My Mom's Basement - FRIDAY BONUS EPISODE 18 - "STONE COLD" STEVE AUSTIN

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

Robbie receives a call from the Broken Skull Ranch this week and gets to chat it up with the one and only "Stone Cold" Steve Austin about his new show on the WWE Network: The Broken Skull Sessions. They talk about The Undertaker, what it means to be a locker room leader, what the hectic backstage environment is like nowadays, and of course, gives the grapplefucks an obscure match recommendation!You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. We're here. WWE Hall of Famer, Stone Cold Steve Austin, is on the show today. I had a phoner interview with him. It was only 15 minutes, so obviously I didn't get to ask him everything I wanted to ask. I kind of focused in and made this interview all about basically what he wanted to talk about, his new show on the WWE Network, which pretty much sounds like his interview show, his live interview show, the live podcasts he would do a few years back, but they're going to be pre-taped this time. They're going to put them on after pay-per-views, the first one with Mark Calloway, aka The Goddamn Undertaker, debuts this Sunday after Survivor Series.

So we talked a lot about The Undertaker. We talked a lot about the show, the culture of podcasting and whatnot that Steve has gotten into the last few years. And it was a very cool time. It's obviously just surreal being a fucking kid sitting there talking to Stone Cold Steve Austin. He is a larger than life superhero-esque personality for me, and he couldn't have been just more normal and down to earth. So I'm not going to waste any more of your time.

Please enjoy this interview with Stone Cold Steve Austin. The Undertaker is not a person that has done this ever before. So what can we expect this Sunday? Man, you got to tune in to see what we ended up with. But it was great just sitting down with Mark. And I've called him, you know, in the wrestling business, kind of some people you call them by their work name. Some people you call them by their shoot name.

I've always referred to Mark as Taker. So this was a chance for me to sit down and talk with Mark, the guy that was the Undertaker. And as you know, being a fan, I mean, this guy's been doing it for over 30 years, and he kind of has loved that gimmick. And he's done a few things, but he's pretty much stayed kayfabe his entire career. So just to shoot the breeze with him and have a sit-down conversation with him was, it was just a lot of fun.

And really interesting to hear his take on his career and you know what it took to get that gimmick over and what it took to ride the lightning bolt as long as he did i really can't wait to listen to it and we hear the term locker room leader about the undertaker a lot over the years we've heard that almost incessantly as hardcore fans but it's sort of a vague term right None of us have ever been in a wrestling locker room. We don't really know what that entails. You don't have to give us specifics, but what does that mean, a locker room leader? Because it seems like a sign of much respect when somebody is called that.

I think it's a calm within the storm. You know, when anything goes down, and because Taker was there so long, he just kind of turned into the guy. I don't think he necessarily, you know, was waving up his hand and said, hey, I'm the guy, I'm the leader. But that's the way, you know, he conducted business. Always level-headed, you know, he's a thinker. You know, I was a little bit more of a knee-jerk kind of guy.

But I remember, you know, when the screw job happened in Montreal, you know, everybody kind of looked to him because he was the barometer because he'd been there since when he went. And so it's just he's that guy that when anything goes awry or everything's going steady, you just look to him and see which way the wind's blowing. And that's the easiest way I can describe it because he's not gathering up the troops like a quarterback

or a defense coordinator when things are going bad. Say, hey, man, we need to do this. We need to work harder to fill up these seats. It's not that. It was just kind of the brum of how things were going. He was the guy you looked to. And many guys went to Undertaker if they were looking for career advice on how to navigate the waters or how to go about talking or creating a relationship with events

or with respect to their character and how it was getting over. And you'll take a minute and give them a quick read. But he wasn't like a shrink. He wasn't a psychologist. He wasn't there to just offer up those services. Guys went to him because he'd been through so much and seen so much that they kind of gravitated towards him. Did you have anyone like that where if you had any questions,

you would go to them for advice or guidance? Well, I would ask a few different guys, you know, some peers in the locker room, and sometimes it was Vince, but because I was kind of different than everybody else, you know, I didn't really know who to ask because no one had kind of done it the way I did it. And I always say superstar Billy Graham was doing it before I

was doing it because he was that guy who was a heel, but he was becoming so entertaining. Had Vince Senior really known what to do with him, he kind of could have segued, you know, he could have done the same thing that Vince did with me, turned me babyface, and you don't really have to execute a turn, just

the way the crowd was responding to him just transitioned to him to where he's working with heels now and talking all that same trash. So, Undertaker was so different, and I asked him who he went to, and you'll see that in the interview, and that's a very interesting answer, But for me, it was a feeling out process and kind of using my instincts.

And so many things back then happened on the fly. And because I was, you know, Superstar was there, but he never had the ride I did because they didn't switch him. So a lot of things that Vince and I were doing, man, this is the first time it had ever been done. And I'm not saying I was the breakout worker that introduced different psychology to the business, but to be in that time, in that era, to be so hot as a hill and then be doing things that almost would be considered hill-like as a baby face to navigate those waters was sometimes kind of difficult. And we went by crowd reaction and it was a thing that was always ongoing you know always reading the temperature and seeing where we were at that's fascinating and i don't think anyone has ever in the history of the business

garnered the crowd reaction that you did at your peak when that glass shatters and that crowd pops and you you know you hear it behind the when you're in gorilla is there a is there a moment where you're locked in, you're just thinking about the match, you've got to go out there, you've got to be stone cold and you've got to compete. Or is there something that hits in your mind where you kind of can smell the roses for a minute

where you're like, this is insane how these people are reacting to me? Well, you honestly, well, I can't speak for everybody you're speaking to me. So I'll tell you, I live and die by that response and man nine times out of ten or maybe more than that it was always through the roof and as soon as that that glass broke and that that crowd reacted i was like oh man we got them we got them and then any kind of game plan i had in my head i knew as long as we didn't mess anything up we're going to crush this

thing. Every now and then, you'd get a tired crowd because there had been so many good matches. Yeah, they were waiting for the main, but they were a little wore down. You didn't get that quite as loud a reaction as you were wanting or expecting. It's like,

man, it could have been a little bit better than that.'m hyper sensitive to that crowd reaction and i can read a crowd and i listen to a crowd the the entire match or the entire time i'm out there and uh i was talking to a guy a long time ago and they said steve you know a lot of times after the match many times i would stay for a long time when we went dark and i would entertain the crowd but as far as television time you know, I made it a habit never to wear out my welcome or stay too long. You always want to leave them wanting more, satisfy them while they're there.

But as soon as you start feeling just, even before you start feeling a little bit of a downturn, get your ass out of there and get in the back. So it was always, you live and die by the response to answer your question and yeah it has a huge impact on me and i'm quite sure everybody else it seems like almost if you got that immediate amazing crowd response 10 out of 10 from the crowd what you wanted maybe you could go out there and have more fun in the match just knowing that obviously you were going to do your job your opponent was going to do their job so everyone has a podcast now it seems everyone in. So everyone has a podcast now, it seems.

Everyone in the wrestling industry has a podcast. A lot of wrestlers, former wrestlers, former people in the business have a podcast. If podcasts were around in the Attitude Era, who do you think would be the people jumping on the train trying to host these things? Man, I don't know. That's speculation. But just with everybody having podcasts now, I think it's tremendous because, you know, anybody and everybody can have a voice.

And there you have your voice, and you can capture your voice and your opinions and someone else shooting the breeze with you maybe and have this audio. And so then you need to take it out and grow an audience. That's where the difficulty lies. But the thing is, and I've enjoyed podcasting, but over the last few years, just for instance,

the other day my stunt double, Paul Lazenby, came down from Vancouver. He came down to see the New Japan Pro Wrestling Show because he's friends with a lot of those guys, and they do a lot of good work over there. And so we started just off the cuff talking about some tag team wrestling, which I love. And I simply stated that the tag team wrestling today isn't like it used to be where you had dedicated teams that were together for many, many years, and sometimes their entire careers.

And so all of a sudden I get taken out of context and said, Steve Austin blasts current WWE tag team scene. And that's the biggest, I know this is a little different answer than you asked on the question, but the thing I'm disliking the most out of podcasting, you know, as of late and in the past, is being taken out of context. And when you're just trying to form an opinion or voice an opinion, as someone uses it as clickbait and changes what you said, so it looks like you're speaking negatively of the current scene.

I never want to speak negatively about the current scene. The business has changed since I left it, but there are many things that remain the same. And to simply state the obvious and get taken out of context is one of the things that rubs me the wrong way. No, I'm with you. We see it happen all the time. That's obviously, I think it's a concern of many people. It seems like podcasts should be the medium where you could really dive in and understand what somebody's saying and not

get taken out of context. But they flip it the other way. So let me ask you this. Let's talk about how great some of the things on the new scene are. When you go back and make an appearance on Raw or SmackDown or whatever you're on, who are the people in the locker room, the new talent, that you always make sure you check in with and keep your appearance on Raw or SmackDown or whatever you're on, who are the people in the locker room, the new talent, that you always make sure you check in with and keep your eye on?

Well, you don't really have a chance all the time to check in with everybody because, man, we were busy back in the day. And the business was on fire. And these days the WWE superstars are going through so many different things. They have just much more digital content that they're trying to film for WWE.com and other things. Corey Graves just started his podcast, so I appeared on that yesterday. But they're doing so many things, and they're so busy. And, man, the machine is much bigger than it used to be.

So they're so busy. You don't have a chance to really shoot the breeze with too many people other than, Hey man, hi, bye. What's going on? They'll give you a quick download and they're off and running. You know, if I get a chance to talk to Brian, it's usually about hot rods or side by sides or something like that. Because Becky Lynch was on my straight-up Steve Austin show, I'll always, you know, make time to check in with her

because we're really good friends, or Sasha and Bailey. It's just, you just got to, you know, when Bray just passed by, I guess it was Tampa, you know, he's doing the Firefly Funhouse, and he's so busy doing that. I love that gimmick. I love what he's done with it. So, to answer your question, things are moving so fast back there and you know we're coming from kind of from been gone a long time and coming back for a special event i'm trying to take a temperature

get a read on exactly what they want me to do and if someone uh wants to ask me a question i'm always happy if they pull me aside but i just kind, kind of watch the process because when you're, when you're one of the ants, you know, it's like a big ant farm. Yeah. They're all, they're, they're all specifically, you know, doing the task that they've got, you know, it's either wardrobe, this, that, you know, still photos. There's a million things those, those, those, those kids have to jump through. So I just kind of let them do their thing and talk to the ones that I can talk to understood completely i've got one more question for you a question that i try to ask every single wrestler i interview if you can give our listeners a recommendation for maybe an obscure match a match that you don't believe that the casual wrestling fan the average everyday wrestling

fan has seen that they can go back and check out you could be involved you could not be involved what would you recommend? Man, this is one I've been talking about for about nine months. You can find it on YouTube. If you just type in Harley Race versus Terry Funk, it's a two-out-of-three-falls match. The match lasts 40 minutes. It's Harley Race, Terry Funk from 1977 at the Sam Houston Coliseum. Paul Bosh is laying down the commentary

and there's a part in the match there and you watch the way these pinfalls happen and you're talking about two absolute masters in the ring who had so much chemistry with each other and tell them how many times those guys had worked with each other and then at one point in the match, Funk gets busted

open and I'll be danged if you can see where, you know, when. You kind of understand how because of the left hands Harley's throwing. But where and when that happens. The absolute masterful technicians that these guys were, there's basically two spots in the match, and that's basically a tackle and a sidestep from Harley throwing Terry Funk out. So it's a classic-style wrestling match from the mid-70s.

So that's it. Funk versus Race. Two out of three falls. 1977. Check that one on YouTube and tell me if that's not one of the all-time great matches you've ever seen. Wow, now I really can't wait to do it. Steve, thank you so much. The Broken Skull Sessions will be live on the WWE Network

immediately following Survivor Series, 11 p.m. Eastern. I'll be tuning in. I know every single wrestling fan in the world probably will be. I can't thank you enough for the time. Thanks, Robin, for helping to spread the word.