.

Cassie Skye's the youngest.

And I remember I came home. I think when Stephanie was born, I flew in. I was in

New York City. We were working in New York. That was the garden. And I flew

home. I was there for her birth.

And then as soon as she was born, I held her. I gave her, like, her first

bottle. I got on an airplane, and I was in Pittsburgh that night working.

The truth is even guys that were married and had families and things like that,

they were more married to the road and the business.

To be successful in this industry, you have to be willing to commit an enormous

amount of time away from being home.

There's just no other way to do it.

It's an extremely difficult life. It really is.

If you have a family, so difficult.

So difficult on everybody.

I think that's probably why there's such a high rate of divorce and things of

that nature.

I try to not bring up that stuff.

I knew what family life was like.

It's unsatisfying.

It's a source of consternation.

It's a source of crying children and heartbreak.

It's a source of unhappy spouses.

It's not like you're making a conscious decision, hey, I'm putting everybody

else on the back burner, but I decided to get a divorce.

You know, when you go through divorce, they're chaotic.

So obviously, you're very distracted.

I was living in a house, but once I decided to get a divorce, I moved

about two or three miles down the road in a little double -wide.

And although I was going through the pain or whatever goes with a divorce,

I moved into that double -wide, me and a double -wide, for some reason, there's

synergy. I had two cinder blocks with a 1x12 plank where my TV was. I had my

cooler, you know.

full of beer. It's too bad that the marriage didn't work out, but I found

comfort and solace in that double one.

You can be in the business and you can still live a full life, but everything

else is kind of like white noise.

I'm putting all my chips in my own basket and this is what I'm doing.

And that was the first and foremost priority was me.

Selfish I was.

And I was going to ride myself and everything that the business had to get

the top and do the best I could.

There's a sacrifice to greatness.

And it's a price that a lot of people are not willing to pay.

Because there is an intensity to it.

There is an obligation to your own vision and dreams that you have to serve

at all costs over and above everyone else in your life, including yourself.

Your own self -interest take a backseat to your dreams and

aspirations of what you want to achieve.

He's had multiple marriages that fell apart. He's had multiple friendships

will never be repaired.

But that's the price you pay to look back on a body of work and have

everyone else around you say he changed the game.

Man, I am very demanding.

I was a professional wrestler. It's what I lived and died for.

He took a lot of things personally. He wanted everything to be perfect, and he

always wanted to be challenged with new information, new creative. It kept your

star happy.

Keep your talent happy as best you can.

If you don't build new stars, you can't feed the superstars at the top.

So when Steve became the big star in the business, he knew he needed a fresh

rotation of brand new stars to work with. Mr. McMahon couldn't be that equal

because once they got into the ring together, it wasn't a very good match.

You needed someone that you could honestly look at and say, this guy

can measure up to Stone Cold Steve Austin.

is cooking.

To build an opponent for Stone Cold, that opponent should be on TV regularly

go six months without losing.

Start planting those seeds.

Can you imagine what this guy's going to be like when he takes on Stone Cold

someday? My first couple of years in the business, I watched this guy, Steve

Austin, ascend to the top and start to achieve this incredible popularity.

And I would just...

quietly watch in the shadows, study his behavior and watch how he operated

because that was the position that I wanted to be in.

And I think he knew that.

I just remember watching him starting to gain momentum, starting to establish a

relationship with the crowd.

He's starting to get over, there's something here.

I need to watch this.

And I remember him saying something to the effect of, there's something there,

kid.

There's something there.

There was also this bond like he was a big brother in a way.

And then we knew that we were going to converge and that we were going to work

together. And as far as The Rock is concerned, the greatest book ever

the one titled The Rock vs.

Stone Cold, Steve Austin.

They were natural together.

They had great chemistry.

I think that Steve and Rock liked each other.

So that helped, and they both rode that wave.

I love the relationship with The Rock and Steve

because they were both very, very competitive.

They were always wondering how the other was feeling, how the other was doing.

They never left each other's radar.

They pushed each other.

They made each other better.

In the world of pro wrestling.

You can only control so much.

And after that, it becomes the intangible.

And that intangible, what everybody

searches for, is chemistry.

I knew exactly what he was going to do all the time.

He knew exactly what I was going to do all the time.

That's just kind of the special thing that you just feel.

It's like watching two comets fly through the sky and hit each other. It

happens.

I think it was the apex. I mean, it was really the peak.

And Steve Austin and The Rock were the two hottest stars in the business.

We were fighting for the exact same thing.

And that was the number one top spot in the company at a time where the company

was on fire.

It's really rarefied air. And we were fighting for that rarefied air.

But it was out of so much love and so much respect.

God, it was so fun to watch. Being privileged to see something like that

you have these two big talents coming together.

It's a new champion!

Man, that was a great ride.

Rock and I never rode the roads together.

He ran with a different crowd.

But whenever we see each other, it's just like the last time we left off.

It's a friendship that is forever.

That was a guy who looked at me and said, you, you and me, we're going

to go, and we're going to go to the dance.

That decision to take me, if you will, under his wing, it changed my life.

Steve's going to be the first one to tell you that he's got just a core group

friends. I mean, he's not going to just be your best friend just to be your best

friend. They say it's lonely at the top, and I think Steve was pretty lonely.

I ran with myself. I was low wolf.

My place was on top of that roster, on top of that card.

There's so much jealousy.

I really love the thing I came up with years ago, DTA, don't trust anybody.

DTA, don't trust anyone, makes for a good catchphrase.

I don't know if it's the best way to go through life, but I think that is how

Steve went through his life at that time.

The DTA, don't trust anyone thing, that wasn't Steve playing a character, angry,

bitter, paranoid, like there was a lot of that. Steve's a very private guy.

He just is.

He never really talked about his home life. Every now and then he'd tell you

something about his family, but for the most part, he kept all that stuff to

himself.

People have always asked me about my daughters. In the past, I haven't talked

too much about them, and it's because of the strained relationship that it was

and me being gone all the time.

I never won Father of the Year because I'm purely on the road.

If I'm going to come home from my two days off every now and then, I'm going

cook some flank steaks on the grill and drink beer.

That's as much as I'm contributing.

I hate to say that. That's the way it was.

I knew that I loved them, but I wasn't there.

Back in 2001, my wife took the kids over to England to visit her side of the

family. 9 -11 happened, and then that's when everybody was, or at least she was

afraid to fly.

They kind of stayed over there.

I was always gone anyway, so what's the big deal? So they stayed over there, and

they kept staying over there.

And as time went on, well, I called.

Stephanie, just to talk to them.

And when we started talking, she had a proper London accent.

When I hung up the phone, I started crying like a baby because she used to

exactly like I do, for better or for worse, without the poor lot of words.

had my same accent.

And to hear her with an English accent, yeah, that shook me up because I was

like, okay, what did I do wrong or could I have done better?

Now that they're older, we're on the way to building better relationships.

So now they're pursuing their own things. I support them.

If I can give them any advice, I do.

Through all the BS that has happened, we're talking now, the relationships, as

strained as they were, they're better now, but it's still a building block.

Because truly, after all these years, we still don't know each other as well as

we should.

That was the Faustian bargain that he cut with himself in order to

myopically, obsessively go after the success that he knew in his heart

he could achieve.

You have to get it while you can and then hope that you can make up for all

other stuff that you put on the bottom shelf while you went out and lived your

dream. There's a lot of casualties that come with that, and you have to be

willing to accept that.

your window is really small.

For most guys, it really is a small window.

He always felt like he was going to lose his spot in line if he was not on the

road. I can't be home.

I've got to be on the road with the rest of the guys because somebody else is

going to have a great match, they're going to be noticed, and I'm not.

The drive for that, the lust for that, he could never get away from.

Any time that someone is successful, they have a hands -on approach.

Steve had a very hands -on approach when it came to the presentation of what he

was going to do.

Steve was very demanding, but Steve could be guilty of, this sucks.

Okay, it sucks, Steve.

What do you want to do to make it better? I don't know, goddamn, you're a

writer, write something.

Steve would get mad, throw it away, and storm off.

This was at a time.

when The Rock was taking a break in Hollywood.

And Stone Cold Steve Austin needed a new equal.

Steve would have been very easy to maintain and manage if we'd always had a

opponent ready for him. And why wouldn't you?

I think that's what led to a lot of Steve's frustration.

Complaining about his opponents, you know, complaining who he's working with.

He wasn't getting red hot villains. Nobody's ready. Nobody's been groomed

me.

The process had failed him.

When the creative stuff started going south a little bit, it had a more

effect on him than it would a lot of guys.

Because he felt like this foundation was starting to crack.

I was like, dude, what is going on here?

When you've been trying so hard, so long to be that guy, and you get that

chance, you ain't letting it go.

I found out what creative had in mind for Steve and Brock Lesnar.

And I confirmed it with Vince.

Oh, you're going to work with Brock tonight, and you're going to lose.

And it certainly was very premature to try to have... Steve and Brock wrestled

with no buildup.

This is a match that could sell out indoor stadiums.

But there's no story there.

It was thrown together.

And it meant nothing.

Jim Ross calls me with the creative for Monday Night Raw.

Tells me, long story short, that I'm doing a job for Brock Lesnar.

I said, oh, really?

I said, well, if that's going to be the case, I ain't going to be there.

So sure enough, I woke up.

I had two Bloody Marys. Got on an airplane, and I was flying back to San

Antonio. And I was mad.

It ain't about winning or losing.

I'll let anybody beat me. As long as it's for a reason, it means something,

there's money behind it. And so I said, I ain't doing it. And I went home. It

was over. I was done. And it cost me a lot of respect from my peers, a lot of

money, and that's what I did. And as they said it, I took my ball and went

It felt like he kicked everybody in the co -unions.

It felt like all of a sudden, wait a minute, what is wrong with him? How is

thinking this way?

To his credit, Vince called me three times. He left me a voice message each

time. I never called him back.

I didn't want to talk to him on the phone. I was still hot.

And for about six months, I was hunting, fishing, and drinking, and not

necessarily in that order, and making a lot of bad decisions.

You know, just time was going by.

Finally, I'm going through my mail. There's a card from Jim Ross.

I didn't expect a card from Jim Ross.

Hey, man, just checking on you. Want to see if you're okay.

If you ever want to talk, give me a call.

And I felt right then that that was my friend throwing me a lifeline.

I called him up. It was back when they had those old Motorola flip phones. I

burned through two batteries talking to Jim.

We did speak for hours.

Life, football, you know, booking, marriage, relationships.

Boy, he really needed to talk.

He goes, hey, man, do you think if I ever put you in the old man or the

building, you can hash this out and put it behind you and come back to work?

I said, I'd love that.

He facilitated the meeting between myself and Vince.

And I'm thinking, man,

we're going to fight or hug.

We started talking.

We hashed it out. I told him what I was thinking, and we got back on the same

track. And then shortly thereafter, I returned to work.

When I did come back, I knew what

I had done. So I remember going up to basically the whole locker room. Yeah, I

apologized to a lot of guys.

And it was warranted.

Well, Stone Cold Steve Austin is back, and I can guarantee you that I am going

to raise more hell in this ring than I've ever raised in my life.

I came back for a few months, but, man, it's a hard -ass

job.

I was backstage with Bruce Prichard one time, and I just kept having this nerve

jump in my leg.

And it was just like everything in my nervous system was so shot.

You know, the atrophy in my hands and other things that I was going through

like finally starting to unwind me. It's like, dude, when is your body going to

give you enough signals that you need to get your ass out of here?

The feeling was basically that he had pushed the limits as far as he could and

that it was time that he didn't want to push him anymore.

And I think Steve just saw the writing on the wall.

I can't imagine how agonizing it was for Steve to make the decision that

his career was over.

He had to resign himself to the fact, this is as far as the character goes.

Now the question then would become, who will he wrestle and what will be the

outcome? Steve being an old school guy, wanted to go out the right way.

He wanted to be Rock.

He owed it to Rock.

But he didn't want to distract from The Rock getting a win by him, so this is

his last match.

So we kept that confidential.

It's a professional thing to do.

And it shows great love and respect for Dwayne.

It's bigger than wrestling. I just like The Rock.

And so I didn't tell hardly anybody at all.

Obviously Vince knew, Jim Ross knew, and I told The Rock.

When I found out that his last match was going to be with me, I had really mixed

emotions.

You know, we hugged, and it makes me a little emotional now because it is the

ending of a career that has been so influential on not

only me, but the world of wrestling that we love.

It hurt to walk away. It was a real tough decision to make, but I just

it was the best decision for me.

I think the days leading into WrestleMania 19 were miserable for him.

How am I going to do? How am I going to deliver?

What are the people going to say?

How do I look?

The day before WrestleMania, I was at the gym.

This was at a time where I was drinking about three bottles of wine a night, two

pots of coffee in the morning to get up, and a bunch of energy drinks to get you

going.

Really dehydrated. Never mind.

Feet kept jumping, just nervous reactions. I was like, man, what is

And I was standing at the Grand Hyatt Hotel there in Seattle.

And I went up to the floor that I was on, and as soon as I got out of the

elevator, man, my heart started beating out of my chest so hard and fast, it

scared the hell out of me.

And I was thinking, man, I'm dying.

I just got my number called. I'm gone.

And there was a WWE employee named Liz DiFabio coming down the hallway.

And I looked at her, and she could see that I was as serious as a heart attack,

no pun intended.

And I said, Liz, I'm in trouble.

They take me down to the emergency room, and they put all these tests on me.

They thought I had a pulmonary embolism. They thought a bunch of things. And the

thing was that I was just basically dehydrated, drinking too much alcohol

way too much caffeine, and finally, you know, it was time to stop.

So Vince and I were there. He put too much on himself. He worried too much. He

overthought the situation.

So I woke up the next morning. The doctor didn't want to discharge me. He

wouldn't clear me to wrestle.

But I was going to wrestle, and I was going to wrestle the rock.

Getting to the building.

I was walking around seeing everybody going through the motion.

Hey, Mark.

Hey, Steve.

How you doing?

If I talked to anybody or hardly said anything, I was about to start crying.

And when you're making the decision to walk away from your number one passion

that you live for, oh, man, I'll make this go away.

So I was like this all day long.

And then, of course, you know, we get ready for the match. It's like, okay,

let's go turn it on, rip it up. You know, if your heart explodes.

If I died in the ring.

Hey, man, what better place to go than in Mania, in the middle of the ring,

The Rock?

So, you know, you can't plan a better death than that.

I take

it all in.

I feel everything.

And I sense everything. The smell, the feel, the love.

The tone of that building.

It ain't about nothing but a wrestling match between two of the greatest that

have ever been in the ring.

That's a clothesline.

And The Rock. Is he going to do it?

When that three -count hit, it was like... I was just laying

there. It was like someone lifting 1 ,000 pounds of bricks off my back.

Damn near 70 ,000 people in that building. A couple men watching on pay

-view. We were both laying in the middle of the ring.

And I sat up.

And I remember I pushed the referee, Earl Hebner, away.

He knew that I was going.

He knew that I didn't want to go, and this was a hard decision for me to make.

I lowered my head down to Steve's ear, and I said, I can't thank

you enough for everything that you have done.

And then I said, I love you.

I remember just laying there in front of 70 ,000, man, saying, man, I love you

too.

I told him I loved him.

Verbatim, I said, I love you too. Two big ass, tough ass guys telling each

that they loved the other one in front of millions of people.

I felt like that was the time to tell Steve because there is no other moment

our world where we are as raw and open and vulnerable than in that moment

right there.

When the one, two, three happens.

It's just two men who have gone on this incredible journey.

You know, I have goosebumps now thinking about it.

That was the moment to say, man, I love you, and I can't thank you enough.

What makes Steve's career different than most others is just how hot he got, how

fast he got hot, and how short of a time he had to enjoy it.

I was seeing the end.

as something that will never be replicated.

Seeing the end of a moment in a pop culture genre that will never be

Now I can go enjoy the life that I have in front of me.

You know, retirement always sounds good, and then there I was. I was doing

nothing. I was going crazy.

Straight up, man, I hit the bottle pretty hard.

I do know that he was a bit lost after, you know, having to leave the business,

trying to redefine himself and see what is life after wrestling.

He had three years that he talked about how he was just drinking and eating and

just a little bit depressed.

I'll tell you this true story.

I woke up one morning. I was looking right at myself in the mirror. I said,

dude, the things that you are doing are not conducive to living a long life.

You better straighten your ass up.

It took me three years of being a fuck up to come to my senses to say, you know

what? You had to quit the business.

You ain't doing nothing now.

You better get your ass out to L .A. and try to capitalize on at least, you

know, some part of the name that you spent so long trying to build up.

Look at me, you piece of trash.

I heard you've been running around saying you could take me in a fight.

I wouldn't say that.

Let's get busy, Hollywood.

And initially I came out to California to get into acting. I quickly realized

that I didn't really want to do that, and when I found hosting and reality

television type stuff, that's when I knew I'd kind of found my niche.

I'm Stone Cold Steve Alston, Jerry the King Lawler, my next guest on Brunker

Skull Sessions. Check it out, and that's the bottom line, because that's Defco.

Great. And so I started podcasting, and the reason I started was just to keep in

touch with people.

I guess it was just all built on the history of what I put forth inside the

squared circle.

He's got a podcast that he does. He's got TV shows he hosts. I would say the

biggest difference between the Stone Cold we see now and the Stone Cold we

back then, he doesn't have the pressure.

I'm a civilian now.

It took me a while to turn into a civilian, but I'm a civilian now.

My problem is, man, I'm type A personality, so I'm always in a hurry.

I'm in a hurry when I don't have anything to do.

This is Brownie, our chocolate lab we rescued about three weeks ago.

These are my Kawasaki KRX 1000s. This is my Corvette, this is KLX 450.

This truck right here is a 1966 Chevy C10.

I'm not a wrestler anymore. I had a good time doing it.

But at the end of the day, now it's about life.

You step through the curtain, you're in front of the paying customer.

And that's where you got to be the person they perceive you to be on

And you're that person from the first step.

through the curtain until the last step back through the curtain.

You're a performer out there.

Talk about your songs. Talk about John 316.

Austin 316 says I just whipped your ass.

Nobody else told Steve Austin what to do.

When you come back through the curtain, you're a human being.

And those human beings are worried at that moment when they sit back through

curtain, was I good?

Did they like me?

Did I do all I could do? Did I maximize my minutes?

Coming back through.

It's for whoever meets the road.

That curtain is a big thing.

And how you navigate the curtain, how you react on both sides of it, largely

spells your success in the pro wrestling business.

Look, I got placed in a real good situation, and I got a chance to have a

fun doing something I love.

But, like, I still feel like I'm sitting there in this damn chair, and I'm still

Steve, the dude from Edna.

In my mind and in my eyes, that's me.

That's all I can say.