Stone Cold Steve Austin Cancelled His Wrestling Return Because “He Felt Like It Was Below Him” as per Legendary WWE Commentator

WWE Hall of Famer ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin was one of a kind wrestler. The former WWE champion single-handedly changed the whole scenario of WWE in the late 90s. However, his career had an abrupt ending when he retired in 2003, citing several neck injuries.

Since then, Vince McMahon and the company have been trying to get The Rattlesnake back in the squared circle, but it never happened. However, Stone Cold almost wrestled a match in 2005 at the Taboo Tuesday, but the former champ backed out at the last minute.

Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter recently looked back at the time when Steve Austin almost wrestled in 2005. The supposed match was against the WWE commentator Jonathan Coachman.

Meltzer revealed that it was a gimmick match where Steve Austin would wrestle Coachman. The stipulation of the match was that if Austin won the match, then Jim Ross would get his Raw lead announcing job back, but if he lost, Ross would lose his job.

However, Austin didn’t follow through with the match because of back injuries.

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Jonathan Coachman thinks otherwise of Stone Cold Steve Austin

Interestingly, back in 2021, Coachman revealed his take on this matter. The former WWE commentator revealed in an interview that Austin didn’t appear to fight with him because Austin thought that it was not worth it.

“He didn’t show up. That’s the truth. He felt like it was below him, he didn’t show up, but it wasn’t the only time that he did that.” [h/t: Fightful]

Coachman doesn’t buy Austin’s back injury story and still has some grudges regarding this matter. The former commentator revealed that he didn’t receive the check he was supposed to get.

“But I have no ill will towards him at all because he had a long career, he had a lot of things going on, he was a big star, and I certainly wasn’t in his world. But that particular time, I wouldn’t say it was his best moment,” said Coachman.

Eventually, Batista replaced The Rattlesnake for the match against Coachman. However, WWE is planning to bring in Steve Austin for WrestleMania 38 against Kevin Owens.

Would you like to see Owens face Austin? Or would you like to see some other wrestler fighting Austin? Let us know in the comments.

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