Stone Cold Steve Austin had to hang up the wrestling boots long before he really wanted to, and that made life incredibly difficult for him.
WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin was a recent guest on DJD Classics. While discussing his career ending early due to the piledriver he took from Owen Hart in 1997, catching up with him, Austin said having to retire at 38 really screwed with him.
“When I got dropped on my head, I bruised my spinal cord, and there’s a lot of neurological issues that I still deal with,” Steve Austin said. “I had to pull a plug on myself… I had gotten piledrived on my head, and for 60 seconds, I was a transient quadriplegic. And when you’re laying there in the middle of a ring in front of 20,000 people, live on a pay-per-view, and you can’t move, it scares the shit out of you.
“Hell, I retired when I was 38, man. You know, much money I left on the table. I mean, it’s not just about the money, it’s about the good times, being with the boys, traveling down the road, being in front of a crowd, getting an adrenaline rush. That’s what I lived and breathed, so I didn’t handle it well. When I got out, I didn’t really have an exit strategy. And for about three years, I drank, I hunted, and I fished and did a lot of stupid stuff.
“One morning, I woke up and I went in the bathroom and I just looked at myself in the mirror. It’s a true story. I was thinking to myself, dude, the things you’re doing are not conducive to living a long life. You need to slow your ass down.”
Returning to the world of pro wrestling
Austin would seek out a career in the entertainment world, which eventually led him back to professional wrestling when he hosted a season of WWE Tough Enough.
“When I first retired, I was so upset that I had to leave the business that I loved. I had to be completely away from it,” Austin explained. “All those years later… I had been away long enough the wounds had healed, and I wanted to be closer to the business… that put me back in touch with the business, in a position that I really loved.” [H/T: WrestlingNews.co]
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What do you make of Steve Austin’s comments? What do you think WWE would have looked like had Austin not had to retire when he did? Let us know your overall thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
