Insight with Chris Van Vliet - "Stone Cold" Steve Austin On One More Match, Who Takes The Best Stunner, WHAT Chants & What Scares Him

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin (@steveaustinbsr) is a WWE Hall of Famer, actor and television personality. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about his new A&E series called "Stone Cold Takes On America". He talks about what scares him, why it's important to takes chances, who he thinks takes the best Stone Cold Stunner, his reaction to the WHAT chant after 20 years, the possibility of seeing him wrestle again, why he hates rollercoasters and more! Check out "Stone Cold Takes On America" here: https://www.aetv.com/shows/stone-cold-takes-on-america For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: http://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  Follow CVV on social media:  Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blin. Oh, boy. Stone Cold. Stone Cold. Stone Cold. Stone Cold. Guys, we got Stone Cold Steve Austin on the show today.

Welcome back to another one on Insight. I'm CVV, Chris Van Fleet, and come on, this guest needs no introduction at all. I've been wanting to have Stone Cold on the show for a while. I actually thought it'd be awesome to have him on last year for episode 316. I mean, how perfect would that be? It didn't come together at all. Then I was thinking, man, he would be a great guest for episode 500, which is just a few months away.

I mean, incredible. And then, at a nowhere, boom, I got an email that Stone Cold is doing interviews for his new A&E show called Stone Cold Takes on America. And you've got to understand with a huge, huge name like Stone Cold or The Undertaker or The Rock and, you know, the list goes on and on. When you get a big name like that, they're typically only available to do interviews when they're promoting something. So, for example, I had The Undertaker on when he was doing interviews to promote the one dead man show that he was doing. I had The Rock most recently when he had Black Adam

coming out. And here we are, Stone Cold Steve Austin, this new show that starts on Sunday on A&E. So it's like perfect timing. How great would it be to have him on for episode 500? It'd be incredible. But I'm not going to say no to a Stone Cold interview. And yeah, you saw the runtime. This definitely falls into the category of a mini interview, a mini view, as I like to call it. But come on, any time with Stone Cold Steve Austin is better than no time at all.

And we dig into a bunch of different topics during this. So I hope that you enjoy it. Please take a screenshot. Share this with a friend that you know would love it and share it on social media and tag us. He is at Steve Austin BSR. I'm at Chris Van Fleet and it's actually pretty astonishing looking at the numbers and seeing how many people

aren't following the show. So it would really mean a lot to me if you clicked follow or subscribe wherever you're listening to this right now. All right, please welcome one of the best to ever do it. Stone Cold, Steve. Austin. There he is. Stone Cold Steve Austin. What are doing? Doing great. How about you? What are you doing here? What are you doing here? Come on.

Austin is such a pleasure to be able to spend some time with you this morning. Good to see you. Good to see you too. You know, I'm watching this trailer and you're doing all these things. You're drift racing. What? You're flying a helicopter. What? You're bowling. What? I'll of these things, right? And I'm wondering, is there anything that scares you? Yeah, predicting the weather alive television scared the hell out of me. You know, I made a living being a live TV. And, you know, we went up there, first of all, it was a 12, 45 wake-up call. I didn't sleep. 215 call time. I'm not a morning person. And then I go in this wonderful young lady, Manus McCa's breaking down how she does the weather. And she's taking information, this paragraph like that, and taking the pertinent information

and condensing it just like that on the fly. And I'm thinking to myself, hey, I've got to do exactly as good as she is. And you're never going to step in someone else's shoes and someone else's job and be that good automatically, but that's what I expect out of myself. So moments like that crushed me because I thought it did terrible.

And I love live television because when the red lights on, that's when I'm at my best and I failed. But anyway, it was a ton of fun to make this show. I'm happy for the opportunity. So cold, is there any overarching lesson that you learned from diving all in on everything that you've done in the show. God dang, you know, but, you know, I got a chance to do a lot of things that, you know, when I was focused on my wrestling career, and I've been off quite a while, but, you know,

I kind of just stayed in that mindset. But, you know, it's a lot of things that I want to, wanted to delve into on a personal level and to try these things and do different things and be a fish out of water, which which ain't great for me. But, man, if you're on offense about trying something or if you look at something else to do, man, don't be afraid or don't be hesitant to go do it. And just get the backbone up and go out there and try some different things.

That's the best thing I can say. I'm not a guy who's so philosophic about life who can articulate just the meaning of life and say, hey, here's some advice. But, I mean, you know, you're not here for a long time. You know, and life can be rough. So enjoy the moment. you can and chase your dreams and passions or if you're on the fence about something, get off the fence and go do it.

You've given the Stone Cold Stunner to just about everybody. Now, can we settle this once and for all? Who takes the best stunner? Well, you know, you had those different athletic presentations from Scott Hall. You know, Shane took a good one. But I always go to the Rock. The Rock would always take that extra effort to green around the ring and, you know, way over self-fashioned.

But it just meant so much when he did that because the big matches that we had, whether it was 13, 15, 17 to 19, you know, those moments meant so much. But I'd go to the rock. And here's the thing about that people don't understand about when you give the rock a stutter. That guy, you know, he was so jagged

and said just so hard. When he's bouncing around a ring, sometimes he'd flop off the ropes and end up landing back on me. And I was like, Jesus, you're killing me. So given Rock, a stutter can be painful just when he floss back on you. But that's the name I'm going to give you. It sounds like we were pretty close to seeing your WrestleMania 39, and it didn't end up happening.

Do you have another match in you? I could. I'm not going to sit in a lobby for one because that'd be silly. That's a year away. But, you know, a year away in that business is just like that. They asked me to be a part 39. They really did. And I couldn't do it just because there's no way that I knew what my life is going to look like due to the filming schedule of this show.

We had some internal stopdowns where this show took about five months to film. That's a long time. We finished filming about five to seven days before Russellmania 39. In a position that they were going to put me in, which was going to be a big one, you can't prepare for WrestleMania and do yourself justice or do that crowd justice. Dallas was set up for a Stone Coe return. We framed that with K.O., who I love, was perfect for the time and setting. For this match to play out, I really needed to perform at a high level. And I didn't work out before 38.

I had thrown a working punch in 39. And I had thrown a working punch in 19 years. I was killing K.O. out there. I truly was asking. And I told him when I went in the back and said, man, I can't believe you didn't throw a receipt. And he just laughed because his job was to take care of me. So anyway, in the future, I'm going to. not lobbying for it, but could anything happen? Yes, because I always say, never say never.

So the first time you said what was in 2001. Here we are 20 plus years later. And this isn't just a WWE thing. This is a wrestling thing. Like every wrestling promotion across the world does the what chant now. Does it surprise you that this is still a thing 20 plus years later? It really does. But I mean, it's a testament to, I don't know how impacted. people were to that. And, you know, that started off as me living a voice message on Christian's phone. And then I was working

healed at the time, and I said, hey man, it's a really good way to F with people and get under their nerves or under their skin. Because, you know, if you tell me something, I'd just say, what? And throw it back at you. It's irritating. And that's where it was designed to be. And then I turned it into something that worked for me as a

baby face, as far as as you know, wait to mock a situation. With cadence and delivery, People can't escape it as far as a talent done, a promo. You know that. But it's very, it's flattering to see that it's still around. But, you know, I've had so many people cussed me out about inventing it, you know. And we ended up putting on a T-shirt, for God's sake, and it sold a ton.

So I'm thankful for the word. But if it disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't complain. But I'm honored that it's still here. I saw this thing you did on A&E's social media channel. It was hell yeah or hell no. and you said hell no to roller coasters. What do you have against roller coasters, Steve? Man, I'm not a big thrill seeker.

You know, I'm not looking to go out there and just do a bunch of crazy stuff. When I used to travel down the road with Lord Stephen Regal, one of my really good friends, you know, Blackpool, where he's from, they had a little, you know, gimmick circuses. And, you know, we would talk, but you know how the English,

people from England are really tough. And if the roller coaster went off the rails, you know, it squashed a bunch of people, they just pass out a bunch of free tickets. Oh, it's okay. Here's some free tickets for the next one. You know, so I bet that's always in the back of my mind as safe as these things can be. I'm always wondering about the one that I get on is going to careen off the rails and it's like, man, what happened to stone cold?

Well, you remember that roller coaster went off the rails? He was on that roller coaster. So it's stuff like that I look at the worst case scenario. And when they leave you hanging at the top because they're kind of mess with you and it works. the clack, clack, clack, clack, clack on the way up, and then you just go down. Yeah, yeah. Not fun.

Not fun. Austin, it's always such a pleasure to be able to chat with you. Thank you so much. And if you think that everybody should watch Stone Cold Takes on America, give me a hell yeah. Oh, hell yeah.

Austin, thank you so much. Hey, good seeing. You and take care of yourself. There we go. You can check out Stone Cold Takes on America beginning this Sunday, April 30th on A&E. Oh, hell yeah! We dug into a lot there,

even though it was a relatively short period of time. Sure sounds like we're going to be seeing him at WrestleMania 40. Like it sounds like he was on board to do something this year and just didn't work out with his schedule filming this show. Because by the way, he's driving around the country in an RV. It's not like he's being driven around. he's actually driving around the country in an RV for this show. So schedule really tight for him to wrestle at WrestleMania 39.

It sounds like this is for sure a possibility at WrestleMania 40. So we will see. This quote from Harvey McKay seems very fitting with the life lessons we got here from Stone Cold during this conversation. Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it. But you can spend it.

Once you've lost it, you can never get it back. Be great, be grateful. We will see you on tomorrow's episode. An Ask CVV episode, if you still haven't yet, there's still a chance. Send me some questions on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag Ask CVV, and we'll get to it. So be great, be grateful. We'll see you tomorrow on Insight. A Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mock you middle.

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