Today marked 20 years since WWE Hall of Famers Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels did battle in the WrestleMania 14 main event with Mike Tyson as the special ringside enforcer. Austin would defeat Michaels to capture the WWE Title that night, the first WWE Title win of one of the best runs in pro wrestling history.
Below is new video of WWE interviewing The Rattlesnake about the match. Austin said time flies as it feels like it hasn’t been 20 years since his first WWE Title win.
“We were in Boston at the Fleet Center. I wrestled the one and only Shawn Michaels. We didn’t know if Shawn was going to get in the ring. He wasn’t really in a good place at that time. In his head, in his back, he was beat up, battered. I was on fire,” Austin recalled. “Tyson came in, he was the X-factor. A lot of outside eyeballs coming into the product. I mean he really brought a lot of attention with him and we were able to capitalize on that but the bottom line was, was the match even going to happen?”
Austin recalled how Vince McMahon first mentioned the idea of Austin doing something in the ring with The Baddest Man on the Planet.
“Hey man, I was ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, alright? This was way back in the day. When I’m ‘Stone Cold” Steve Austin I’m in 150%. I was smart enough to know my place,” Austin said. “My role is in a WWE 20×20, I got no business going up against Mike Tyson and killing everything that I built up by him knocking my ass out within 20 seconds of the bell ringing.”
Austin also talked about the pre-WrestleMania public workout in Boston, which saw him get beatdown by DX and kissed on the forehead by Tyson and Michaels, and how this was just another stunt to draw attention to the match.
“That’s what I’ve always loved and respected about Vince, he knows how to promote something,” Austin said. “You can have the greatest thing in the world but if you don’t promote it, if not enough people know about it, it ain’t going to be a success.”
Regarding the match itself, Austin discussed Tyson’s performance and said the only gripe he had was the 3 count being too quick.
“I thought the three count was a little too quick. You want to win that title with a slow, deliberate count of the proper cadence. He hit the mat too fast three times. That would be my only knock about what Mike Tyson did,” Austin said. “We didn’t get the chance to pull out all the stops. I didn’t get the best out of Shawn Michaels and he didn’t get the best out of me. I walked right back past the blue curtains and there was Vince. I looked at him and I said, ‘Man, that match sucked.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, it all starts fresh tomorrow.’ And the nest day, that’s where we started that campaign, the kind of Stone Cold thing with Vince McMahon, the corporate thing, and it all started working, all the pieces started falling into place. You always want to knock a grand slam every time you go out there. We didn’t but things happened after that and that’s what you do to move forward. You look past the match, put it behind us, I now have a championship, focus on things and move forward. That’s what we did.”
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