THE STONE COLD TRUTH (10 page)

P
retty soon, I was wrestling lots of weekend shows in Dallas-Fort Worth and the surrounding area, and doing the televised wrestling shows from Dallas. And I was still using my real name, Steve Williams.

By then, I was working for Jerry Jarrett, who ran the Memphis wrestling territory and who had had a live television show on WMC-TV Channel 5, on Saturday mornings, for more than twenty-five years. Jarrett had bought the
World Class
promotion in Dallas and renamed it USWA, United States Wrestling Association.

By working for Jerry Jarrett, wrestlers got to work in both territories, Dallas and Memphis, and be seen in two different television markets. Jarrett didn’t pay much, but you got a lot of experience and worked with guys who were dedicated to learning the business.

So I was getting my paychecks from Jerry Jarrett, but I wasn’t getting them as often as I would have liked. I just wasn’t wrestling that much—just Fridays and Saturdays, and working at the trucking company during the week. But I thought I was doing a good job in the ring and finally asked Jerry when he was going to book me full time.

He said, “Hell, Steve, I think you’re ready now.”

That’s when they sent me over to Mid-South Wrestling in Memphis, a pretty famous territory where Jerry “the King” Lawler was usually the champion. They had a lot of television exposure over there, which could only do me good.

So I drove my 1988 Hyundai to the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, Tennessee, and was pretty excited the whole way. I remember walking around the dressing room when I arrived. I was the first guy there—a habit I’ve tried to continue my whole career. I was looking around and in came Ricky Morton, half of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express tag team and an awesome worker in his day, smoking a cigarette. Ricky was a big star at the time.

He said, “Hey, how you doing?”

I said, “Hey, I’m Steve Williams.”

He said, “Ricky Morton. Can you work?”

Well, Ricky Morton was a workin’ son of a gun, one of the best. I said, “Well, I guess that’s what I’m here to learn.”

He took a drag off his cigarette and said, “Nice to meet you,” and walked off. That was my first meeting with Ricky Morton. Little by little, everybody else showed up at the building. Dutch Mantel, the booker, looked at me and said, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

I said, “I’m Steve Williams, Jerry Jarrett told me to come find you. I’m starting tonight.”

He said, “Well, I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

That didn’t sound good to me. “Dirty” Dutch Mantel, a Vietnam veteran who looked like Yosemite Sam, is a big, burly guy who’s built like a bear and as furry as one too. He has a long beard with a long handlebar mustache and long black hair. At the time, Mantel was a seasoned ring veteran who had been around the world and was booking the Memphis territory. He later came to World Wrestling Entertainment for a while as a character called Uncle Zeb.

I had obviously caught Mantel off-guard. He was the booker in the place, but he didn’t know I was supposed to start that night. He didn’t even know who I was. And my future had been placed squarely in his hands.

“All right,” he said. “Okay, let me think of something. Hang tight and I’ll get back to you.” Finally he came back and said, “What’s your name?”

I said, “Well, it’s Steve Williams.”

He said, “You can’t be Steve Williams here. There’s already a wrestler named Dr. Death Steve Williams.”

He looked at me a moment longer and said, “All right, you’ve got fifteen minutes to come up with another name.”

I got really nervous. I was in a new territory, it was my first gig there and I didn’t want any problems. I was still trying to come up with something that didn’t sound stupid when Dutch came back.

“Well,” he said, “what’d you come up with, kid?”

I said, “I didn’t come up with anything.”

He went, “Okay, you’re Steve Austin.”

I said, “What if I don’t want to be Steve Austin? A lot of people watch
The Six Million Dollar Man
TV show, and I don’t want to copy anybody.”

He said, “You ain’t copying anything. It’s got nothing to do with that. Your name is Steve and you were born in Austin, right? But if you don’t like that name, you’ve got five minutes to come up with a better one.”

The show was about to start and the fans were hollering for us to hurry up. It wasn’t exactly the best environment for thinking clearly or creatively.

Dutch came back and said, “What’d you come up with?”

I said, “I still haven’t come up with anything.”

So he said, “All right, you’re Steve Austin.”

What was I going to say? I couldn’t come up with anything else, so I was Steve Austin. I ended up going out there and telling the fans, “I’m Steve Austin,” for however many weeks or months that job lasted. I didn’t love the name, but it wasn’t a deal breaker for me.

So I made my debut in the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis and the booker, Dutch Mantel, gave me my name, “Steve Austin.” I think it was a week later, over the weekend, that I had my first match.

It was in Lebanon, or some town like that in southern Tennessee, and I was working with a guy under a hood—a mask. I forget his name. Of course, I was green as hell, and Dutch only wanted me to go out there and work seven or eight minutes. When I came back to the locker area, I thought I did pretty well. I walked back through the door and Dutch went, “What the hell was
that
shit?”

I thought it was a pretty good match. I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Damn, brother. Chris, come here.” He was talking to Chris Champion, a guy who was working his way up the ladder, trying to catch a break. Chris had entered the wrestling business five or six years before me. He had long hair extensions and wore high leather boots up to his knees, and had a rock ‘n’ roll-type gimmick. He was a good guy to hang out with. I would wind up traveling with him and Dutch quite a bit

Anyway, Dutch Mantel told me, “Put a headlock on Chris.”

I got Chris in the hold with his head low on my side. Dutch said, “No, don’t do that. Pull him up here under your arm so you can listen to him talk to you.”

All of a sudden, I got it. My opponent was attempting to communicate with me, trying to call the match to me, but I didn’t hardly hear a word he said. Dutch balled me out for about two minutes, just ripping into me.

Then he said, “You see that chair out there?” There was a steel chair standing up against the wall. “You get that chair and you sit in the doorway, and you watch every one of those matches out there in the ring. That’s the only way you’re going to learn.”

So from that day on, for virtually my whole career, I’ve watched every single match on the card. Not so much in the last year or two, but damn near every single match on every card before that. And I did it because Dutch Mantel told me to. He was a big influence on me. “Dirty” Dutch was a damn good teacher and a much better booker than he’s been given credit for.

Dutch knew I didn’t have any money, but I did have a car, so Dutch and Chris Champion started riding with me. Since we rode in my car and I did the driving, I didn’t have to pay for the gas. Sometimes “Dr.” Tom Prichard, one of the top heels in the Tennessee territory, came with
us as we traveled around in my 1988 Hyundai Excel, which cost me $154 a month to own. It almost got repossessed several times, but I never let it happen because my brother Scott had cosigned for it and I didn’t want to screw up his credit.

Riding down the road and listening to Dutch Mantel run his mouth was a wonderful experience. The guy’s a great talker and tells great stories. Great promo guy, great worker and a great mind. Sitting there listening to Dutch, you can’t help but learn a few things.

Dutch would always sit in the front seat, chewing
my
chewing tobacco, and Chris would be in the back doing whatever he did—nothing I would recommend to anyone, I’m sure. The more I rode with Dutch, the better we got to know each other—and the better I got to know Dutch’s cutting sense of humor. He was just a trained, highly skilled wise ass. But he was a wealth of information too, because he really knew the wrestling business.

One day we were just sitting there, talking. I was asking questions as usual, and he was being real nice to me and explaining things.

Then Dutch said, “You know, if you ever turn heel, you could be a real cocky son of a gun and call yourself Stunning’ Steve Austin.”

So that’s how I got the name “Stunning” Steve Austin. Dutch Mantel gave me that one too. Of course, I wasn’t trying to be “stunning” with my look. It was more of a mind-set for me. But that was my first bit of education in what a character meant and how I was supposed to “be” it or portray it. For a while, I was riding to the wrestling arenas with Tom Prichard and another wrestler, Brian Lee. We were shooting the bull one time and Tom started talking about gimmicks and personas in detail.

He’d say, “‘Prime Time’ Brian Lee … what’s so prime time about you? ‘Stunning’ Steve Austin … what’s so stunning about you? You’ve got these tights and that long hair, but that’s about it. Why should the fans think you’re such hot stuff?”

He had a valid point and I understood what he was talking about. But I didn’t have any money to do anything about it.

When I first went to USWA in Tennessee, Prichard was working against Eric Embry or Jeff Jarrett and he had a damn open cut on his
head for about three weeks where he was gigging every night. It’s funny what a person remembers looking back on a wrestling career. To this day, Tom has a forehead full of scars from his matches in the Tennessee territory.

When I first got to Tennessee, I was living in the Congress Inn in Nashville, where a lot of the other wrestlers lived. It was owned by real nice people.

At first, Tom Prichard and I were living on different ends of the Congress Inn, fifty yards apart. But when we started traveling to the shows together and going to the gym together, we ended up living together at the Congress Inn.

That gave me lots of time to pick Tom Prichard’s brain. The guy was a big influence on me, because I was watching him every night in the main event. Afterward he’d explain everything to me, why and when he did certain things. Tom was a great worker with a great mind for the business. That’s why he’s such a great coach for the kids in the WWE developmental program today.

Tom and I lived cheaply by living together, and bought our food once a week. Each time we went shopping, I used my last fifteen or twenty dollars to buy a big-ass bag of potatoes, eight or ten cans of tuna fish and some disposable razors. I was clean-shaven back then.

After about two or three days, I’d be out of tuna fish because that’s all I was eating—tuna fish and potatoes. And I couldn’t cook the potatoes because I didn’t have a stove. My dad had given me and each of my brothers a hunting knife, and I’d use that knife to peel my potatoes and cut ’em up. So for about three or four days all I was eating was raw potatoes that I’d cut with my knife. Literally, that was my whole diet.

Man, I lost a ton of weight. We starved, to tell you the truth. We called Tennessee the “NutriSystem territory,” because everybody who went there lost weight. After all, most of us weren’t making a dime. There were no guaranteed contracts the way there are today.

Sometimes Dutch and Chris would offer to buy me a hamburger or something else to eat, but I was too proud to take a handout so I never let them buy me food. I’d peel my potatoes, and I’d do my push-ups and put on some baby oil so I’d look good going out for my match. I learned
very early on that a wrestler’s look is extremely important. A successful wrestler doesn’t have to be a musclehead, but he’s damn sure got to be in shape and look like an athlete.

However, after a few days of just eating potatoes, I didn’t give a damn anymore and I’d just go out there for my match. I got all flat. I could pull off my jeans without even unbuttoning them, I’d lost so much weight. But that was just the way it was. Again, I knew I was paying my dues and, hopefully, things would get better.

Another guy who helped me out a hell of a lot when I was in the USWA in Memphis was Danny Davis, then known as “Nightmare” Danny Davis. I remember one time I was going down the road, some little spot show, and I was told I was going to work with Danny Davis. That was a big thing for me as he was a very good wrestler and a star.