Steve Austin: 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin
Quotes
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Steve Austin : [about Owen Hart botching a piledriver] As soon as my head hit that mat, I was thinking Christopher Reeve. Cause I knew I was never gonna walk again, ever. I couldn't feel anything from my neck down.
Jim Ross : It was very scary. It was essential basic human error.
Steve Austin : Man, I'm laying there, and now pain's starting to set in, and my interior delts are burning like fire. There was no way I was gonna lay there and let some ambulance or bunch of paramedics carry me out of that ring. I hit him with the roll-up; it looks like shit. One, two, three; I'm the champion. I grab the belt, and I held it up in the air, and when I looked back at that footage, and I look in my eyes, if you look at my eyes, the lights are on there, but there ain't nobody home. I'm... pretty fucked up, and I'm really hurt. But I did it. I remember going to the back, I sat down on a bench, and I was in a world of hurt. And I was confused and I was... didn't know what was gonna happen to me. When you come that close to almost being paralyzed for the rest of your life, it really fucks your head up.
Vince McMahon : That incident really, really bugged him, on so many different levels.
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Paul Heyman : I was post-producing an ECW television show, and I got a phone call from a friend of mine in WCW informing me that Steve had been fired by Eric Bischoff. So I called Steve on the phone.
Steve Austin : My phone rings, and there's Paul Heyman calling me. Now, me and Paul had known each other for years down in WCW. I was part of the Dangerous Alliance, he managed me, we traveled together, and just had a blast and man, we just had an instant chemistry, we instantly liked each other and mutual respect. But anyways, so Paul E. goes to Philly and he starts Extreme Championship Wrestling. My phone rings...
Paul Heyman : "What are you doing?"
Steve Austin : "Nothing, Paul. Just healing my arm up."
Paul Heyman : I offered Steve a chance to come to ECW.
Steve Austin : I said "I can't work, Paul. My arm's busted."
Paul Heyman : "Can you talk?"
Steve Austin : "You're gonna pay me once a week to come up there and cut promos?" I said "All right, I'm in."
Paul Heyman : You know, today someone gets frustrated and
[pantomimes typing on his phone]
Paul Heyman : they start tweeting and they put- post on Facebook, and they give interviews about how upset they are, and how they're being held back, and how the system doesn't appreciate how great they are. And back in the mid 1990s, there was no platform. I offered Steve a platform.
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Steve Austin : [about changing his WWE gimmick] I went home and I was drinking a few beers at the house, and I was watching this special on HBO about Richard Kuklinski; he was called the Ice Man. The Ice Man was a hitman for hire for the Chicago mob. Totally remorseless, just a ruthless individual, guy didn't give a shit about anything. He was very cold, no emotion about him, and I said "Man, this guy... there's something about this guy that's really got my gears going." So I pitched my idea to the office, and they said "Okay, Steve, we'll think about it." And they faxed me three pages of the worst names I'd seen in the history of my life. And, um, the three names that I'll never forget, based on this cold-blooded, ruthless individual, were Otto von Ruthless, Ice Dagger, and Fang McFrost. And man, it don't get more suck-ass than that. And so I'm thinking "You kidding me? These creative geniuses are, you know, these are the guys that make superstars?" And, um, 'cause you know, back in the day, you just think "If you go to WWE, soon as you walk in the door, they'll put a gimmick on you and they'll make you a star." No, that's not the case. Sometimes it can be the case, but it ain't all... always the case. I mean, it's a crapshoot at best. So anyway, I'm sitting there frustrated and you know, my wife at the time, Jeannie, who was from England, uh, makes me a cup of hot tea, and she sets that, uh, hot tea on the table and she goes "Ah, don't worry about it. You'll think of something." She goes "Go ahead and drink your tea before it gets stone cold." She goes "That's your name, Stone Cold Steve Austin."
