Stone Cold Steve Austin is the biggest star from a generation that outsold every other before and after it. His reign as the cool guy with beers in the ’90s immortalized him in the wrestling industry. Many consider him to be one of the best in-ring talents this industry has ever seen. Just watching his WrestleMania 38 match with Kevin Owens was enough to send fans into a frenzy.
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But like all great biographies, there is one moment in Stone Cold’s career that changed everything. A huge injury at the hands of Owen Hart turned the way the Rattlesnake wrestled. This is one of the rare examples when a career-threatening injury would lead to a star-making career.
Steve Austin vs Owen Hart injury spot
Austin wrote in his biography, ‘Stone Cold Truth’, “I remember kind of picking my head up from the mat and telling the referee, Earl Hebner, tell him not to f*cking touch me, I can’t move. Earl got up and told Owen, don’t touch him, he can’t move. I said, tell him to buy me some time. So, Owen started chanting to the crowd, Now he’s gonna have to kiss my a*s. He was buying me the time I needed to recover.”
READ MORE: The Mysteries and Controversies Behind the Death of Owen Hart
“A minute or a minute and a half went by and I finally started getting a little bit of feeling back in my limbs. My shoulders and my interior delts were on fire. It took everything I had to bend my legs to get to a crawl position… I told the referee to roll up for the win and the next thing that happened was the worst-looking roll-up in wrestling history.”
Stone Cold Steve Austin’s turn after the match with Owen Hart
After this match, Austin would be stripped of both his WWF Championship and Intercontinental Championship. Following his eventual return, his feud with Mr. McMahon would shoot him through the roof in terms of popularity.
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Not only would Austin return to get back at Owen for ruining his career, but after that feud, he would go to face The Rock for the WWF Championship. Winning two consecutive Royal Rumble matches and main-eventing WrestleMania three times in a row. But one thing that Austin lost was his technical wrestling. A technically expert Austin vs The Rock will only be a dream we can only imagine.
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Tell us about your favorite Steve Austin moments after his career-threatening injury in the comments below.