Posted on 1/07/126 by Colin Vassallo
Stone Cold Steve Austin sat 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!
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? I’ve
always wondered what arthritis felt like. Man, I found out
firsthand. 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.”
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 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.”
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.”