During the latest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin spoke about his cats, beer, Bret Hart, Vince McMahon and Austin 3:16.
On his cats Pancho and Macho:
“The cats are out in the horse barn. Solid a– 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 a– cats are alive and well.”
On what makes a solid a– 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 s—, 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 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.”
The most beer he has 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 post-match 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.”
On why he had great chemistry with Bret Hart:
“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.”
On how he ended 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 mother—— 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.”
On if he was surprised at how far Vince was willing to go in 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.”
On if he thinks the Austin 3:16 tag line 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 s— 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.”
Austin also talks on the stunner, Kevin Owens, WrestleMania 19, the “What?” chant and much more!
You can watch the full interview below:
All quotes are courtesy of Insight with Chris Van Vliet.