‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin recently explained on his podcast the reason he walked out of WWE back in 2002. Austin was asked to lose to Brock Lesnar on RAW and Austin did not like that as he felt he could “draw money” with Lesnar if given the proper build.
“Back in the day, I was drinking a lot of whiskey, and then [Ross] laid out the finish for me and I was laying in the hotel room.” Austin continued, “I said, ‘if that’s creative, I ain’t going to be there’ and he told me to call Vince [McMahon].”
“I said to him, ‘so that’s what we’re doing, huh?’ and he goes, ‘yep’. And I was thinking [he would say], ‘well, yeah, unless you don’t like it, Steve’ and he didn’t say that, so I’m just like, ‘oh really? Okay, then F- you!’ and that’s when I took my ball and went home and that big smear campaign started.”
Austin would admit that he difficult to work with at times because he would reject ideas from creative, but offer no alternatives or solutions.
“I was always a reasonable guy. I was always going to put a guy over when it was time to, but if I didn’t like the finish, I would say, ‘no, F- that. We’re not doing it’, and I’d leave the room. I would never offer a solution, and so, sometimes, I was a little bit hard to work with from that respect,” Austin said. “The fact that I couldn’t dispute the finish was a valid point, but I didn’t dispute it. I just said, ‘F- you.’ I didn’t even say that. I kayfabed [McMahon]. I said I was going home. It was a walkout.”
“Sometimes the finishes were just so ludicrous it was unbelievable.” Austin added, “some of the times I was so amazed with the things they wanted to come up with. I was like, ‘are you kidding me? I mean, come on, man!'”
Austin expressed his regret with how he handled the finish even after several years going by.
“I knew Brock was money back in the day when I first met him! And me and the guy are friends! We’ve always been friends! But it’s like, that wasn’t a good business decision!”
“I handled it in the worst way I could by saying that’s when I effectively quit and I was gone for six or eight months or whatever it was. But, hell, it was basically career suicide for almost anybody! I lost a lot of money. The company lost a lot of money. It was just a bad part of my life that I handled in a horrible fashion.” Austin added, “I blew that one and it was on me.”
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