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Austin: Flair Not Getting Proper Sendoff

Posted: Feb 18th 2008 By: mikeiles

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin, who pitched a Rocky-like storyline for Ric Flair's final year with WWE, said last week that he hasn't been pleased with the angle thus far.

Austin laid out an elaborate scenario for Flair's last major run with the company following last year's Wrestlemania, but a revised, watered-down angle didn't take root until late November when WWE owner Vince McMahon announced that Flair would have to retire the next time he lost.

Plans for the original storyline called for Flair to either win the title for a 17th and final time before retiring, or lose in an emotional, competitive match for the gold at Wrestlemania 24 in late March. Flair, however, doesn't appear to be in the title hunt at this year's big show, and his most likely opponent for his final match appears to be Shawn Michaels.

Austin admitted he hasn't been watching the product that closely, but added that he didn't think Flair was getting the kind of sendoff and storybook ending to his career that he deserved.

"We're talking about 'Nature Boy' Ric Flair. He's my favorite pro wrestler ever in the history of the business. I know he took a little bit of a break and they brought him back. But I don't think they green-lighted that thing near enough or made it as important as it could be and as it should be."

Austin, who enjoyed the most lucrative run in pro wrestling history during the late '90s, said Flair is the greatest performer - bar none - the industry has ever produced.

"Ric Flair is the most legitimate pro wrestler there ever was. He was the greatest traveling world champion of all time," said Austin. "With all the exposes that pro wrestling was supposed to be fake and it turned into sports entertainment (in the mid-'80s), Ric Flair had the ability to go out there with an opponent of any talent level and have five-star matches. Whatever you thought about pro wrestling, when you saw Ric Flair, you knew that was the man in this sport. You had (Hulk) Hogan, who got hot in the '80s and was kind of the show-bizzy type, but Ric Flair was the real deal in the world of entertainment, which everything is these days. Flair was the man. He still is."

Austin, who said he "never would have thought in a million years" his career would have turned out the way it did, said there were several names he would have liked to wrestle, but never had the opportunity, including Randy Savage, Andre the Giant, Harley Race, Jack Brisco and Dusty Rhodes. There's nothing at this point, he said, that would draw him back into active competition.

"If I really needed the money, I'd probably go back," he said. "But I've always been very, very conservative about money, and I've invested wisely. I love the business and I'll always love the business, but I don't miss it anymore. I have fond memories when I think about all that stuff, but I've been out long enough to know that life goes on and that life doesn't revolve around professional wrestling."

It's uncertain, Austin says, whether he'll have a role at this year's Wrestlemania.

"I got a pitch thrown at me that I wasn't real keen on and turned it down. I'd like to think that I'll be at Wrestlemania. Obviously I'm not going there to wrestle, but I would like to go to the Hall of Fame to see the new guys coming in. I think they've got a full card. It's not my desire to get back in the ring at this point in my life. I've got great memories of everything I did. I had a great career, but it's time for those guys and girls to have the spotlight."

Austin, whose three-disc "Legacy of Stone Cold Steve Austin" DVD collection was released last week, said he gives thanks every time he hears the glass breaking, the explosion of the crowd and fans coming out of their seats. He's not able to deliver the way he used to, he admits, and that disappoints him. A serious neck injury led to his eventual ring departure several years ago.

"I just wish that when I out went I could give the people more. But I can't," said the 43-year-old Austin. "I've worked my (behind) off for it, but I appreciate it more than anybody in the world. Without those people, I would have never had the career or the lifestyle I have. It's truly appreciated by me."

Regarding his health, he said, "I feel real good right now. I have an active life, hunting and fishing. I'm making movies. Physically, I feel fine, and my past injuries don't effect me filming movies. I can do what I need to do in the movies, and it doesn't hold me back at all."

Few moments in pro wrestling were more electric than the ones where Austin would come out to the sound of shattered glass filling the arena. Austin said he took a more traditional approach to his pre-match routine and prior to stepping through the curtain.

Nowadays, he says, it's more like a bodybuilding show backstage where wrestlers do pushups, calisthenics and pump up their muscles. It was in stark contrast to how veterans such as Jake Roberts prepared.

"Jake 'The Snake' Roberts, with that snake bag slumped over his shoulder, smoking a cigarette. They'd hit his music, and he'd kind of stamp out his cigarette on the concrete floor with his boot, and walk out to the ring. And that was Jake 'The Snake' Roberts."

"'Stone Cold' Steve Austin is just sitting back there with a bottle of water," Austin says of his pre-bout routine. "I'll pour it on me just to make my skin is wet because my skin is very ashy, and if I don't use the water, I'll look like hell on TV. I don't use oil because it makes you too slippery in the ring and I didn't like the way it felt. But when that glass broke, 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin was turned on and all of a sudden I was already to go ... You might be having the worst day of your life, but when that glass breaks, you're 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin, and there's a job to do, and that's what you go do."

Austin said he sees too many wrestlers today with roles and gimmicks not suited to them.

"Don't pretend to be anything that you're not. You've got be who you are," he advises them. "When I was Stunning Steve Austin and I wasn't a star, I was comfortable being that guy. There wasn't enough there for people to really identify with, although there was with me and Brian (Pillman) as The Hollywood Blonds. When I turned into Stone Cold Steve Austin and kind of just let it all hang out ... certainly that's just a part of me, but I'm extremely quiet in my normal, everyday life, and that's just me turned up to volume 10.

"I see so many guys and girls out there these days trying to be somebody they're truly not. And if they're cutting a promo that's unfortunately been written for them and they don't believe it, they can say it a million times, but I can look in their eyes and listen to their delivery, and I can see it's not coming from their gut and their heart, and it's not even coming from their brain."

One WWE performer in particular, Ken "Mr." Kennedy, has tons of potential, says Austin. He says he first spotted him working a match with Batista and personally called him to tell him he liked the bout. The two became friends over time, and Austin occasionally gives Kennedy pointers and advice. Austin says Kennedy could become a big star if WWE allows him to be.

"I think there are too many voices, too many people in his head up at WWE," said Austin. "They need to stand back and let him do exactly what he wants to do, and kind of go back to that OVW style. ... He's going to be a big star if they just let him be a big star and stop messing with him."

Austin said he has no problem with Shark Boy's parody of him in TNA.

"It doesn't anger me. If a guy's able to make a living doing a 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin impersonation or a rip-off or spoof, or whether he's doing to make fun of me or whatever, I could care less .. If that guy can make a paycheck acting like 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin, more power to him."

Tags: Ric Flair, WWE, Andre the Giant, Jack Brisco, Dusty Rhodes, Jake Roberts, Nikita Koloff