THE STONE COLD TRUTH (31 page)
Read THE STONE COLD TRUTH Online
Authors: Steve Austin,J.R. Ross,Dennis Brent,J.R. Ross
To pour fuel on the fire, when we did
Raw
in Oklahoma City, we did a live interview in the ring and J.R. asked me that question. I couldn’t be his friend anymore, so I had to beat him up. I remember the moment I cut him with that blade, blood was running down his face and I was pounding the living hell out of him for real.
Afterward, backstage, he had a headache and knots all over his head and he said to me, “Damn Steve, how come after you cut me you were hitting me so damn hard? Wasn’t I bleeding enough?”
And I said, “No, that was fine, I just wanted it to look good for TV.”
J.R. said, “Well, hellfire, I guess it did.” The doctors wanted to give J.R. a few stitches after the angle, but he opted to have the cut glued shut. Ol’ J.R. wears that battle scar with pride to this very day.
I think his daughters were backstage after the show. They didn’t come up and say anything to me like they usually did. Maybe it was because I beat the hell out of their dad pretty good that night in front of all his friends and family. My business with J.R. in Oklahoma City worked, at least more than it did anywhere else, in my ill-fated heel turn. Everyone was asking why I had turned on my good friend, J.R.: “Why, Stone Cold, Why?”
I enjoyed being a heel, but I didn’t really have the success that I was used to having. So eventually I became a babyface again. But looking back, if I hadn’t turned heel back then, I would never have come up with “What?”
So it all works out in the end, I guess.
J.R.: I never thought Steve’s heel turn would succeed, no matter how hard all of us worked to get it over. We had jointly built a wrestling franchise in Stone Gold that was extraordinary. This was not your typical star babyface who at his hottest turns to being a bad guy and it gets over. This was Stone Cold Steve Austin and short of Steve’s kidnapping a school bus load of kids, I did not think that there was anything we could do to get the twelve to seventeen and eighteen to thirty-four male demographic to hate Austin. Our fans never disliked Steve to the point to where they would pay their hard-earned cash to see him get his ass kicked. If fans will not pay to see a heel get thumped, then the heel isn’t “over.” It was like attempting to make John Wayne a Nazi. Ain’t gonna work.
Boy, did that stiff, big-knuckled son of a gun kick my ass good in Oklahoma City on day three of the ill-fated heel turn of Stone Cold. My home state did not like it one bit. They could see Stone Cold beating the barbecue sauce out of good ol’ J.R., but they still couldn’t understand why. That is not what they wanted to see, in my opinion. I thought I knew what to expect in the beatdown, as I have been hammered by wrestlers several times over the years and it seemed like I always got beat up in Oklahoma, but let me tell you, I was not ready for what I received. Steve also forgot to take off that damn skull-and-crossbones ring he wears and it left knots all over my head. I had attempted to warn my kids, who were in attendance, and my wife, who would see it on
SmackDown!
a couple of days later, but I sort of undersold what I thought it was going to be like. I have been in real fights in my life with less physicality than the angle we did on
SmackDown!
from Oklahoma City. It was one hundred percent old school.
“Crazy Kevin,” Jenny and Jeff
Astrodome Fever
F
unny thing about the match between The Rock and me at the Astrodome at
WrestleMania X-Seven
… the conflict between Stone Cold and The Rock wasn’t limited to the ring. It became a family affair.
Because it was in Texas, I had gotten seats with the WWE family members for my brother Kevin, my sister, Jenny, and my good friend Dr. Jimmy Baros and his wife, Debbie. They were sitting right behind The Rock’s mother, who is just as fanatical as my brother. Kevin was yelling and screaming like an idiot for Stone Cold to kick Rock’s ass, even though he knew that the outcome was predetermined.
All of a sudden, The Rock’s mother turned around and gave Kevin a dirty look. He was so carried away by then, he said to her, “What’re you looking at? Turn around and watch the damn match.”
That’s my emotional brother Kevin.
Of course, everyone had a great time. Then I took them all to the big post-
WrestleMania
party and they got to meet everybody, and vice versa. Naturally, Rock’s mom was there too.
But she and my crazy brother Kevin got along just fine at the party. Luckily for all of us.
WHAT?
W
hen I started doing the “What?” gimmick, I was preparing to wrestle Kurt Angle at
SummerSlam
on August 19, 2001.
I’d been off from work because I got three broken vertebrae in my back when Booker T clocked me on the announcers’ table over at Continental Airlines Arena during his debut. So I was out of shape and I was working with Kurt, who was an Olympic gold medalist and a badass, to get back to fighting form.
But it wasn’t enough to get in gym shape. I had to get in ring shape, so I got myself booked in a couple of house shows. I was driving by myself to these shows and I was bored, so I called ol’ Christian on the phone.
Christian’s one of the younger guys in WWE, and he’s done real well. He’s always early, he works hard and he shows good drive and determination.
Christian was in the gym, so I got his voicemail. I start talking to it, and I was just going on and on and on.
I said, “You know, Christian, why do we have to be professional wrestlers? Why can’t we just be …
what?
Why do we have to fight each other all the time?
What?
Why can’t we all just get along?
What?
I’m stopping for gas now.
What?”
I was just saying stuff like that, because we were doing this thing where out of boredom we were leaving all these long-winded messages for each other all the time, just to entertain each other. But on this one particular promo, at the end of each sentence I’d just say
“What? What?”
I was riding down the road and I was a heel at the time, so I started thinking, You know, that would be a pretty good deal to start doing in my promos. It’s real intimidating to ask a guy a question and just cut him off before he can answer it. It’s heat. It’s to disrespect him and stick it up his ass.
I first started saying
“What?”
with Scotty 2 Hotty, and I was playing like he was Kurt Angle. I was right next to his mouth with the microphone, and every time he’d go to open his mouth I’d go,
“What? What?”
I was doing it to bully and belittle people and intimidate them and make them look like shit.
It worked too. But shortly thereafter I decided, Hey, man, this ain’t workin’ the way I want. Nobody really wants to hate me that much, so let’s go back to being a babyface. I’ll make
“What”
entertaining, not intimidating.
Boom, people started picking up on it and said, “Okay, if he gives us a space here, we’ll say ‘What?’”
After I’d ask the question and say
“What?”
the fans put two and two together and then they said
“What?”
They all did it together. Crowd participation is always good. So now, anytime I talk, if I give them that space there, I get the big
“What?”
chant from the audience. I love it and they love doing it.