Stone Cold Steve Austin: Iconic WWE Moments, Worst Stunner, One More Match, CM Punk, Vince McMahon

Steve Austin (@steveaustinBSR) is a professional wrestler and WWE Hall of Famer. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at Broken Skull Ranch in Nevada to discuss his legendary wrestling career, iconic theme song, how beer became a part of his celebration, why he came out of retirement to wrestle Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 38, a possible in-ring comeback, why he and Bret Hart had great chemistry, a dream match with CM Punk, who took the worst Stunner of all time, his cats Pancho and Macho, and more! 

On his cats Pancho and Macho:

“The cats are out in the horse barn. Solid ass cats. They’re out roaming around. Macho is prowling by the pond. He’s a hunter, and Pancho pretty much stays by the horse barn. He has really befriended one of my wife’s horses, and so he’ll jump on her back, and they’ll hang out together and nuzzle each other. The solid ass cats are alive and well.”

What makes a cat a solid ass cat?

“I don’t know. I just came up with that. It’s turned into a thing. People love to see those cats on Instagram. So, you know, I was out there shoveling horse sh*t, I think it was two years ago, around Christmas, and I just addressed the camera on my iPhone. I said, ‘Hey, man, this is Steve and Pancho, wishing everybody Merry Christmas.’ I didn’t expect anything of it, and just in subsequent posts, not trying to make it a thing. It turned into a thing. So it is what it is.”

On the rumor that he no longer drinks beer:

“Yes, I still drink beer, but it’s kind of like the old timers used to come up to you in the dressing room when you first started breaking into business, ‘Kid, you got to pick your spots, you don’t have to take all those bumps.’ So, yeah, these days you don’t need all those hangovers. You pick your spots. Friday night is kind of like I still eat, and watch what I eat pretty strictly. So Friday is usually my beer night when I’ll have a couple IPAs, and that’s when I pick my spot.”

What’s the most beer you drank in one night?

“It was over in Japan, and I’ve talked about this before, because the Dudleys were there, and Stacy Keibler was there, and there’s a whole bunch of people that were in the ring. So I just started tossing out beers, but I think we went over 100 and this isn’t an Andre story that, but I believe there was 100 beers involved in that. Now, did they all get drank into Completion? No, it was spilled everywhere and thrown here, there and wherever. But I think that was about the biggest one ever, over in Japan. I used to like to get Goldberg in the ring and toss him beers on a few occasions that we did that, because Bill don’t drink. He’ll drink a beer ot two, but he doesn’t really drink. And so I’d keep force-feeding him beers, because if you’re in the ring with Stone Cold, you got to drink the beer. And I’d try to get him as hammered as I could before I left the ring. It’s kind of an ongoing rib between me and Bill. I still keep up with him.”

How did beer become part of the celebrations?

“I don’t know. Someone else asked me that a while back, and Sandman was way before me. So always give Sandman credit, and then we evolved it somehow, some way, in a fashion that I don’t think was copying Sandman, and I think he bashed them over his head. But always throw respect to Sandman, and because I wasn’t trying to rip him off, but we weren’t even thinking that when we started doing it. I don’t even know how it came to be, if it was something where I took a can from somebody in the audience, and then it turned into a thing or what, as we were talking on the phone before you came here, I told you, I said, Man, there’s a lot of my career that I remember, but there are certain pieces that I don’t remember, and I can’t remember exactly how that got started, so that that would be one of those occasions.”

You look like you could still go:

“I could. God dang it. And just saying that takes me back to when we did that WrestleMania match with Kevin Owens in Dallas, Texas, and they didn’t send a ring down for me to work out in to get any kind of timing or hit the ropes. I remember going down there, and I was running the ropes and taking a couple of flat back bumps before we got into the ring, but you can’t get your timing or any kind of anything back, much less your wind. I was over here in my gym doing all kinds of cardio, because when that glass breaks, or whoever’s music hits, and you start walking to the ring, man, just the buzz of the crowd. I’ve seen people blow up walking to the ring, because that’s just what a crowd can do to you. So just going there with Kevin Owens and trying to have that match with him, where we didn’t bill it as a match, but it was going to be a match, so to speak. I remember telling Kevin, and I was knocking the sh*t out of him. I was potatoing him so bad because I hadn’t thrown a punch in 19 years, and he never threw a receipt. I told him, because we keep in touch with each other every now and then. I just wish that he could have been in the ring with me when I was really going, you know, full speed and had my timing, because he’s a great worker, and I really like him a lot. I wish he would have got a chance to experience me when I was in my prime, because that would have been a great contest. But I could still do it, and I’m not advocating for nothing, so I’m not selling a match here, Chris. But you asked me, could I? Yes.” 

Would you?

“Probably not. I’ll say that, but you say never. But with the knee replacement I had last year? God dang, I was limping around so bad, and I didn’t know I was limping, and people would ask me, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ [They said] ‘You’re limping.’ F*ck, I didn’t know, because I don’t watch myself walk. And then finally, after everybody kept pointing it out to me, I could feel it, no doubt that’s why I was limping. And then it just started getting really bad because of all the arthritis in there. And finally, last year, I had it replaced. I was thinking why didn’t I do this sooner to get out of so much pain? And I’ve always wondered what arthritis felt like. Man, I found out firsthand. And it’s an it’s chronically over time, years and years and years of it. It’ll change your personality. It just puts you in a state of mind where you just want some relief, so to get that relief and come out on the other side and still be active.” 

Why was Kevin Owens the right opponent?

“It was in Dallas, Texas. Vince flew down here, and we had a conversation, and I thought about it for a minute. I love Kevin Owens, and I think, from a safety standpoint, they picked Kevin. And when they threw out just a couple of names, Kevin was the guy.”

Was it because Kevin Owens was doing the stunner?

“No, they just hand-picked Kevin because they know how good he is, and he cuts a good promo. I remember meeting Kevin 100 years ago in the airport, him and Sami Zayn, it’s a well-known story. But anyway, I gave him some advice about learning how to promo and talk instead of taking all those bumps. And you know, he’s turned it up. Kevin Owens will end up in the Hall of Fame. So, I mean, why not pick Kevin Owens for Stone Cold Steve Austin’s opponent?”

How did it feel getting back in the ring?

“Well, it was interesting, because there were different people that were making comments about that. Triple H says, ‘You never know what you got until you get in there.’ He was right. Hulk Hogan, God rest his soul, says, ‘You’re not calloused up because you haven’t been on the road, you haven’t been taking bumps in the ring.’ He was right. Undertaker says, ‘There’s no way that you can have timing because you haven’t been in the ring over and over every single night.’ And he was right. So on that night, walking to the ring, I remember I couldn’t hear the crowd like I wanted to, just because of the acoustics of that building. And, man, I’m just real in tune with how the crowd responds to anything particularly as anybody would, your entrance, we blew the roof off the place. So anyway, we go into the match, and it was fine. I blew up because I hadn’t had any reps in the ring. But when I look back at that, I rushed through so many things, I wish I would have slowed down more and savored a little bit more and just entertained the crowd a little bit more. And it was what it was, we got away with it because it was anticipated. It was billed as my last match, because Dallas is where I started and Dallas is where I would finish. So for all the right reasons, it was there to have that match, and we pulled it off. But God dang, I could have been better prepared, and I would have loved to have been better that night for Kevin Owens.”

On the incident the night before WrestleMania 19:

“It was just a thing where I was running hard and dehydrated and drank a lot of caffeine. I remember my legs were kind of shaking at the gym that day, and it was just kind of a precursor for what was to come. I was working out with Kevin Nash, and we were sitting there doing cardio and talking on the recumbent bikes. Then when I got into the hotel, I think was at Grand Hyatt, and I was up on one of the top floors, 27, 28 and goddamn, my heart just started beating out of my chest. It was like about 180 beats a minute. That sounds crazy, but that’s what it was. Then the doors opened, and I’ve told this story many times, and there’s a lady that worked in the office. Her name was Liz, real nice lady, and God damn, I looked at Liz. I said, ‘Liz, I’m in trouble.’ My room was right there. Went in my room, and she called 911, and a couple of ambulances came and all that stuff, and they told me about the hospital. But they had to kayfabe me to the hospital because, you know, I was in the main event. So anyway we get there, they do a bunch of tests on me, check me out and everything, and thought I had a pulmonary embolism and stuff like that. Turns out, man I was just running ragged. And so anyway, doctor never really cleared me. I’ve said this before, and went to the ring the next day and put over the Rock and took care of business. I think the match is okay, but that was just a product of running too hard, too fast.”

On his theme song:

“I remember when I was down in WCW, I had a pretty decent little entrance song. It was pretty rocking for as cocky as Stunning Steve was. Then when I came into WWE, as I was using the Million Dollar Dream as my finish, and I was a Million Dollar Champion, they had this dreamy slow music. I’m like, man, what the f*ck? How do you walk to the ring with any kind of swagger to this? I was lost. Finally, they want to redo my music, because I turned into Stone Cold Steve Austin, and I just hit Jim Johnston with, ‘Hey, man, I like Bulls on Parade from Rage Against the Machine.’ So if he listened to it once, twice, or didn’t listen to it, and he came up with what he came up with, and he put the siren in there and the glass breaking, which wasn’t part of that song. So I’ve always given him just the nth amount of credit, because, man, he made winners. And yeah, God dang if that ain’t one of the best entrance songs, or top three, I don’t know what is.”

On why he and Bret Hart had great chemistry:

“Because Bret Hart is the best there is, the best there was, there ever will be. I love working with that guy. We just had instant chemistry. He was a student of the game and a student of other promotions. He had seen what I was doing in WCW as Stunning Steve Austin, and he knew his style and my style would work well together. And it did. Just trash-talking heel that I was, and he was at that steady workaholic working babyface, blue collar, if you will, from Canada, wearing the pink. Just two styles that would work really, really well together, and it did. I’m very thankful to that guy, because he meant a lot to my career. I’ll never forget that one time when he was just coming back from getting his knee cleaned up, and he needed an opponent for Survivor Series in the Garden, and he picked me as he picked me as his opponent. That was a real classic, an understated classic. And if you go back and watch it match, the rings were miked differently back then, so that match sounds different and the crowd is different, and I was not at the level that I would be, but people were into that match, and I had some mixed reactions. Of course, Bret was the babyface, but for some reason, when they ring the bell, Bret and I click in the ring. There’s just mutual respect, and for some reason, with some people, you just have great chemistry. You and I could be best friends, and we could go out there and work, but we might not have the best in-ring chemistry, although we’re best friends. So sometimes that just happens, like with The Rock, great chemistry, with Mankind, great chemistry.”

How did you end up working with Vince McMahon?

“I don’t remember. I just remember he was interviewing me one time. He was talking about whoever was the President at the time. But I said on the interview, I said, everybody knows you’re the boss, Vince. And I think maybe that was when he woke up and said, Hey, let’s do this. I don’t know. He was the mastermind. I don’t know what he’s doing now, but that was a feud that transcended the wrestling business. And even if you didn’t, even if you weren’t a wrestling fan, per se, you were interested in being entertained. So you put on to see what this motherf*cker from South Texas is terrorizing his boss from New York City. Of course, Vince is from North Carolina, but you know, he’s the guy with all the money, and here’s this guy that he’s trying to give a hard time to and make everything hard for him. He’s outsmarting him, and he’s kicking his ass. At some point in anybody’s life, they’d like to punch their boss in the mouth. When it was time for me to get mine in, I did. When it was time for Vince to get that heat back, he did, to keep feathering the storyline. So it was just, you know, master at creating a storyline and feuding with him as long as we did, and really, it never became boring.”

Were you surprised at how far Vince was willing to go in your storylines?

“I’ve always said that Vince will go to any length to further any angle. And obviously, considering himself, he wants to be the leader of the pack and the king of the mountain. So he’ll do anything, sacrificing himself as part of it. I loved it, we were the perfect rivals.”

Did you think Austin 3:16 was controversial at the time?

“I did, yeah. Religious people could consider it as blasphemy. I remember walking through airports, and I would get priests and stuff like that. You could see they were because they were wearing their stuff in the airport, wearing the gimmick, You never wore your gimmick. You don’t wear Austin 3:16 shirts. If anybody wore their T-shirt to the airport, dude, you’re a mark. You can wear the sh*t in the building. But anyway, so I would be signing autographs for preachers and stuff like that and the airports. I said, ‘Man, you ain’t mad about the Austin 3:16?’ [They said] ‘Oh no, Steve, it’s okay. But at the time, could it be construed as [controversial]? Yeah, but certainly it was by some.”

On the “What?” chant still being used today:

“Yeah, a lot of people wish I wouldn’t have done that. But it just turned into something to do, because when I turned heel, not everybody wanted me to turn heel, but I was just set on turning heel, because I’ve always liked working heel so much. [That was your call?] Yeah, and I wish Vince would have shot me down, or I wish I felt it in the ring at night. I should have just said, ‘Hey, man, we’re changing this. Watch the stunner.’ And I should have just stunned his ass and never went down that road. But as a means to an end, I was leaving Christian a voicemail and kept saying, What? What? I just turned it into this thing to berate somebody, to belittle somebody as a heel. So I use that as a mechanism to do that as a means to an end, to try to get heat. And that whole attempt was over-trying just to compensate and gain ground on getting heat. I remember Hunter and myself as a Two Man Power Trip just whacking people with chairs. I mean, you know, trying so hard through violence to get heat, which is not always the best way to get heat, and by laying stuff in. It was an interesting period, the heel thing. If I could go back in time, I would not have done it, because I didn’t need to. I think Jim Ross said it best, nobody ever wanted to hate John Wayne. I wasn’t John Wayne, but I was the anti-hero. I got over by being the way I was. So to turn bad, to try to do worse things, I don’t know, just it didn’t work. It wasn’t successful. We got a chance to push the character in different directions, in different dimensions, but I don’t think we were really ringing up the box office doing that.”

When you broke your neck in 1997, did you think that was it?

“When I got fused up, had a great doctor in San Antonio, and I was starting to kick out a little bit. I had my collar off, and I was riding around on my four-wheeler, and I had a cooler on the back of my four-wheeler. I was out there just drinking beer, riding around, and my phone rang. Just back in day, we had those Star Trek flip phones and those Vince calling me. He just asked me how I was doing. He goes, ‘I was just thinking about what we need to do for your comeback.’ I was kind of almost offended. Man, I almost got paralyzed, and you’re asking me to get ready to come back into the ring. I said, I don’t f*cking think I’m taking any more bumps. That’s what I’m thinking. And I told him, I said, ‘Vince, I don’t think I’m coming back.’ I can imagine him on the other end of the line when I said, I don’t think I’m coming back. Because it kind of scared me. When you get paralyzed, which I was a transient quadriplegic for a length of time, 60 or so seconds, it scares you, and so you don’t want to go back to that place again. I didn’t think I was coming back. And so anyway, we had a few more phone calls. And it’s funny, because when you get into any endeavor that you love or brings you joy, and what I set out to be in my life a professional wrestler. Once you come out of those tender stages of healing, and you start getting solid, and you turn back into the man that you are, a physical person who played football, track, hunted, thrive on physical, manual labor. Once you start getting solid again, you start regaining that confidence and that sense of, hey, there’s things to be done, and I’m not through yet. So, yeah, once I started getting more solid, then it was time to start talking about that, come back and indeed, make a return.” 

But there was some doubt there?

“Oh, definitely doubt. I don’t think that there’s anybody that comes out of a I can’t say that. But yeah, when I came out of surgery, and you’re kind of all f*cked up, and I remember I had my hard collar on, and I was bored, and so because I was just being on the road, and I lived on 120 acres right outside of San Antonio, and just because I wanted to feel like I was still on the road, I would drive to Fredericksburg, which is about 25 miles away, because they had a Sonic. I’d go through the Sonic and I drive back home, I’d feel like I was on the road. I’d get a jalapeno burger and some onion rings or whatever, and that’s what I did to feel like I was on the road. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a hard cervical collar on before, but man, and they’ll tell you this anytime you get your neck fused, sometimes you’re gonna have a hard time swallowing. There was a couple times like when you swallow food, it just gets lodged in your throat. It’ll scare sh*t out of you. So I’d be driving my truck down the country road choking on a jalapeno burger thinking, God damn, am I fixing to die? Wash it down with that vanilla coke that I’m drinking. Yeah, things started getting solid. It was time to get back in the ring.”

Who took the worst stunner?

“Easily Vince is the worst.”

Worse than Linda?

“Well, because there’s multiple occasions with Vince where, Jesus, you can screw one up. Of course, me and Linda, she was like a second mom to me. I didn’t see her often, but when she was there, she was just so nice to me, and we would always have great conversations. So I felt bad that that one didn’t turn out good. But Vince had so many opportunities, and they were always so awful, especially the one at WrestleMania [where I wrestled] Kevin Owens, it was just terrible. So I had to start laughing, because you got to let everybody know that, hey, that’s really bad. Rock took a good one. Scott Hall took a good one. A bunch of people. There’s so many, I can’t list them all.”

How about how Austin Theory sold it at WrestleMania 38?

“Oh, premiere. I don’t know what the kid’s doing now. Is he still in WWE? [He is]. Okay, yeah. Good kid. I mean, I thought, Man, the sky was the limit for him. He took a great one. McAfee took a great one, just the fade back, money. And of course, when he tumbled out a ring, he was still drinking the beer while he’s laying on the mat. F*cking classic. What an entertainer. And he was thinking about it, you know, I knew his ad lib. He wasn’t planning that. It just happened, and it was straight money.”

How close were you to being a part of WrestleMania 40?

“Things just didn’t line up. I had other things going on. I remember when they pitched that to me. I said, dude, I got some things going on. I don’t see myself being there. That was way in advance. Was it pitched to me, or did they want me there? Yeah. But I wasn’t in a position to go.”

So there was never a possibility?

“No, there was a possibility that I could have been there had I chose to go there. I had other sh*t going on. WWE is this multi-billion dollar corporation. I got a metal shop that we’re sitting in. So sometimes the multi-billion dollar company has an idea that the dude that has the metal shop [should make an appearance], it just don’t work. So it didn’t work. I’m over here in my metal shop. I like to do as much as I can with WWE when it works, when it works for them, when it works for me, and when it’s going to be fun. But in that and saying that not everything lines up on a timeline basis, I had other sh*t going on.”

Who is on your Mount Rushmore?

“Man, I won’t build one. Because right now, there are so many people that did so many things for the business, it’s hard to pick four. You can pick four. Anybody can pick four, but my list is greater than four. I’ll say this though, Shawn Michaels is probably one of the best to ever get in a ring, if not the best. If he would be 1A, then 1B would be Eddie Guerrero. I don’t know if those aren’t interchangeable, because Eddie Guerrero was straight money, so good at so many things. I was watching a promo a few months back that he cut on Brock Lesnar, and Brock Lesnar was talking about winning championships. I love Brock, but he was talking about winning championships, and then Eddie flips it over, and he talks about coming back from being addicted and stuff like that. It was about a minute, two-minute piece of business. I think Brock was damn near about to start crying, because Eddie was just laying it on and shoot, how good he was in the ring with the things that he could do, and just the character that he created. Hulk Hogan, just larger than life. Brock Lesnar, Undertaker, Cena with the longevity of his run there. Flair is my favorite wrestler of all time, and he’s the greatest traveling world champion of all time, because no one ever did it at his level. All over the world for a shoot. Harley Race is another one. But Ric Flair for what he’s done for as long as he did it, and just the way that he did it. There’s a lot more, but I won’t build a Mount Rushmore.”

How close were we to getting Stone Cold vs. CM Punk?

“It was teased at one time, we were promoting a video game, and I think I just had an ACL, PCL [surgery]. Maybe it was teased, but it just never happened, just like me and Hogan never [happened]. Many things never happened. There’s so much good sh*t that did happen. Not everything can happen.”

Why didn’t we get Stone Cold vs. Goldberg?

“I don’t know. I think we pitched it when he first came in, but he wasn’t at the level that he needed to be. He had just come into WWF, and he needed to get going or get over first. He was certainly over from his WCW days. I think a little bit of time had elapsed, but I watched him down there in Atlanta, but we were all on the road at the time, and that was during the Monday Night Wars. If you set your DVR to record back in the day, you kind of knew what was going on. I watched Dallas Page kind of go down a parallel path as me too as far as this timeline of getting over. But yeah, you know, Goldberg just needed to put some time in WWF before we could go, and then it just never happened. Bill is a good friend of mine.”

What is Steve Austin grateful for?

“My wife, my health, and the friends I have found along the way.”

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