THE STONE COLD TRUTH (33 page)

The singing was my idea. I figured, I’m a horrible singer, but I’m a heel so I can get away with it. As a heel you could show your ass and get away with it. Coming from my “musical background,” I always wanted to play the guitar, but I was never able to learn to play it.

I went up to Vince and said, “I’ve got some ideas for next week. With all I’ll the stuff going on, I figure maybe sing a couple of songs to you on the guitar and try to cheer you up.”

Of course, he fell in love with the idea. He didn’t know what I was going to sing. I was going to surprise him. We were going to pretape it that afternoon at the arena. We did it almost in one take, but too many people started laughing. Then we did a second take, but we ended up laughing our asses off and had to start again.

It was one of those extreme “laugh out loud” moments where everybody, talent and crew, wants to just roar, but they can’t because it’s time to get this thing done because of the time constraint.

So I sang “Kumbaya” to Vince to calm him down, while badly strumming an out-of-tune guitar. Then Kurt moved in on the action, doing the exact same thing and acting like a complete idiot because that’s how good and quick-witted he is. He sang
“Jimmy Crack Corn” for Vince and that pissed off Stone Cold, because it was Stone Cold’s idea to sing to Vince, not Kurt’s.

Most of that was ad-libbed and it was so much fun. I was just doing my part to be entertaining. I couldn’t get in the ring and wrestle, so it wasn’t heat, but I didn’t want to be totally flat as a heel. Anger for the sake of anger with no direction and no chance to do anything about it just makes you a steaming pile of cow dung.

That’s when we started doing all the comedy stuff with me and Kurt and Vince. We did some real funny things together that people seem to enjoy and remember.

Then I came up with the hugging idea. I had just turned heel, so the fans didn’t really know what I was thinking. They thought maybe I had lost it.

On
Raw,
I came out of a limousine and there was Vince, and I got this really psychotic look on my face. Vince looked at me like he was scared. So what did I do? I grabbed him and hugged him, keeping that crazed look on my face the whole time, just staring real hard as we went off the air. I knew if I hugged Vince, it would make the fans do something. It would command a reaction of some sort.

And it did. They fans went, “What the hell is this?” as we went off the air. And they tuned in next week to see what was going on with Stone Cold.

Kurt and I did a live deal in the ring on
Raw
where we were trying to lure Vince over to each of us so we could grab him and hug him. It was classic stuff, for sure, with Vince being bounced back and forth between us like a pinball. Kurt is such a talented hand and Vince sold it so well, plus the fans were wondering, What the hell is Stone Cold up to? Has he lost too many brain cells? We were both so serious about wanting to hug Mr. McMahon.

Then we turned it into an ass-kissing thing, with me and Kurt each trying to impress Vince the most and be his “favorite.” And of course Kurt’s right there, because he can be as cheesy as the next person. I mean, the guy’s a genuine Olympic gold medalist and he’s so quick and funny. He’s amazing.

The little cowboy hats were my idea too. At the San Antonio airport,
Debra and I spotted a little-bitty cowboy hat in a store window, so we bought it for Kurt and laughed the whole plane ride thinking how funny it was going to turn out.

Kurt was nice enough and goofy enough, pro enough, to wear the damn thing. Again, an Olympic gold medalist wearing this stupid little kid’s hat. My God. He wore it the entire show and looked like the biggest, most moronic goof in the world. But it was so damn funny and entertaining, it was great. Just thinking about that big, strong guy in that stupid little hat still makes me laugh, because Kurt was so straightfaced when he wore it.

“Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges.”

That was a completely ad-libbed response on my part when Kurt tried to give Vince, Debra and me some cheap toy sheriff’s badges.

So while Kurt and I healed up, we did some damn entertaining TV and we didn’t sit at home. And our characters were still on television and we were still contributing to the show.

Kurt has a chance to become one of the all-time greats in our business. The guy is pure gold.

34
The Real Reason Why I Left WWE
(Why I Took My Ball and Went Home)

W
hy did I walk out on WWE on June 10, 2002? It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. It had been building up for some time.

There were clues beforehand that I was not happy. On March 15, 2002, I did an interview with
WWE.com
where I said, “I ain’t real excited about some of the direction the company is taking, and the way business is being conducted from a writing standpoint. I’ve got no problems with any individual talent, but I’m just watching and being very patient, waiting to see what happens, the reasons that everything happens and that it’s done for the right reasons. I think a lot of things are done for the wrong reasons now, and there’s guys being sacrificed. Hopefully everything will work out. I’ll leave it at that.”

At
WrestleMania X8,
I was in the third or fourth match—it wasn’t even the main event. It was just some match on the card, the way I looked at it. And I wasn’t happy with that at all. You can tell me this business goes in cycles, and sometimes you’re not as hot as you want to be, but where I was on that card didn’t make sense to me. The match wasn’t promoted properly, it wasn’t built properly, nothing.

People said I had heat with Scott Hall, or Scott Hall had heat with me. I didn’t have heat with Scott Hall. I like the guy. He’s had problems, or whatever; that’s stuff he’s got to deal with. As far as getting in the ring with him, I like working with the guy. But you can’t expect him to come in here and get over in a couple of months and be in a
WrestleMania
match.

So I wanted to work with somebody different. I have no animosity toward Scott Hall. He’s as good as gold with me in the ring.

After
’Mania,
I was fried. I was burned-out and frustrated. Debra and I did not even attend the traditional post-
WrestleMania
party. One day later, before the Montréal
Raw
in March 2002, I left and was gone for two weeks.

Then, on May 31, I appeared on
WWE.com
’s online webcast, Byte This! In the two and a half months since my previous interview, things had gotten worse. On the live show I said, “The bottom line is that everything sucks. I’m not happy with the way Stone Cold Steve Austin is going. I’m not happy with the way the whole company is going. The writing has been pretty substandard. I’ll go one better than that. It’s been piss poor. I guess if that pisses some people off, then that’s just the way it is. I think it could have been a whole hell of a lot better creatively than what it’s been. It’s been pretty shitty. I wasn’t happy before
WrestleMania X8
and I wasn’t happy after
WrestleMania X8,
as we speak presently.”

I said that I still loved my job, but by then feathers had been ruffled once too often. Vince had to respond with his own Byte This! appearance, where he said that I was “the most demanding Superstar he had ever worked with.”

Quite frankly, that’s why our relationship worked and we drew money together. I “demanded” great creative and Vince “demanded” that I carry the ball and get results.

We were about to do a show in Columbus, Georgia, and we were going to drive up I-85 to Atlanta for
Raw
the next night. Debra, with whom I’d had a big, damn argument, was already in Atlanta, waiting on me.

So I was in Columbus, lying around in the hotel room all by myself before the show, and J.R. gave me a phone call. We talked about what Creative wanted for Monday night. They wanted Brock Lesnar to slip over me real quick (an out-of-nowhere win) in an unadvertised match with no buildup or promotion or meaning, in a tournament-style deal. There would be a screw job and he’d catch me for a three-count.

I thought that was complete crap. I told J.R., “They’re going to have to change that. I ain’t doing it.”

J.R. said, “Well, that’s what Vince wants to do.”

I said, “If they don’t change it, I ain’t gonna fucking be there.” To me this wasn’t business.

J.R. said okay and said he’d called Vince.

I worked the house show that night, wrestling Ric Flair in a cage. In the meantime, Vince called me back and left a message on my hotel voicemail, saying, “Steve, this is Vince. Give me a call no matter what time it is. Give me a call so we can talk about that Creative for tomorrow’s show.”

I checked out in Columbus and drove to Atlanta and made a point of not calling Vince back until I got all checked in at my hotel room in Atlanta. My cell phone rang a few times in the car, but I didn’t answer it. When I got to Atlanta and got checked into my hotel room, I called Vince. It was around two in the morning.

“Hey, Vince,” I said, “It’s Steve. I’m just calling you back.”

He ran the same scenario by me. Brock goes over me with no
buildup in a surprise situation in a tournament-type match. He laid all that shit by me and I sat there and listened, and said, “Okay.”