Kemo
05-09-2017, 09:49 PM
WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin recently appeared on Lilian Garcia: Making Their Way to the Ring show on AfterbuzzTV. Austin spoke about a number of topics, including Roman Reigns, plans to visit NXT, why he’s done with acting, scripted promos and much more. You can listen to the full interview at the bottom of this article.
Here are some highlights of the show:
Why He Is Done With Acting:
“All the stuff that I’m doing now is like passion projects like Broken Skull Challenge I love that show and acting I don’t really care about acting…no because you just, the memorization process, I mean for me to be you know on set you know and going through the paces, and hitting your marks, and doing another take, doing another take, and then someone else’s coverage, I’ve probably done ten to twelve movies and it was fine while we were doing them. You know being on the set is not fun for me, and don’t get me wrong if the right gig came along I would consider doing it I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but people always think just because you came out of wrestling and you did a few movies like oh man you need to do more movies, well it depends on you know, I don’t really want to do more movies you know, but people always think this is what you should do. What I should do is what I’m doing.”
Roman Reigns’ Potential To Be A Big Star:
“I think Roman Reigns is going to be a big star—he’s a star right now, but he’s going to be a big star if he just keeps going down the road that he’s going and he’s going to figure it all out he’s not necessarily just a natural to the business, but he’s very very good and he’s only going to get better.”
WWE’s Roster During The Attitude Era:
“That was one of the most talented rosters in the history of the business so ya man first of all we had a stacked locker room, and heres the thing, like in the business of pro-wrestling hey man I made it for myself but we’re in it as a team because we’re traveling together, we’re like a carnival, this is pro-wrestling we got a card, your a match and theres eight other matches or ten other matches whatever the program is, so you’re all a team, and you’re all fighting to put asses in the seats. It would be real selfish for me to say oh man I want to be number one and I don’t want anyone to be close. No, I want to be number one and I want everyone to be kicking and scratching crawling so I can really say that I’m number so you wan the guy you’re working with to be as hot as you because the hotter your dance partner is the more people are going to want to see that so we had such a charismatic, talented group of guys in the ring on the horn with their gimmicks Vince was on fire with the ideas, the writing department, the booking department had great ideas so yes I’m glad we had the locker room we had.”
His Relationship With WWE:
“I’m still a part of the WWE, I still keep in contact with a lot of the guys and girls and Vince and Triple H and everybody, so I’m still you know in with the WWE.”
Not Wanting To Work A Full Time Schedule:
“I don’t like to travel anymore Lilian. It’s like when I was still in the WWE and my days before that because I give or take have been in the business thirteen or fourteen years until my neck crapped out and I got out of the business, I loved being on the road back in the day you know you’re a road warrior, you’re addicted to the road, then all of a sudden you’re out there and you’ve been on the road for ten, fourteen whatever more days and you’re thinking God dang man I really want to go home, and then you get home and you’re there for about a day and a half your like man I’m ready to get back on the road, so I mean its in your blood. But once you get out of the business—and it took me three years to get over getting out of the business, and I won’t tell that story because I told that story so many times, but my point is, you know when you’re in the business of being on the road with the WWE you’re a road warrior and that’s what you do, that’s your life, and you love it, and I’m very passionate about the business, it’s what I wanted to do with my life, it’s the only thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want to come out here and get into acting, I did it because I had to get out of the business of pro-wrestling but my point is when you turn back into what I call civilian mode, you know, you kind of lose all that interest in traveling.”
His Reasons For Walking Out In 2002
“It was a real stupid decision to fast forward there and go back to my family but ya when I heard about doing the favors you know from Jim Ross and I was in a hotel and I heard that information and I worked with Flair in Columbus, Georgia that night in a cage and that was Monday Night Raw in Atlanta and then I called Vince that night people heard the story a million times and I didn’t like the creative, I was burnt out and there had been a couple of real weird things that I thought were road blocks thrown at me that didn’t make sense from a booking standpoint, when you have an extremely hot talent who’s selling tickets and merchandise like crazy you just kinda keep throwing gasoline on him and I thought this was road block unadvertised, all about trying to help the next guy up but right now we’re running strong with me so anyway thats when I went home and if it hadn’t been for Jim Ross who knows what would’ve happened.”
Walking Out Being The Stupidest Thing He Could Ever Do:
“Because it was stupid, I mean here I am talking to Jim, he gives me creative, I don’t like it, so then you know he calls the old man and the old man tells Jim ‘Tell Steve to call me no matter what time it is, give me a call’ because we got TV — this is live Monday Night Raw, so I call Vince at two am that morning his time and he tells me the same creative and I’m thinking as you and me are sitting here eye to eye face to face and I’m thinking ‘all right so that’s what we’re gonna do, all right’, well you can’t read my mind but you can look at me, I don’t like what I’m hearing, so I was just thinking okay at the tone of my voice, it was stupid, I already knew right then, I already knew right then I was going to get on an airplane, book my flight and fly back to San Antonio’. “What I should’ve done was gone to the building man to man, face Vince McMahon and said ‘Hey you know I don’t really like Ed and here’s why I don’t like Ed I’m extremely hot right now and I want Brock to do well and you got a real blue chipper right there, he’s an absolute phenomenal freak, and he’s very charismatic, he’s gonna draw a lot of money but not right now it’s my time and we need to do something else, and if you do want to do that match well lets promote it, lets build it, and lets make something of it then make some money on a Pay Per View, and so I should’ve went there and talked to Vince man to man, face to face and sell it rather than going home—it was the dumbest thing I could ever do.”
Advice Vader Gave Him In WCW:
“I’ll never forget the advice that Leon White gave me a long time in WCW as Big Man Vader, he goes ‘Steve, always let a cooler head prevail’ you know, he goes think about things before you make a knee jerk reaction, because I’m real bad about making a knee jerk reaction. These days I’ll think about the knee jerk reaction but I won’t do it, I’ll think it through before I do anything and that just comes with being around, being in more situations where you can say okay man you really screwed up the last time, lets think about this, lets be a little big smart about it.”
Giving Back To The Younger Generation:
“I feel like when you get out of the business you should give back to the business and help that younger generation because if you look at it, if you look at the current locker room, okay, who is, and I’m not being a big head about this, I’m trying not to brag on what I’ve done because I never talk about my wrestling career unless someone brings it up, but I actually drew money, and when I got in the business I was making fifteen dollars a night, so I started at the very bottom and I ended up at the very top, so I’ve kind of seen a lot of things. I’ve been a heel and I’ve been baby, you know, and I’ve been a stranger to Vince and a great friend with Vince, so I’ve seen a lot of highs and lows and I can offer some good advice because a lot of things I have been there and I have done it, so if someone wants my opinion I always want to be able to convey it to them.”
Being Proud To Be A Role Model:
“Man, its pretty cool, I get a lot of emails to you know my email address for my podcast and man, literally a couple every week about people that I affected, or they got to live vicariously through the actions of Stone Cold Steve Austin, and you know whether it was like I don’t know just eating disorders or being bullied, just you know single parent households, or some people just lived in a home, but for some reason they found strength in that Stone Cold Steve Austin character, man it’s very flattering, and you know I worked my tail off to be successful and what I chose to do with my life —which was professional wrestling, and I had so much fun doing it, and the fact that I could really make a change, or inspire somebody, or give somebody strength, courage, whatever you want to call it, it’s really, really cool and I’m very proud of that, and while you're doing it you know, I’m not driving down the road thinking okay you know how am I impacting peoples lives here you know I just kicked the crap out of Vince tonight you know maybe someone who’s not doing so well somewhere will see that and have a smile on their face, I’m not, you’re not thinking about that. It’s all these years later you get these emails from people that were watching you ten, fifteen, twenty years ago and they found strength through me or some of the other WWE characters or whoever it was in their life so it’s really cool to be able to do that.”
Plans To Visit NXT In The Future:
“I’ve been wanting to go down to NXT to talk to those kids down there…its just a pain in the neck to get down to Florida but one of these days I will.”
Scripted Promos In WWE:
“When I came back from my neck surgery thats kind of when that system kind of really came into play, in those last few years you know I got away with it because you couldn’t tell that I was doing it but the system changed and I just kind of adapted or adopted the system that they were throwing at me, but I always felt a little like I was maybe short changing myself or the business by doing that but thats what the system became so it is what it is.”
If He Misses The Spontaneity Of Live Wrestling:
“God dang not to book the territory or criticize or critique the business, I just love Lilian back in those old days, just the spontaneity, the spontaneity, when you’re on live TV it should be God dang man this is live anything can happen—well they’re still live anything can still happen but it’s very micro-managed and gone over to so much detail it’s like, the chances are nothing is going to happen that’s not supposed to happen, but when you have that feeling it’s like God dang man Steve’s coming back, Stone Colds coming back on RAW I don’t know what he’s going to say, well we know what he’s going to say right now—not too much because we’re going to hand him a script and tell him go say this.”
Roman Reigns & Braun Strowman:
“I think [Reigns] is doing fine now and I’ve been watching. You know some of the story lines haven’t been so good and you know when you gotta shove someone down peoples throats they gotta get a gut full of it sometimes and they got a gut full of it because you know maybe some of the lines that they had written for him weren’t the greatest ones ‘I’m not a bad guy, I’m not a good guy, I’m the guy’, kinda corny, but if you watch and you did Payback when the main event with him and Braun Strowman those guys crushed it and Roman Reigns getting beat 1, 2, 3 and then the steel chairs into his chest, he’s spitting up blood, well people watching the business these days they’re watching what the guys are doing and then they’re thinking about the writing.”
Getting Fired From WCW:
“Every now and then when Eric comes to LA he’ll give me a call and we’ll go drink a couple of beers that’s a hatchet thats been buried a long time ago I like Eric a lot but it was a deal where you know he didn’t see any money in me, and quite frankly if you lined up everybody in that locker room and said hey man pick all your stars and then throw out the scripts you know I was kind of starting to lose my hair, I didn’t really have a great gimmick, didn’t have the whole you know package put together yet so you know based on the amount of days that I had been injured, coming off a knee injury and then a tricep injury, you know he did what he thought he needed to do, but heres the thing going back to what I said about my mother, you know you tell me I cant do something well I’ll prove you wrong every single time, and I wanted to be a successful professional wrestler, and I came up with the Stone Cold gimmick, and I started cranking out merchandise and we started putting asses in the seats, but it wasn’t like hey this is a vendetta or this is revenge you’re one of the guys who let me go.”
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Here are some highlights of the show:
Why He Is Done With Acting:
“All the stuff that I’m doing now is like passion projects like Broken Skull Challenge I love that show and acting I don’t really care about acting…no because you just, the memorization process, I mean for me to be you know on set you know and going through the paces, and hitting your marks, and doing another take, doing another take, and then someone else’s coverage, I’ve probably done ten to twelve movies and it was fine while we were doing them. You know being on the set is not fun for me, and don’t get me wrong if the right gig came along I would consider doing it I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but people always think just because you came out of wrestling and you did a few movies like oh man you need to do more movies, well it depends on you know, I don’t really want to do more movies you know, but people always think this is what you should do. What I should do is what I’m doing.”
Roman Reigns’ Potential To Be A Big Star:
“I think Roman Reigns is going to be a big star—he’s a star right now, but he’s going to be a big star if he just keeps going down the road that he’s going and he’s going to figure it all out he’s not necessarily just a natural to the business, but he’s very very good and he’s only going to get better.”
WWE’s Roster During The Attitude Era:
“That was one of the most talented rosters in the history of the business so ya man first of all we had a stacked locker room, and heres the thing, like in the business of pro-wrestling hey man I made it for myself but we’re in it as a team because we’re traveling together, we’re like a carnival, this is pro-wrestling we got a card, your a match and theres eight other matches or ten other matches whatever the program is, so you’re all a team, and you’re all fighting to put asses in the seats. It would be real selfish for me to say oh man I want to be number one and I don’t want anyone to be close. No, I want to be number one and I want everyone to be kicking and scratching crawling so I can really say that I’m number so you wan the guy you’re working with to be as hot as you because the hotter your dance partner is the more people are going to want to see that so we had such a charismatic, talented group of guys in the ring on the horn with their gimmicks Vince was on fire with the ideas, the writing department, the booking department had great ideas so yes I’m glad we had the locker room we had.”
His Relationship With WWE:
“I’m still a part of the WWE, I still keep in contact with a lot of the guys and girls and Vince and Triple H and everybody, so I’m still you know in with the WWE.”
Not Wanting To Work A Full Time Schedule:
“I don’t like to travel anymore Lilian. It’s like when I was still in the WWE and my days before that because I give or take have been in the business thirteen or fourteen years until my neck crapped out and I got out of the business, I loved being on the road back in the day you know you’re a road warrior, you’re addicted to the road, then all of a sudden you’re out there and you’ve been on the road for ten, fourteen whatever more days and you’re thinking God dang man I really want to go home, and then you get home and you’re there for about a day and a half your like man I’m ready to get back on the road, so I mean its in your blood. But once you get out of the business—and it took me three years to get over getting out of the business, and I won’t tell that story because I told that story so many times, but my point is, you know when you’re in the business of being on the road with the WWE you’re a road warrior and that’s what you do, that’s your life, and you love it, and I’m very passionate about the business, it’s what I wanted to do with my life, it’s the only thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want to come out here and get into acting, I did it because I had to get out of the business of pro-wrestling but my point is when you turn back into what I call civilian mode, you know, you kind of lose all that interest in traveling.”
His Reasons For Walking Out In 2002
“It was a real stupid decision to fast forward there and go back to my family but ya when I heard about doing the favors you know from Jim Ross and I was in a hotel and I heard that information and I worked with Flair in Columbus, Georgia that night in a cage and that was Monday Night Raw in Atlanta and then I called Vince that night people heard the story a million times and I didn’t like the creative, I was burnt out and there had been a couple of real weird things that I thought were road blocks thrown at me that didn’t make sense from a booking standpoint, when you have an extremely hot talent who’s selling tickets and merchandise like crazy you just kinda keep throwing gasoline on him and I thought this was road block unadvertised, all about trying to help the next guy up but right now we’re running strong with me so anyway thats when I went home and if it hadn’t been for Jim Ross who knows what would’ve happened.”
Walking Out Being The Stupidest Thing He Could Ever Do:
“Because it was stupid, I mean here I am talking to Jim, he gives me creative, I don’t like it, so then you know he calls the old man and the old man tells Jim ‘Tell Steve to call me no matter what time it is, give me a call’ because we got TV — this is live Monday Night Raw, so I call Vince at two am that morning his time and he tells me the same creative and I’m thinking as you and me are sitting here eye to eye face to face and I’m thinking ‘all right so that’s what we’re gonna do, all right’, well you can’t read my mind but you can look at me, I don’t like what I’m hearing, so I was just thinking okay at the tone of my voice, it was stupid, I already knew right then, I already knew right then I was going to get on an airplane, book my flight and fly back to San Antonio’. “What I should’ve done was gone to the building man to man, face Vince McMahon and said ‘Hey you know I don’t really like Ed and here’s why I don’t like Ed I’m extremely hot right now and I want Brock to do well and you got a real blue chipper right there, he’s an absolute phenomenal freak, and he’s very charismatic, he’s gonna draw a lot of money but not right now it’s my time and we need to do something else, and if you do want to do that match well lets promote it, lets build it, and lets make something of it then make some money on a Pay Per View, and so I should’ve went there and talked to Vince man to man, face to face and sell it rather than going home—it was the dumbest thing I could ever do.”
Advice Vader Gave Him In WCW:
“I’ll never forget the advice that Leon White gave me a long time in WCW as Big Man Vader, he goes ‘Steve, always let a cooler head prevail’ you know, he goes think about things before you make a knee jerk reaction, because I’m real bad about making a knee jerk reaction. These days I’ll think about the knee jerk reaction but I won’t do it, I’ll think it through before I do anything and that just comes with being around, being in more situations where you can say okay man you really screwed up the last time, lets think about this, lets be a little big smart about it.”
Giving Back To The Younger Generation:
“I feel like when you get out of the business you should give back to the business and help that younger generation because if you look at it, if you look at the current locker room, okay, who is, and I’m not being a big head about this, I’m trying not to brag on what I’ve done because I never talk about my wrestling career unless someone brings it up, but I actually drew money, and when I got in the business I was making fifteen dollars a night, so I started at the very bottom and I ended up at the very top, so I’ve kind of seen a lot of things. I’ve been a heel and I’ve been baby, you know, and I’ve been a stranger to Vince and a great friend with Vince, so I’ve seen a lot of highs and lows and I can offer some good advice because a lot of things I have been there and I have done it, so if someone wants my opinion I always want to be able to convey it to them.”
Being Proud To Be A Role Model:
“Man, its pretty cool, I get a lot of emails to you know my email address for my podcast and man, literally a couple every week about people that I affected, or they got to live vicariously through the actions of Stone Cold Steve Austin, and you know whether it was like I don’t know just eating disorders or being bullied, just you know single parent households, or some people just lived in a home, but for some reason they found strength in that Stone Cold Steve Austin character, man it’s very flattering, and you know I worked my tail off to be successful and what I chose to do with my life —which was professional wrestling, and I had so much fun doing it, and the fact that I could really make a change, or inspire somebody, or give somebody strength, courage, whatever you want to call it, it’s really, really cool and I’m very proud of that, and while you're doing it you know, I’m not driving down the road thinking okay you know how am I impacting peoples lives here you know I just kicked the crap out of Vince tonight you know maybe someone who’s not doing so well somewhere will see that and have a smile on their face, I’m not, you’re not thinking about that. It’s all these years later you get these emails from people that were watching you ten, fifteen, twenty years ago and they found strength through me or some of the other WWE characters or whoever it was in their life so it’s really cool to be able to do that.”
Plans To Visit NXT In The Future:
“I’ve been wanting to go down to NXT to talk to those kids down there…its just a pain in the neck to get down to Florida but one of these days I will.”
Scripted Promos In WWE:
“When I came back from my neck surgery thats kind of when that system kind of really came into play, in those last few years you know I got away with it because you couldn’t tell that I was doing it but the system changed and I just kind of adapted or adopted the system that they were throwing at me, but I always felt a little like I was maybe short changing myself or the business by doing that but thats what the system became so it is what it is.”
If He Misses The Spontaneity Of Live Wrestling:
“God dang not to book the territory or criticize or critique the business, I just love Lilian back in those old days, just the spontaneity, the spontaneity, when you’re on live TV it should be God dang man this is live anything can happen—well they’re still live anything can still happen but it’s very micro-managed and gone over to so much detail it’s like, the chances are nothing is going to happen that’s not supposed to happen, but when you have that feeling it’s like God dang man Steve’s coming back, Stone Colds coming back on RAW I don’t know what he’s going to say, well we know what he’s going to say right now—not too much because we’re going to hand him a script and tell him go say this.”
Roman Reigns & Braun Strowman:
“I think [Reigns] is doing fine now and I’ve been watching. You know some of the story lines haven’t been so good and you know when you gotta shove someone down peoples throats they gotta get a gut full of it sometimes and they got a gut full of it because you know maybe some of the lines that they had written for him weren’t the greatest ones ‘I’m not a bad guy, I’m not a good guy, I’m the guy’, kinda corny, but if you watch and you did Payback when the main event with him and Braun Strowman those guys crushed it and Roman Reigns getting beat 1, 2, 3 and then the steel chairs into his chest, he’s spitting up blood, well people watching the business these days they’re watching what the guys are doing and then they’re thinking about the writing.”
Getting Fired From WCW:
“Every now and then when Eric comes to LA he’ll give me a call and we’ll go drink a couple of beers that’s a hatchet thats been buried a long time ago I like Eric a lot but it was a deal where you know he didn’t see any money in me, and quite frankly if you lined up everybody in that locker room and said hey man pick all your stars and then throw out the scripts you know I was kind of starting to lose my hair, I didn’t really have a great gimmick, didn’t have the whole you know package put together yet so you know based on the amount of days that I had been injured, coming off a knee injury and then a tricep injury, you know he did what he thought he needed to do, but heres the thing going back to what I said about my mother, you know you tell me I cant do something well I’ll prove you wrong every single time, and I wanted to be a successful professional wrestler, and I came up with the Stone Cold gimmick, and I started cranking out merchandise and we started putting asses in the seats, but it wasn’t like hey this is a vendetta or this is revenge you’re one of the guys who let me go.”
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