The Dale Jr. Download - 258 - Stone Cold Steve Austin: Drink Beer & Raise Hell

Episode Date: May 28, 2019

From beer bashing to bleeding, Stone Cold Steve Austin sits down with Dale Earnhardt Jr. for this tell-all interview.  They discuss the "hard life" of wrestling, beer bashing, making yourself bleed, the origins of Stone Cold and a ton more.  Dale Jr. and the DJD gang discuss learning to drive by crashing in the woods and keeping babies from eating rocks.  Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stone Cold, you do whatever the hell you want. You got it. This is a production of Dirtymo Media. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for the Dale Jr. download. Co-host Mike Davis is here. Matthew Dillner, Leavon. Ready to get Body Slam, guys? Ooh.

I mean, if there's a show that could do it, this might be it. Why? Because Stone Cold, Steve Austin is on the show. Plus, memories of learning how to drive, guys. Memories of learning how to drive? I mean, I'm still kind of learning. How we learned to drive. All right, let's get started.

Holy crap. I don't give a shit. Grow a pair. And lock that shit in. Kyle, you bunch of babies. I would dump the shit out of somebody. Okay, we got legendary wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin in the house. I'm excited about this.

We've met before, but it's always been in a racetrack. You've been brought in to give the command, wave the green flag, things like that. We've never really been able to sit down. But you've got a TV show. Tell fans a little bit about that real quick. Man, we're just traveling around different parts of America and just roll up on different people that I find interesting. You being one of them.

And so we kind of do some activities, have some conversation. It's a good time. And it kind of puts me back out on the road. You know, I retired from a wrestling business in 2003. and I did a little bit of acting. I don't really care to act. I don't like to remember anything. So we come up with this show,

and I've been podcasting for about five or six years. But to get back on the road, it's kind of the fun part. And so the show is going to premiere sometime in summer. And I'm looking forward to it. And I'm looking forward to talking with you. Yeah, I've seen some good clips of the show. Basically, just hanging out, talking, having great conversation with people.

And so I'm looking forward to doing that later today. But this morning, you've been kind enough to come out here and join us on our podcast. We got a lot of questions for you. You said that you got your own podcast. How you enjoy doing the podcast yourself? You know what? I wanted to get in the podcast business about a year before I did, but, man, I am the

worst at technology. So I didn't know, you know, what to do. So podcast one, I called my agents up and my agent's call me and said, hey, man, podcast one called and asked if you want to do a podcast. I said, hell yeah, I do. So we started that thing up. And I started with just doing one show a week. And then it hit real good.

So we started doing too. So I've really enjoyed it because, you know, when you get away from the kind of the global entity that WWE is, you know, it's a worldwide platform. And all of a sudden you go from that to nothing. And so if I've got something I want to talk about, push this, that, or whatever, or some awareness, you've got to have a voice. And so, you know, I might as well be standing on the corner with a megaphone, you know, now with the podcast, it's not the same size as WWE, but it's that platform. Yeah. So I love it.

And, you know, I run two shows. I run a family-friendly show. And, man, I love to salt and pepper my language with four-letter words. So I run an explicit content show as well. That's kind of my go-to. That's my favorite one. And I've been on a break for about three or four months. I had to get some things taken care of.

But I really enjoy it. And I kind of stay a little bit wrestling-centric. But I like to talk to people from all walks of life. You gave me this hat when you came in, Broken Skull Ranch. What is Broken Skull Ranch? Broken Skull Ranch. I sold that place about three years ago, man. Oh, you did?

I didn't know that. I didn't either. That ranch is my pride and joy. It was always my goal to own a ranch in South Texas, deer hunting and stuff like that because that's the way we grew up. And finally, I said, it's time to buy a place. And I found 2,000 acres down there in South Texas

and a part of Texas known as a Golden Triangle. And it's called a Golden Triangle because everything that grows within the specific region is very high in protein. And that's the brush country. And everything that grows out there will cut you, stick here, hurt you, but it's high protein for the deer. So if you've got genetics and you give them some time, you can grow some big ass deer. And once I shut the gate, I love people.

And I performed in front of people, you know, my whole career, but also left my own devices. Man, I'm a hermit. So me and my wife go down there with our dogs and I don't see another human being for a couple of months. It was a good time. And finally, it just got to be where it was just too much work. You know, it was 1,500 miles down there and 1,500 miles back. And there's always work on each end to be done. that place like a state park. And when the oil

came in, that kind of changed things a little bit because I was a surface owner. And so if you got minerals, that means you can come in on my property and use my surface to get your minerals. And once the oilfield happened, I just kind of lost interest in it and I said, hey, it's time to get out. And so we bought a place in Nevada around Reno, which is a thousand miles closer. So I'm able to get there more often to enjoy the great outdoors. And with Nevada being such, you know, 90% of Nevada is public land.

So I get out of my side by side, my four-wheelers, and I can ride anywhere I want, and I love that. You talked about Texas. You're from Texas. What part? Born in Austin, Texas. Austin has a lot of different, you know, sort of boroughs in there. What was the particular area, though?

I cannot remember because my dad, I think he was changing tires at a, or running a tire store. Yeah. And something went wrong, and my mom and dad split up. My mom went down to Victoria, Texas. Victoria. Yes, sir. Well, I say that because my wife is from Victoria, and a lot of people in Victoria claim you.

Oh, yeah. Oh, and I claim Victoria. Right on? So it's true. Oh, absolutely. I was born in Austin, but when my mom had to get out of there, she went down to Victoria,

and that's where she met my stepdad, Ken Williams. Yeah. And we lived her a couple of years, and my dad was selling the insurance. And then finally, we moved 25 miles up the road to a little town called Edna, about 5,000 people. And that's where we all started at school.

but I was in Victoria for a couple of years and as a matter of fact, when I came up with the Stone Cold Steve Austin, a moniker, because when I came into WWE, they wouldn't call me the ringmaster. They didn't have any designs on making me a worldwide superstar. And so after about six months of that,

I said, hey, man, I need to come up with this different name. And I came up, we came up with the Stone Cold thing, and I said, you know, I got to be from some place that's got a cool ring to it. And I couldn't be Steve Austin, from Austin, Texas, because that's redundant. And then everybody always wants to be from a big city, right? You know, Los Angeles, California, or Las Vegas,

or something that was some pizzazz to it. I said, man, I said, man, I'm from a small town. I love the way Victoria, Texas sounds. It's got a ring to it. You remember it. You might not know where it is, but you'll look on a map and try to find it. And I actually lived there, and our old address was 404 Roads Road. The people living there, you know, right now probably mad at me for saying that.

Little bitty ass house. And yeah, I cut my teeth there in Victoria. What'd you do in Texas growing up? The only thing you could. If you was in South Texas, you had to play football. Right. And I loved baseball, so I played baseball as well. And then I threw the discus.

I thought it was going to be a long-distance runner. And I was running around the track one time, jogging, because I had good endurance back in a day. And I seen this boy huffing and puffing over there, throwing a damn discus. And I said, man, let me give that a whirl. And I threw that damn thing out there, and I threw it way further than he did. So I said, man, to hell with the long distance running out.

I'll start throwing a discus. You found your sport right there. Found my sport. So I played football, baseball, and track. And then my dad, my stepdad, and we don't use the word step in our family. So my dad got us hunting, and we never hunted before. And I'll never forget, you know, trailing behind him. You know, my older brother Scott, me, and then Kevin, walking behind my dad in the woods.

He's carrying his rifle. And he was forever looking behind us going, you know, be quiet with that come to Jesus look. Stop stepping on twigs. So just playing sports, saltwater fishing and hunting. First job. Landscape guy, my senior league baseball coach, a guy named Dan Meador. And he was a landscape guy. And so I started working in a landscape business, planting stuff and mowing yards, but basically landscaping.

And through that, I'd work on lease crews, cleaning up all field. stuff, hauling hay out there in South Texas, work for the highway department, you know, in the summer, you know, driving a cement truck or, you know, that asphalt truck patching roads or putting patches in roads. Anything that was manual labor, I specialized in. Yeah, that makes sense. He's a work ethic guy. I've listened to a lot of his podcast. I think that that's what Steve Austin is about. He wants accountability and work your ass off. Am I right? Well, the thing about, you know, growing up in our household, I mean, you were. was going to do your chores and that wasn't no two ways about it. Dad had a strict set of rules and

you know and so did mom and we all we rotated on doing the dishes we rotated on mowing a yard and we had a system if you didn't if you weren't going to work you wouldn't go you can get your ass handy to you yeah that's just the way it was how what was uh so what was your favorite sport was the football or baseball it was football and i loved baseball I played catcher and had a pretty good arm mommy. Did you think you were good enough to go into the NFL or did you? I did. Yeah. I did. In a small system that we were in down there in South Texas, we were playing two and three A ball. And so Houston's 100 miles away. That's all the 5A schools. And that's where all the badass athletes at, okay? So down there in South Texas, I was, you knew who my last name used to be Williams.

Number 32. You knew who Williams for the end of the Cowboys was. That was me. And I would run your ass over. I ran north and south because I couldn't afford to run east and west. And so they gave me that football. It was a sweep left or a sweep right or something right up the middle. And I was running down down field and coming out of high school. And I just think, man, all these schools got to come recruit me because I'm pretty good running back. All I got was a junior college offer. And I was offended and upset. And I needed that scholarship offer because my parents couldn't afford to pay for no college. And I want to keep playing football. So I go to a little school outside of Houston called Wharton County Junior College.

And I never forget I was talking to my mom's friend, Evelyn. And I said, oh, Evelyn, don't worry about it. I'll go to junior college and make All-American for a couple of years, then go to a big school. Let me tell you something. There are some football playing fools in the junior college system that either, you know, they can't make the grades or they've got a learning disability or something like that, but they will knock your ass out. And I was lucky enough to get two scholarship offers out of there to a university in New Mexico

and North Texas State University out of Denton, Texas. I took my trip to New Mexico. They took me skiing. I went to North Texas, and I knew I didn't want to leave the great state of Texas. And I got out there, and I was running a 40-yard dash one time, and the Jucco coach had pumped up my stats a little bit. We're out there running a four-yard dashes. And the head coach called me over and goes, Williams, come here.

He said, Williams, come here. Yeah, coach, what's wrong? He goes, you're running a 4-940. I said, yep. I said your coach at junior college said you ran a 4-7. I said, hell, coach, I ain't never run a 4-7 in my life. He said, Williams, get out of here. So anyway, I blew my ACL out on my junior year-playing linebacker,

and I came back in next season. I started all 11 games at Weekside defensive end, and I know you love the Redskins. I saw the writing on the wall, and football wasn't as fun as it used to be, and that's when, you know, I segued out of there. and I left college with 17 hours to graduate and started working on a freight dock, driving a forklift.

Holy cow. Manual labor. Did you ever go back and finish your college? People have asked me that, and I know a lot of people go back and do that, but I have nothing to prove. Me getting a degree and putting it on the wall means nothing to me. Now, when I talk to young kids and stuff like that these days, I say, hey, man, arm yourself with as much education as you can get or go to a trade school, learn how to weld or work on, you know, something mechanical.

But for me, it doesn't mean anything. It was going to help me in my endeavors from there on out. So fill in the gaps between when you graduated college to how you got involved in wrestling. What happened in that period? Yeah, where did that start? Well, I remember one time I was at the house, I was seven or eight years old, and I was flipping channels on TV, and you did it by hand back in. My mom was over here in chair, and I come across Houston wrestling,

and I saw Dusty Roach bleeding his ass off, and somebody had an iron claw on him. And there was a smoke-filled arena at the Sam Houston Coliseum. And there was a guard walking around the ring. And there was only a rope banister and it was smoky. Everybody was smoking back in. And, you know, the guy had a pistol. He had a sidearm on. And Dusty was in bad shape.

And I looked at my mom. She's over reading Red Book. And I said, Mom, I said, why don't that security guard go over there and help Dusty? Because he got a gun. He was in on the gig. But I was hooked. So I knew, you know, at the end of the day, my goal was, to be a professional

Oh, really, that early. But how old were you there? Seven or eight. Okay. I watched my whole life, and I'd be in there watching wrestling. My brothers and my sister coming there, man. Turn this stuff off, man. We want to watch something else.

I said, hey, man, it's only our show. Let me watch this, and you can watch whatever you want to watch. I wasn't allowed to watch wrestling in my house because it apparently made me too hyper. I can't imagine. But, man, me and my sister Kelly used to sneak in our wrestling. NWA would come on Saturday mornings. And Dusty Rhodes was one of my favorite, one of my favorite, Magnum TA. Yes.

Tully Blanchard, Olin, R. and Anderson, all those guys. Rick Flair, obviously, was a big, big deal here in Charlotte. Who were some of your heroes? You mentioned Dusty. Who were some of the other guys that were heroes of yours growing up? A lot of guys you just mentioned, and I consider Dusty to be one of the greatest of all time. And, you know, he was a heavyset guy. Dusty could work his ass off.

He could tell a story, and he could sure talk. He could talk a Blue Streak. And I love Dusty, but I consider myself to be the greatest world champion in the history of the business is nature of war Rick Flair. Oh, man. And as far as just an in-ring performer, then you go to like a Sean Michaels. But the guys you just named, really? Did you try to emulate them like we all did as a kid when we're playing wrestling and we're like, I'm going to be this? Who were you?

Well, that was the problem with the early part of my career when I was with the World Championship wrestling in Atlanta. I started off in Dallas and shipped me over to Tennessee territory. I was starving my ass off. We worked the same towns every single week. And I was making $15, $20 a night. You know, most of those trips, you know, three or four hundred mile round trips, and you can't afford to eat. You got two guys riding with you, and they're putting gas.

I had a 1988, I had a 1988 Hyonde Excel. Payments were $154 a month. My brother co-signed the lease for me, and that thing almost got repoed a couple times. And I would never go get it, get it repoed because I wasn't going to screw my brother, right? Yeah. So, man, I was starving.

I was literally starving. And I patterned the early part to answer you a question, the early part of my career in World Championship wrestling after nature boy Rick Flair. And I was kind of like thought of as being the next Rick Flair when, in all actuality, there will never be another Rick Flair. And that actually kind of was a hindrance to my development because yanging out Rick Flair or Rick Flair,

because he was still in the territory. We'd go to television tapings in Gainesville and over in Anderson, South Carolina, some of those towns around Atlanta because we're all based out of Atlanta, a lot of guys based out of North Carolina as well. And, man, you go to like a tag team situation or a six-man tag, and I'd be on the same team with Rick. And all of a sudden, the man goes there and there and just lights it up. And you're sitting on the apron thinking, okay, you thought you was good,

and you think you're going to overtake this guy, and you realize not so fast, my friend, because when Rick Flair turned it on, there wasn't no fall in it. Oh, wow. You know, how do you guys, you know, the promos is what a lot of people remember, how do you guys work on that? How do you become so good at it? I'll tell you what, you start off being bad at it.

You know? Right. I started in Dallas, Texas. I saw a commercial on TV when I was back at my college dorm. And this is when I was still driving at forklift for Watkins Motor Lines. And I said, hey, man, I need to go check this out. So I went down there to the seminar, signed. up five months later I'm having my first match. I'm out there you talk about green as grass and this

was back when I before I had to go to you and I had a long blonde hair down the middle of my back pretty good looking kid and I don't know what the hell happened and I go out there and I start to talk because they're trying to promote the school or I got a few promo opportunities and you know when you first start off your voice is kind of high you don't know how to talk from your diaphragm You don't really know what to say. You haven't really created a character, so there's no base or ground base to build from. And so you flounder.

And when you go out there, where you're doing the best you can. But, you know, when you shit the bed, you have done just that. And once you fall in your face enough, you learn, hey man, this is sink or swim. These are shark-infested waters. You better succeed or your ass is going to get left behind.

So it's very competitive. And so finally, if you go through the paces enough, and when I got to World Championship wrestling, they teamed me, they didn't know what to do with me. They knew I was a talent, but they didn't figure I had it yet. So he stuck them in a tag team with Flying Brian Pilman. And if you remember Flying Brian, we used to drive down the road, and Brian was one of those guys who would sit there and read, you know, dictionaries and books just to try to increase his vocabulary. And he was out there, and he was forward thinking. and if you put a microphone in front of his face, he always had something to say.

So all of a sudden it was like, man, hey, you better crank it up, Steve, or you're going to look like a deaf mute next to Brian because he's lighting it up. So he kind of pushed me. And then it was really when I started learning how to cut a promo deal. I was over in Japan. It was a three-week tour,

and I jumped off the top turnbuckle on a guy, and he moved, and I bent this arm too far up under me. I tore my right tricep off my arm. So I wrestled for two and a half weeks, with torn tricep, because back in the day, and you know from injuries you suffered, hey, you worked through it. And then, you know, when I came back, hell, I forgot when I was going to that story. What were we talking about?

Promos. Promos. When I came back, that's when Paul Heyman called me up. I answered the phone. He goes, hey, Steve. He just started up the ECW down there in Philly. And he goes, I want you to come work for me. I said, hell, I can't work, Paul.

I said, I got a busted arm. He goes, you ain't got to work. Cut promos. I said, well, man, I had 10 acres, I had a log cabin, a wife and a kid. I needed the money. Started flying to Philly every week. And Paul E. set me down one time. It's about 4.30 in the morning.

That's how we ran over at ECW. And I was a new guy in the territory, so I was letting everybody talk first, because I'm not going to jump in the system because I come from the big territory. And I can't talk worth of damn anyway. And so he says, hey, Steve, he goes, you're up. I said, well, hell, Paul. I said, what do you want me to talk about? I said, what am I doing? He goes, just talk about how you're feeling.

Just talk. And he turned the cameras on, and I rattled off that promo still on YouTube, ECW. And I talked for about six minutes, non-stop, ad lib, told it like it was. And that was probably the groundbreaking promo where I started feeling who and what I was. And I hadn't come up with a stone cold thing yet, but I realized at that point that the who I was in that ring was I'm competitive as hell at anything I do. So what I was was when you turned me up to 11, that's me. And Paul Heyman helped, you know, kind of teach me how to focus as a laser with a promo

to deliver a message, get that message across, and affect people and make people feel things because that's how you draw money. That's interesting because I think they're great communicators and people don't give them credit to be a good communicator. Oh, people give them credit. The promos are probably the most watched thing you'll... I agree. You know, that's what everybody's waiting on is his promo or, you know.

But you know what I've always wondered, you know, because we would always try to emulate this. And so to emulate a promo, you'd have to get grungy and get that raspy voice, and then you've got to start yelling. And then as soon as you start doing that, your throat gets itchy and you start coughing. Did that ever happen? Well, again, that goes back to learn how to speak from your diaphragm.

And it's funny because going back to those old promos, there was different periods of the wrestling industry, and especially a lot of those guys out of NWA territory, because that was my favorite territory of that, and Mid-South Power Pro by Bill Watts. But there became a trend back in a day. Everybody would say, brother, brother, pali. It's like you go into the brother mode.

Everybody's saying, brother, because it's an end thing to do. That's so funny. That was the trend. That was the trend, brother. But the last thing you want to do is start, hacking and coughing during the promo when you're trying to give somebody to the bottom line. It sort of loses its luster, doesn't it? Steve's all choked up, but he really wants to deliver a message.

Hold on. Hey, what I was saying? But, you know, sometimes you get out there and, you know, if it's a post-match promo, your little cotton mouth, because you've been out there, you don't know what the conditions are. It could be a smoke-filled arena. And you do get a cotton mouth. I mean, so you're out there trying to just string some words together and realize that, again, every time you go out there, it's sink or swimming, especially on live TV.

When that red light's running, that's when I like it the most. Really? So at the end, toward the end of your career, you've been doing promos for years. Do you still get nervous? Like, I was always, people say, man, you still get nervous? I'm like, hell yeah, still get nervous? I mean, I was always nervous all the way up to the last race. I was nervous. Were you still nervous?

Yeah, I think to a degree, but I was so ready. And, man, when you're in that mode and that's what you do, And I always tell everybody when you're living in the wrestling life, I mean, you kind of like turn into a zombie. You're going through life, but your job is to be on, you're a road warrior, you're on the road, and sometimes you're on the road strung out so long you're ready to get back home. As soon as you get back home, you're ready to get back out on the road. You put your suitcases by the washer and dryer. You wash the dirty stuff and get back out.

And, you know, you get back out on the road. What was the point we was trying to make? They're still nervous. Oh, yeah, but going to the, you, you, you, um, you, It's a nervous energy. You want to go out there and you know, like the thing I did with Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson goes out there and I say, hey, man, I got one time to get this thing right. So there's some nervous energy, but because I was stone cold, I live with Steve Austin now.

But, you know, back in those days, you could still get some nerves. But the bigger the crowd, the more cameras there was, I thrived on it. How would you get in the mode? What did you do to get in the mode? Nothing. Like I said, you turn me up to 11. A lot of guys go out there and they're done. They're putting on baby all and stuff like that.

I've seen guys butt lock their heads on lockers. One of my favorite stories is looking at guys' different warm-up routines before they went out. And I was talking to a guy and he goes, man, one time I was watching all the guys backstage and the guy I liked the most was Jake and Snake Roberts warm-up routine. And I said, why? What do he do? He goes, well, he had the snake in a bag on top of a trash can and he was smoking a sister. cigarette and they said, Jake, your music's on. Jake took a drag, last drag out of a cigarette, crushed it with the toe of his boot, and walked to the ring.

That was the Jake Snake warm up for me because I was always kind of lily white. We used to tan a lot to try to look cool for television because I was always so ashy. And I wore shorts 24-7, 365. It didn't matter what state we was in. I always wear shorts. So I'd look real ashy. So my routine was, waved my arms a couple of times. I may do a couple of push-ups, but I'm going to pour water all over me just to give me a sheen,

and so I didn't look ashy white for camera. That was my warm-up routine, and I was ready to go. So how did Stone Cold Steve Austin come about? Tricky story. I was the ringmaster. I got the phone call. This was back when phones were still on the wall, and everybody used cell phones these days. I had a long cord on that thing, so you walk around half a house with it.

That was the modern day cell phone. That was the cell phone. Yes, I had that baroon phone. And the phone rang, I said, hello. I get this voice on the end of him. Vince McMahon. Just started talking right away with the sales pitch. He goes, I want to bring in.

And I'd already met with Vince McMahon three times. And I could see that they didn't have any interest in me as like a superstar. They were bringing me in as what we call in the business a mechanic. A guy who is very proficient in the ring and can have good matches with anybody. And you need those guys on the crew, right? That's all they had for me. And anyway, they were going to bring me in as a ringmaster, the million-dollar champion. Ted DiBiase was going to be my manager because Vince hadn't seen me speak yet and thought I was a deaf mute.

And so I was going to have a mouthpiece. And I didn't like that. But when you got a house payment and a car to pay for, you need the money. So I said, okay, I'll sign up. I did that for six months. And I knew that there was no future in being the ringmaster. And so I was at the house in my log cabin. and I was having a couple

and I watched his show on HBO about that serial killer Richard Kiklinski who was a hit man over in Chicago or whatever and I don't endorse nothing the guy did but the guy was called Iceman because he was very cold-blooded

but I was a heel in the business I was a bad guy so it's my job to be hated so I took that idea and I called the office I said hey man I got this idea I want to be like a cold-blooded remorseless you know

a heel and I told them about the Iceman name. Well, there was a guy in Texas at a world-class championship wrestling who had already been the Iceman, Ice Man King Parsons, because we don't want to do that. And so they sent me three pages of these horrible names, Fang McFrost, Otto Von Rootless, and Ice Dagger. And I'm thinking, these guys are supposed to be creative geniuses and this is the best shit they got. And I was like, I threw pages up. I said, my wife at the time was from England, and they drink hot tea over there.

So she brought me a cup of hot tea, and she goes, oh, don't worry about it. Just drink your tea for it, gets stone cold. And she said, that's your name, Stone Cold, Steve Austin. So I called the office. I pitched it. I said, hey, man, I want to be Stone Cold Steve Austin, and I want to be from Victoria, Texas. And Jerry Briscoe says, all right, I'll run it by events and see what he says. So unceremoniously, that's how I, we.

We came up with Stone Coat Steve Austin. And Vince was receptive immediately, or did you have to talk him in? Because that's funny, I bet there's a lot of people that call up and go, this is what I want to be called now. Oh, absolutely, there's a lot of that. But because we knew that the ringmaster wasn't going anywhere, the ringmaster was rigid supposed to be. When I looked back at some of those prototype drawings of it,

you know, this cool symmetrical outfit, and he was, you know, the master of the ring, this technician. You know, I was more of a romp, I'm stopping him. I could wrestle technical. But I wasn't that kind of guy. As far as ring gear goes, I was pretty basic, you know, boots, some knee pads, and some trunks. And they had this pretty design. And the ringmaster didn't work.

There was no Genesee Qua to that. You ain't going to look. Was that one out of Flying Brian's Dictionary? Did you do that? When you see that, I knew that that name didn't have no marquee value to it, Ringmaster. Now, all of a sudden, I'll never forget having a conversation with Rachel Ramon. It was Scott Hall. Yeah.

And I was just starting the stone cold thing, and he goes, so what's with the stone cold thing, man? What's that all about? He's pretty cool. I love that guy. He's really knowledgeable about the wrestling business. I said, I'll manage it. Just name change, but it'll work. And, man, I'll never forget.

We started doing that. What year was this when you began? 96, back in the 96. And I started getting some promotional, some promo opportunities and some chances to do a little bit of color. And this is important to that stone cold development because I wasn't there yet. You know, you don't just come up with a name and just you're there.

It's developing. Yeah, I don't think anybody here develops into a great race car driver overnight, right? So I notice this is a period of business when there was a little bit of a lull. So we'd do Monday Night Raw Live one night, then we'd film the next one the next week, and they'd go to post-production.

And then they'd play it the next week, even though we'd filmed it the week before because you couldn't afford to just do two live nights. And so I noticed when I was watching that show that went to post, they were starting to edit a lot of the stuff I said out of the show. And I'd be at home watching, you know, I could catch a replay of the broadcast on the VCR. I was like, hey, man, I said this then, and they cut it out.

So I remember we used up TV. Is it Lowell, Massachusetts, a Worst or something like that? And I've seen Vince walking across the parking lot into the building. And I said, I didn't know Vince very well. I'd been there six, seven, eight months, but I didn't really know him that well. and I said, but you've got to take control of your career at some point. So I said, hey, Vince, I said, you got a second? And I didn't put a whole lot of bass in my voice.

I was like, hey. Yeah. Get your ass over here. You got that scene down first. I said, hey, man, Eco, sure, Steve. And I said, hey, man, I noticed when I'm watching the show back from Post, I said, you guys are starting to edit a lot of things I'm saying. And I said, I wonder why that is.

Okay, remember I was supposed to be a bad guy. he goes, quite frankly, Steve, he goes, you're popping a lot of guys in the truck. And what he means by that when you pop the guys in the truck, that's a production truck. Those guys have seen and heard everything. So if I'm in listening a response from them and they're laughing their ass off or so much trash that I was spewing, it's entertaining those guys. And so that's a good thing. But because it was getting that kind of reaction out of him, he wanted it to be cut out

because I was trying to be hated. That was my version of South Texas trash. And I looked at him right there. And I told him, I said, Vince, I said, you got guys here 610, 7 feet, 300, 320 pounds. I said, I'm 6.1, 250, black trunks, black boots, ballhead, go tee. I said, if you don't give me my personality, I can't compete. But if you give me my personality, I said, I can compete with anybody you got. And he goes, okay, Steve.

And that's when he stopped editing me. And that's when he let that South Texas trash fly. And that's when we started heating up. And I really found myself. Was that when you weren't a hill anymore? Well, I was still a hill. I was a trash talking hill. And there was a version of me, really, if you go back to superstar Billy Graham,

because Billy Graham was a hill, but he was becoming so entertaining. People started liking him. And then Bob Backland beat him for the championship, and Billy Graham was gone. I think it kind of really affected him. But I was a hill still then, but the business was changing. And due to the roster guys we had, and we had some great guys. guys, times were changing. And I was talking so much trash, Brian Pilman had just came into the WWF at the time.

And I'd go out there and I'd be working with baby faces. And I'd come back from the match and he'd be waiting for me. And he goes, God dang, kid, you're a baby face. And I'd say, F you, I'm a heel. But I was getting those kind of cheers. Right. So Vince had the forethought to, hey, you know what? at the time Brett Hart had been around so long and he's one of my favorites and he said you know

Brett's kind of starting to complain a little bit and people were starting to boo him so he had this big idea to put us in a match in russamania 13 and what we did was go out there when when i went out there i was pretty much universally received as a hill but there was a lot of positive response i got a lot of pops yeah when brett came out a lot of pops some booze ken shamrock special referee We went out there and executed one of the rarest things you can do in a professional wrestling max, which is a double turn. Oh. By the end of that match, I had went from a heel to a baby.

He went from a baby to a heel. Now understand, nothing happens overnight. There were still work to be done on the back end to further those paths. But that was probably... That was the match that really made and launched my career. and I've given Brett Hart so much credit for that because he handpicked me a year earlier to work with him when he's making a comeback from a knee injury.

But it was that story. And that's when I started becoming the baby face or the good guy. And I've always preferred working heel because... I was going to ask you that. It's so much more comfortable. You can do anything. I mean, and it's kind of fun to make people hate you. It's easier to make people hate you than it's like you, I think.

And like if you trip on a stair or the rope's getting in the ring as a baby, baby face. As a good guy, you got egg on your face. If you tripp as a hill, the worst they can do is laugh at you. J. F you, I tried to do that. There's more creative freedom in being a hill.

That's interesting. I always feel that interesting, too. I was watching videos of like Jake, the snake, and then also like honky talk man. Oh, yeah. And I realize that I think they preferred being a heel. And I always wondered that, why that preference? And now you're just answering it, the creative freedom. But ultimately, do you become champion?

Do you become the champion of the long play, the long-time champion as a heel? No, no, no. I became really as a baby face. No, no, I'm saying in general, though. Is that like, if people prefer being a heel, what's the... I think it's all personal. A lot of people love being a good guy. Okay.

Babyface we'd say. I mean, so, I mean, you know, and you look at Hulk Hogan, one of the greatest of all time, you know, until he went NWO, he was a baby face his entire life the biggest draws in history of the business so yeah it's all preference well here's the thing by the time you know I'd

turned baby face and become so successful at that people had got to forgot about that kind of two year heel run and I was effective as a heel but I became so beloved as that baby face when we went to WrestleMania 17 Vince always likes to do something special and I was working with the rock and we set a new

Astrodome attendance record on that paper view and I I said, hell, man. I said, well, after the match, why don't I turn hill? And so I did turn hill. But it was kind of like, as Jim Ross would put it, you never want to see John Wayne as the bad guy. That's how beloved you was. By the time, you know, I'd become that a version of John Wayne.

People didn't want to hate me. But I just wanted to do it because I loved me in a hill. I thought it would be great for the business. Even when you tried to turn hill, you couldn't. Yeah. I think that's right. We tried for a long time, but it wasn't a good idea from a business standpoint. and people wanted to love me.

They wanted to cheer for me. They wanted to have a good time with me, drink beer, and raise hell. Yeah, that's right. You were one of a kind, so nobody wanted to see you change. Real quick, before we get back to Stone Coal, let's hear from my friends over at Vivalene.

As many of you probably know, I was sponsored by Vivalene for several years, and I even drove a Vivalene car at Darlington back in 2015. That baby was hot. A lot of drivers are sponsored by motor oils, but Vivalene, they're a little different. They're more than just another logo on the suit We're on the quarter pound on the race car.

Vavilene is a true partner, and they always were hands-on and helping us make our engines perform better. They'd send teams over to Charlotte to work directly with our engine guys in the garage to squeeze a few more horsepower out of our engines. We literally mixed oils together, different combinations to try to get the power that we needed for whatever track we were racing at. It didn't matter if we were running plates, road courses, short tracks are in a minute. They always had a solution to make our stuff better. Vaville even helped me get the monkey off my back at Martinsville in 2014, where I got the first win, ever on NASCAR's oldest track. That's why Vavilene is the only motorol I trust in my engine

and it's why you should trust them in your engine too. From high mileage rides that need that thick anti-wear film to newer engines that have carbon buildup, head over to Vaville.com slash Dale to find the product spec for your engine. That's baville.com slash Dail. Describe, so for me, there's certainly different eras where the sport, Pete, What's the difference between your era?

It don't even seem like you retired that long ago. 2003, I guess, is a long time ago, but it doesn't seem like it. But describe the peak, which was a huge, huge era for wrestling in your prime to what we have now. Well, I think if you look at the peak, it was when Eric Bischoff went down at WCW, working for Ted Turner, and they decided, hey, man, WWF at the time, you know they got it Monday night raw well why don't we go head to head and you know because Kevin Nash Scott Hall some of those guys have migrated down there he goes why don't we go head to head with them and man that was the Monday night wars and man we was throwing everything but the kitchen

sink every single Monday nights you were getting a main event pay-per-view type card because it was a war yeah and they kicked our ass for two years and then finally we started spinning up I got hot Here comes the Rock. Taker reinvented himself. DX comes along. Mick Foley heating up. I mean, all of a sudden, all our iron started heating up. And I was leading the charge.

I keep it on the DL, but I was leading to charge. I heated up. And, man, once we started beating them, we never looked back. And then, hell, Vince, ended up buying the whole company for pennies on a dollar. And, okay, now go to now, put Ted Turner out of business. There's a new organization. AEW just started. But right here and now,

Man, there ain't no competition. You know, so how good are you without competition? Yeah, 100%. I love competition. And so WCW, I mean, they made us work our ass off to try to get the number one. And then it's one thing when you get the number one, but you got to stay there. So we're still in a dog fight until they shut them down. So I just think that was still the last days of the Wild Wild West.

You know, I don't know if it has something to do like, you know, we're introducing a restrictor plate. You know, guys start to be a little bit more. micromanaged, things had to get a little bit more of a friendly tone, a lot more corporate sponsors coming in. And, you know, I'll never forget when I, I had to leave in 2000 to get my C-3-4 fused up because I had some neck injuries. And when I came back, that's kind of when every now and they start handing something like this, and this is what you were going to say.

Hey, man, before that, what I was going to say was, if you're going to talk some trash to me, I'm going to listen to you, talk that trash, and I'm going to go out there and I'm going to answer everything you just said and and and we're tearing each other down but we're building each other up and we we're working together right right we're trying to sell tickets it's business and i don't work from memory i work from what i feel in my heart my gut and then and then put it together with my brain who was giving you that like when you came back and you and they were trying to script what you say who is that writers you know just like with with uh w w yeah okay so they started trying to write and and what does it What does it look like when Steve Austin doesn't like what you're trying to make him say?

What do you say? Well, just, it's hard for, to me, it's hard for someone to try to write. You weren't in South Texas. You weren't hauling hay. You know, you didn't, you know, have a hard time making it and everything. You know, you didn't have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder. So I don't know if you can achieve the attitude of the mindset or, you know, hell after seven and a half years of paying my dues, finally I'd become an overnight sensation.

or you wasn't there there seven half years when I was living on potatoes, piddling with my pocket knife in a hotel room, you know, struggling to put some damn car in my, some gas in my car. So it's, I don't think you could really encapsulate, you know, what I would say or, you know, you might know who I was by looking at me, but if you ain't been in the ground with me, I think it's hard for me, for anybody to write for me, and it's hard for me to feel what you may write for me.

Would you just say, I'm not saying that? Well, you know, I work with the sister. I'll never forget one time. We was at a building. And someone came and found me, and I was working a program with Vince. And he said, hey, Vince wants to go to promo with you. And I said, all right. And I remember we was in this little bitty room, smaller than this table, half the size of this table.

A lot of things are smaller than this table. I mean, but me and Vince. And I'm sitting there, okay, I'd come back from my neck injury. Like, okay, Vince, I'm going to rip you to shreds. And, man, he got mad at me. He goes, damn it, Steve, give me your A promo. I said, hey, man, I'm going to give you my A promo out there. Yeah.

I'm not a rehearsal guy. Right. So it just, I'll read your bullet points. I'm going to get a couple of them in there, and then we're going to fly. That's pretty awesome. So you've been, you said you retired in 2003. You had a lot of time to think about it. What do you miss?

These days, I don't miss anything because I've been away from it long enough. But when I had to, man, I had to pull a plug on myself. And when I got dropped on my head, I bruised my spinal cord. And there's a lot of neurological issues that I still deal with. And it just got to a point where I was running hard on a personal level. And then I would beat the shreds because I wasn't taking no time off. And it's a hard life. And I tell people these days, hell, if I'd been used some modern training,

techniques or been drinking protein powder rather than whiskey and beer. You know, like I said, but I was, I was a pro wrestler, man. That's, that's all I wanted to be and I was at a high level. And I'll never forget when I, when a pull plug on myself, getting out of the business, it was a hard transition for me. And I've seen a lot of guys get strung out on pain pills. A lot of guys getting an IRS trouble or whatever. And I'm no smarter than a lot of the guys.

When I got out, I didn't really have an exit strategy. and because I had such a hard time dealing with the fact that I was out of business because I'd gotten pile-draved on my head, and for 60 seconds I was a transient quadruplegging. And when you're laying there in the middle of a ring in front of 20,000 people live on a pay-per-view and you can't move, they're scared shit out of you. And, you know, I was able to finally crawl, there's footage on TV. It was a rough day at the office.

I went around all the damn United States, seeing all these different doctors, and I finally found a doctor one of the leading researchers about quadriplegia, Joseph Torg in Philadelphia, and he didn't know the business was at work. And I said, hey, Doc, I said, I ain't got to take a pile driver every night. He goes, oh, you can control what you do out there? I said, yeah, to a degree, I can control everything. So it cleared me to get back in the ring. Anyway, so I made another couple of years, and I got fused up.

I had to ride off in the sunset. But dealing with that, walking away, Retirement always sounds like the R word. Always sounds like the holy grill. You work your ass off because that's what we're here to do. And then you enjoy retirement. Hell, I retired when I was 38, man. You know how much money I left on the table?

I mean, not just about the money is about the good times, being with the boys, traveling down the road, being in front of a crowd, getting that adrenaline rush. That's what I lived and breath. And so I didn't handle it well. And for about three years, I drank, I hunted, and I fished, and just did a lot of stupid stuff. And one morning I woke up, and I went in the bathroom,

and I just looked at myself in the mirror. It's true story. And I didn't say this out loud, but I was thinking to myself, dude, the things you're doing are not conducive to living a long life. You need to slow your ass down, and you need to use, I didn't have any designs on being a movie star, nothing like that, but I was driving a forklift before I got in a wrestling business, and as much fun as that was,

and I loved it. After being on top of the world in the wrestling business, I didn't want to drive a forklift again. I said, you better get your ass down there to Los Angeles and try to do something in the entertainment business and do that. And so, hell, I packed up and moved in with Diamond Dallas Page down there in Los Angeles. Wasted about a year out there, still, you know,

searching for the bottom of a lot of bottles. And we found some people and started making some, I call them low-budget movies. Someone with a big ego would call them independence. Yeah. And, man, I got a chance to host a reality series called Tough Enough for WWE. They reinvented it on USA Network. And it's, hey, man, we want you to host his show.

And I said, I love it because when I first retired, I was so upset that I had to leave the business that I loved. I had to be completely away from it. I couldn't even watch it. I didn't want nothing to do with it. If I can't be the main guy, I don't want to be any guy anywhere around. All those years later in 2000, I think it was 2009 or 2011, when they did tough enough, I had been away long enough. The wounds had healed, and I wanted to be closer to the business.

I didn't want to be taking bumps, but I wanted to help people learn to trade. So that put me back in touch with the business in a position that I really loved. and after one season they yanked it and it did good numbers but that that helped me out a whole lot and then when I found that a couple other people contacted me and the last show I did was Broken Skull Challenge

and some rocket scientists can't let some bitch and I still ain't figured that one out right but I found out that I really enjoyed and through my podcast talking to people and shooting a breeze on the fly Does Vince ever call or has they ever called over the last 15 years with ideas of how to incorporate you back into the system? Maybe not as taking bumps, as you say, but being a part of the program? No.

I mean, yeah, yes and no. But I said, you know, I kind of wanted to do my own thing for a while. Here's a clacket. Classic example. It's a true story. And I was over at, we used to do a Stoneco podcast, and I was in Denver, Colorado. And I said, hey, man, want to see if you wanted to open the show. And I said, sure, man, I'll open money that raw.

And he goes, well, we got four things we want you to say. And they hand me that piece of paper. God. And I was like, this is what you want me to say? You bring me back after, I don't know how many years in front of 20,000 and a couple of million out there in TV land. I was like, all right, so I went out there and said it. But it was like, I can't work off paper.

And I really think that the wrestling business, guys like me, good, to have around in a special occasion or whatever to talk to people about the fine details of what we call in the business, getting over, that secret to becoming hot as a heel or hot as a baby into a money drawing position. There's

knowledge I have or Hulk has or Flair has. But in the system, man, it's for the young cats. They need all the television time they can get. They ain't going to monetize you know me by just bringing me out to a house show here or there. So they got to put the money. I think it's kind of you like developing drivers so I like to watch the talent developing I had my time

and I want them to have their time so you're following along with what's going on now currently I try to I DVR both shows but I don't watch a whole lot of television to begin with you know I'm a big football fan and UFC fan and and I DVR both shows because if someone says hey man check us out or someone wants to ask me something to get my opinion on it right well I've got it dialed up so then I'll watch it I got a question with with you sort of taking on this role of trying to help some of these younger wrestlers, do you try to give them advice as far as planning their end

or their exit already? Because it sounds like to me that you hadn't even thought about it. Injuries sort of took you down that road, maybe if you weren't ready. Is that something you try to help people understand and maybe prepare for better? Oh, absolutely, because... And what do you tell them?

Well, just giving a platform right now, I just say, man, if you're trying to do anything, you know, always keep your... You know, your loyalty and your main job is with WWE. But if you've got some feelers out there and you're trying to network other things, you know, based on the fact that you've got a high IQ rating or a lot of television exposure and you can get your hands into different things, do it. Do it.

But, you know, right now, this is a bread and butter, but start planting those seeds right now. So when you spin out of this, you come out with momentum. Like I said, I sidetracked my, I'm just completely honest. I sidetracked myself three years of nothing and then came out to L.A. You know, had I said, hey, I'm going to do. go do this. You know, I could have planned it a lot better. I would compare the history of wrestling as far as superstars with another popular show that's

long running and that's Saturday Night Live. Chevy Chase, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, you got Rick Flair, the superstars that have Florida carried that show through the decades. Who is the superstar in today's climate? Who is the next Stone Cold? Who is the next guy that's going to be the household name? Man, it's a tough question to answer right now. Do you see those guys in this current climate?

If, if, key thing, when I got hot, I pushed the envelope. And I was saying words, you could still say on television. I wasn't dropping F bombs. I knew what I could get away with. The deal was I wasn't afraid to push the envelope. I wasn't afraid to go out on a limb. So I did. And I knew I had to.

And it was in me. It was nothing I had to, hey, this is a crazy idea. I go, when you turn me up to 11, that's me. And like I said, man, growing up in South Texas, just talking that trash. So to answer you a question, you know, I'd have no restricter plate on me. You know, like the guys today do. Yeah, I just because, like I said, it's a way more friendly setting, and there's a lot more control on television than went back in a day.

I mean, because, you know, we could do the, hey, I went to Brian Pelman's house one time. He had a busted leg from wrecking his Humvee, and I broke in his house with a baseball. bat and he pulled a gun on me on Monday Night Raw, and then shots were fired. And I don't think the network... That wasn't rehearsed at all. Oh, hell no. I beat the hell out of two guys in his driveway, and when that gun went, you know, reports that shots were fired, there was a call from the network and there was some explaining to be

done, but we had done it, and, you know, hey, then we apologize. My point is, I don't know that anybody can push that envelope as hard as we did, and I really think that's what it is. And again, I go to, it's like the people that love you. There's something about you and you driving and now you're doing your broadcasting that just people love you. You were real and you affected their emotions and they got behind you. And that's the same thing in our business. But you got to do something to resonate with those people and to get that kind of relationship. Anything you do, it's all about relationships. Even though you're an entertainer, you have a relationship with those fans.

And those fans got to live vicariously. I've talked to so many people through all the stuff that Stone Cold Steve Austin was doing. And they might have been in a bad way or had some problems going against them or whatever. And they can turn on that TV. And when you're in the entertainment business, if you can make somebody forget about their problems

for about two hours and put a smile on their face and they get that adrenaline going, that's a good thing. And so I just think it'll take someone to be able to capture that audience again. I ain't saying you got to go crazy. Just got to turn them loose a little bit. As a Redskins fan, there's a play or a game that's on the top of the list for me. Do you have a moment in your career or even maybe not in your career?

Maybe it's in someone else's career that you think is the most memorable moment for your favorite moment, your favorite match? Well, yeah, my favorite, I loved working with The Rock, and WrestleMania 17 was a hell of a ride. But that WrestleMania, and I love working with Vince because the Vince feud transcended wrestling for two years. That was water cooler talk. I don't care what you did. At lunch, you met and you asked, hey, man, you see what Stone Cold and Vince did last night?

And Vince was an awesome opponent because he feels this stuff as much as I do. He's an animal. He's one of the most interesting people I've ever met in my life, and I love a guy. But to answer you a question, that match in WrestleMania 13, I knew we had those people from Jump Street. I dived on him and started whipping his ass. And then we go into a barricade. I start bleeding like a stuck pig.

And finally, after a couple of attempts, he turns me over that sharpshooter. And I'm laying there and I'm in a push-up position and I am trying to escape. And we love working Chicago, Rose Mount Horizon because, first of all, the fans are terrific. And the acoustics in that building, the acoustics in that building, that's a wooden ceiling. So it's like when they yell, it's kind of like hitting the gas pedal. You get an immediate response. Everything you do in that ring is driven by a response. And so, man, those people are just quick.

And so we had that crowd, hook, line, and sinker. And I was going to pass out in a pool of blood, got the finish earlier from Vince. The pool of blood was not planned until later by two individuals. But there was no color policy in effect. And I was laying there bleeding like a stuck pig. And I'll never forget to answer your question. And that moment was finishing that match, executing the double turn, and laying there, man, I bled like a stuck pig.

I was in a puddle of blood. You never want to hit something that's gory, but it was an extended period of time. Laying there passed out while Helman Shamrock were going to take care of business, and I just performed my ass off, worked my ass off, so did Brett. And he really brought it that match. Lay in there in that pool of blood with my eyes closed, because that was all I had to do. until both those guys got out of the ring and then I'd get up. And it was my idea to stun the referee because I said,

I still got to just, if someone's going to try to help me, I'm not just going to start hugging on him and thank you for helping me up. I'm still a rattlesnake. Laying that pool of blood, most satisfying moment in my entire wrestling career. That's awesome. Hey, I got a question. Who was the best? Who did you enjoy wrestling with and performing with the most?

in the lens of you trusted them because I've realized with the interviews that I've seen with other wrestlers that you have your life in their hands and vice versa. Okay, so not who was the best performer for the crowd, but who was the best to wrestle with in that you could trust them and y'all could put on a show and protect each other? There's a lot of guys like that, and you hit the nail right on the head. I recently was in a ring and we was hitting the ropes pretty damn hard. The people standing around were like, holy shit, I didn't know you guys are moving that fast

or the things happened in that ring so violently. I said, yeah, man, it ain't ballet. I loved working with Brett Hart. There was so much trust and respect. And like I said, the high-profile matches I've had with Rock Undertaker, Triple H. I mean, the mankind, the list could be a mile long. But if I got to give you one guy, you know, Brett to hit Manhart. Yeah, he was just awesome.

And there was a trust and respect there from day one, and he saw me coming up. And, you know, he had taken a year off to get a, not a year, but some time off to get a knee cleaned up. And he picked me as his opponent to come back, and I think it was in the garden for a Survivor Series match. And that helped me before, you know, we would end up feuding, what a year later.

So Brett Hart. Brett Hart. He talked about laying in that pool of blood. And when I was a boy and would, watch Rick Flair and Dusty Roads and all those guys rassel. And, man, they bled every, they bled on a Monday regular show. And I always thought as a boy, like, how does that process, like, how do you get so comfortable with, man, I'm cutting tonight.

And do they, I mean, obviously that might be pre-planned. They know that that's going to have. How do you get yourself mentally there to do that repeatedly time and time and time again? because for me that was probably the most, it's obviously visually shocking, you know, when you're watching a match and there's just blood everywhere. And those guys, especially back in those days, were just bleeding hard, covered. And you remember that, right? Yes.

And as a wrestler, like somebody, when you're, when, do you remember the first time you bled? Oh, man. But to answer your question, I mean, to go back towards saying, yeah, it's the exclamation point on a great feud. And it's like, hey, man, it turned into a blood. it bad. But I'll tell you, I went to wrestling school. I was in there for about five months, one day a week. There was 25 kids in class. We had one ring, so ring time is pretty limited. Okay, so you learn a bit of chain wrestling. You learn how to take a bump. You just learn how to

fall and protect yourself. And part of the 101 and the 201 class saying, well, here's how you get color. No one teaches you. That's what it's called. Get color. A little juice. All of a sudden, man, we was in Dallas, and there was going to be a match. Eric Emery was booking. I think it was about, no, the first time I was in Tennessee. Anyway, I was in a locker room, and I think it was Jerry Lawler or somebody.

I said, it might have been Chris Adams. I said, hey, man, and someone told him we was going to go out there like a big battle roll type thing and bleed. And as a new guy in the business, I hadn't even been in a year. And now of a sudden, somebody wants me to bleed. Well, okay, what's the process? So I asked one of the guys that said, man, how do you make a blade? And the guy showed me his technique.

And then, you know, you know, like those old school razors? Yeah. The old ones. Right. Double-sided. Yeah, double-sided. Yeah, double-side. You'll clip that thing in the middle and then, you know, get some corners and make a small thing.

Push it through a piece of tape. You know, so you got a pull tab and, you know, put it on your wrist. Some guys are carrying their mouth. Some guys in their waistband. But me, if it was a big, if it was a big pay-per-view, man, you know, I got a plan. Plan A, I got plan B, and I got plan C. So I'm out there with three options. Dang.

And so, you know, it's a very interesting feeling when you first push that blade into your head because there's like a crackle of that skin, and then you're going to drag just a little bit. Oh, man. And at first, you know, you're kind of like, man, it's like a ride of passage, though. You're expected to do it because you grew up seeing it, and all of a sudden now you get a chance to do it. And then all of a sudden, you know, it was like in the 90s, so, you know, trading blood with a lot of people. And some of these guys, you know, we're party animals. It's like, man, you think those guys got to be the dumbest people in the world.

And like the guy, you know, the guy that always bite on the open cut and then spit the blood out. I was like, holy sht. I would imagine, you're right. There are some people that I would just be like, I don't want to color juice with you tonight. There were those guys. those guys that were like really out there? Yeah. And the thing about it is, man, when you get out on that mat,

you know, some of those outdoor shows, that mat is so hot. Yeah. I know, it was like, we did some rode over there. I know you thought of that. Baker'sville, Bakersville, California. You've been there.

So it's so hot that the mat's about 120 degrees. It's hard to lay there just for a three count. Man, guys are kicking out. And, uh, but when you get some of those arenas, like the Sportatorium in Dallas, that, that building was so, the wrestling atmosphere was so,

thick air. And, you know, the Carolinas, I mean, the wrestling is hot here, especially to Rick Flair territory, four horsemen, crockets. So that, but that mat, just like this, you know, you got, you know, metal construction, some two by 12s, a little bit of a mat about like that, and you get the tarp. But on top of that tarp, man, guys have been walking around in a dressing room. I mean, you drink your coffee, maybe you've got to take care of business, or you're at the journal, you're taking care of business, and all of a sudden, you're walking to the ring.

It smells like stale beer, popcorn, piss, sweat, and then you got blood on top of it. It's like any night of the week, you get staph infection. It's got to be one of the most unsanitary places to roll around with another guy and get sweated on or bleated on. I just invented bleated. Yeah, I'm so glad you answered that for me because I think that was probably the number one question on my list, ever since I've been a little boy about wrestling as to how that process goes for somebody, and you answered it perfectly. You talked about mankind. This is a guy from our

vantage point that sacrificed himself more than anybody. Were all wrestlers like that, or was he just someone special? I think he knew that was going to be his... He had to. I don't think he had to. I don't think Mick, well, Mick gets a lot of credit because he's one of my best friends in the business, and we travel together. We're two of the cheapest guys in history. the business as far as saving their money, staying at, you know, shit box hotels, stuff like that. I don't think, I think he did it because he knew that he wasn't going to be, certainly wasn't going to be a high flyer, a mat technician.

And I think he, to a point, enjoyed the pain. And I'll never forget, man, that floor in Dallas, Texas, was that hard wood floor. It's probably harder than any concrete I've walked on. And I'll never forget from my early days when he got to business just a couple, of years before I did and I was out there in a crowd drinking beer with my football playing buddies and we was out there drinking beer

throwing stuff at the wrestlers and he dropped that elbow from apron onto that floor and or get suplexed out on that seam and just just you know that when the Undertaker threw him off that cage into that the hell of cell in that announce desk I think he did it because it was

a means to an end and it was a style that worked for him and so a lot of people didn't think Mick Foley's one of the smartest guys in business. And I think that was his calling card to answer your question. That's awesome. When did the beer, the beer bashing start? Because that became so iconic, just the imagery of that, it was part of your identity in a big way. When did that start? And how did you keep that going? Was it even that hard to? I can't remember exactly when we started it. And I didn't invent it. Sandman was doing his version of it in ECW. And when I did it, I wouldn't say it.

hey, the Sandman did this, I'm going to copy it. I just, it organically happened. I don't know if I grabbed a couple of beers out of audience or I just figured, hey, man, you'd like to drink beer so much. You know, because we'd have that cooler full of beer underneath that announce table, or Mark Eaton used to throw me those beers. But, you know, Sandman would crush him off his head. I would just bank, clack them together like that.

And, you know, people would say, man, Steve always got mad at you because you wasted all that beer. And I was like, they don't understand. You ain't in show business. you don't get it. Half goes in, that's for me. Half goes on, that's for everybody else. It's a win-win situation. You got to have some showmanship to it.

What if I'd clack two beers together and just sipped them? I wouldn't have been worth of flying. Plus, you wouldn't have had the beer on the petri dish. It was called the mat that you, uh, that you, uh... I would kind of sanitize it. Yeah, you can. I love that. I always tell people, Dale, by the time I got finished, I was so,

beat the shreds. I told people, hell, I was drinking for a living and wrestling on the side. Yeah. Do you still drink beer? Yeah, I got into the beer business. I drink light beer for, hell, 30, however many years it's been. And I finally started, all this craft beer stuff started springing up. And I said, oh, man, let me give this stuff a try. Because back in, he was kind of considered a snob if you wasn't drinking a regular beer, everybody else was. And hell, you know, back in a day, we'd drinking Shafor Light. Hell, that's all he can afford. So I started drinking a pale ale. it was pretty good. I tried my first IPA.

It was a little too much. I went back to the PLL. And I said, hey, man, I miss that hop on that IPA. So I really got into the IPAs. And I teamed up with us, a gunned Obrowing company to get in the beer market. So I have Broken Skull IPA. It's a 6.7% alcohol, 40 Ibus.

And that beer is handcrafted by myself and the owner, Rob Crocksal, to my specifications. And I think it's one of the best. I'm very partial, but that built was built for me. It's one of the best IPAs in America. And so I'm very proud of that beer. What's coming next for Stone Cold?

You know, hopefully we do a good job on this show. And we got seven to start off with. Do you know who all your guests are? You don't have to give them away if you don't want to, but you've got some pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, I have some really, really cool guests, and you're one of them. And I look at it like this. I mean, either we're going to get to do seven of them or we'll do 28 of them,

or 56. But we got seven, and I'm looking forward to them, Aaron, and hopefully they do well. I love talking to people. I love talking with you guys, and it gives me a chance to get back out on the road, do cool stuff that I wouldn't get a chance to do otherwise. And I'm probably going to spring back up and kick my podcast back into gear. I had to take care of a few things. I took myself off the air for a while.

I got everything straightened out, so I'll make a return to that. And I continue my adventures in the beer business to podcast. Lock at night business. Still hunting? Oh, I'm still hunting. Oh, man, different. And I enjoy my, I'm in business with Kawasaki Motorsports as a brand ambassador. And I love doing that.

That's one of the best things I got. Hunting has been really good because we still got time? Yeah. Okay, so back when I had the ranch in Texas, we had that place for 10 years. And, you know, in South Texas, everybody's high fence because everybody's trying to grow big-ass deer. Okay, and you don't want your neighbors shooting your deer. Okay, well, we did that for 10 years and we had some models. and we had some monster deer.

And we was feeding protein 24-7 on top of all the protein they already got to eat. And so we were raising those dears, culling, and, you know, rarely shooting trophies because we're growing. We're looking long term. We're playing a long game, like you like to say. And it got to be such a process. We had an awesome setup out there. I had a double-wide hooked to a triple wide with this 2,000 square foot man cave. Five wide.

You talk about super redneck, but it was cool. And over at the barn was our cooler. But during the coal process, man, you're taking out your undesirables. You've got to control the population. Yeah. Because they're in a 2000 acre, you know, rectangle. And all the cullen, all the doze, you've got to do that. And, man, after doing that for 10 years, what I love now, you're not hunting over bait in Nevada.

That's where I hunt now. I can go anywhere in the United States and hunt. I get a lot of invites. but I'm a hermit and I just like to stay in my own territory. My brother-in-law is probably the best guy in Nevada and knows the entire state like the back of his hand. It's uncanny. So you're out there, free range.

I drew my first tag this year for mule deer. My previous years, I bought landowner tags. I had a landowner antelope tag this year and was successful. My first year out there, I shot a big ass 175 mule deer. Nice. And I was just, I was like, hey, man, it happened on the first day. I said, hey, man, it's going to be pretty. easy. This past season, first day out there, we saw a buck, it's probably about a $150

buck. And I, man, I wouldn't even go give him a time of day. I said, no, man, I'll pass. We've got four more days to do this. If you see something out there that's like that, it's in that ballpark, you better take him. And you don't want to take a young buck for no reason, because you don't do that. And so I got smoked. And so that was a landowner tag over it costs $4,000. I just got a $4,000 lesson and how not to get some meat in the freezer. And And when I talk about deer hunting, because it's something that I love and I grew up doing, we eat every single thing we take. And what we can't eat ourselves, we donate to food banks.

And the good thing about hunting in Nevada is I'm just taking one animal. I'm taking one deer and one antelope. And my wife is a vegetarian. First vegetarian I ever met in my life. She has him. We used to go down to South Texas and we'd go through the McDonald's order a macvegy burger. Because they got them in L.A. down in South Texas, like, what in the hell

are you talking about? Do you just not want us to put the meat in there? Right. Yeah, like an air burger. Lettuce and bread. Air burger. So, you know, I get two deer to eat, and realistically, I mean, how much more can you eat? I ate a lot of chicken bread stuff like that.

I got a place in Ohio and bow hunting only. Yeah. We love it. You're welcome to come anytime. We do the same thing. We eat what we kill and donate what we don't. and it's a lot of fun. I've been, I've had that place.

We've owned it, me and a friend of mine for probably five years. I got one buck off of it so far. You just out there just enjoy, I enjoy the managing and, you know, culling and getting things where you want them and growing the population and seeing the same deer every year and watching them grow and do. A lot of fun, learning about just, you know, firing up your food plots and moving, moving things around and how that all works. It's pretty interesting.

And Ohio has good deer. They do. They do. Have you ever heard, uh, you ever heard, uh, you know, the hole in the horn buck? No. That's a famous buck from Ohio. I guess maybe someone who shot a hole in one of his horns with the 22,

but it was found dead on the side of a railroad track or the road. So no person killed him. He died of whatever causes. But research the hole in the hornbuck. Because if I'm not mistaken, that is an Ohio buck. Nice. So thank you, Steve, for coming today, man. You got your show straight up Steve Austin on the USA channel.

So be on the lookout for that fans. I'm a huge fan of yours, been a fan of yours, been a fan all my life. Never thought I'd have a chance to sit here and talk to you, especially hear some of these great stories. We got a little inside scoop, and it was great. We're going to hang out the rest of the day, filming your show, and thanks again for coming on.

And, you know, on that note, if you can edit this end, or if it doesn't make it, it's fine, but I'll tell you how we come up and name of the show, which side was going to do this show on the USA Network, and say, man, anytime you come up with something, you've got to come up with the name for it, right? Got the Dale Jr. download. What we're going to call this show with Steve Austin?

And I said, man, We had a couple of ideas. I said, man, I said, what about straight up shoot? And like in the wrestling business, like a shoot, I mean, is it real? Like instead of saying, if you tell me something, and I don't believe if it's real or not, instead of saying, really, I'll go shoot. And if I'm really perplexed, I go, come on, man, you're telling me something really incredulous, straight up shoot.

So we just took the shoot out. And I say straight up to people. time. If someone's filling me with a story, I got to find out if it's real or not, come on, man, straight up. And people, we realize, and I say that so much, let's call that the show. And that's how the name, straight up, Steve Austin, was born. And we will see how many episodes of this illustrious show we get by how many people tune in to see it. But it's a lot of fun. I'm visiting with some really high profile or some really cool people and doing some really fun things, as you will find out later today. You're traveling and you're putting in the work.

So I think it's going to succeed. Plus, you've got a huge production, a lot of hardworking people out there. I've been seeing it firsthand. So I think you're going to have a great run, buddy. Hey man, your best friend is edit bay. We know that. There he is. Matthew Dillner. All right. We'll see you guys later. So I, you know, did my own personal genealogy. That's right. I actually helped, had some, I got so far down the line. I had a expert helped me sort of affirm everything that I learned on Ancestry.com. It was all true. I say that because I have become a real believer in ancestry, and they now have an ancestry DNA kit.

The great thing about that is it sort of maps out all of the journey that your family may have taken from wherever they're from, mine from Germany to Philadelphia, then down to Salisbury, North Carolina. Why do they move there? When do they move? I can see this in a 3D map when I take that ancestry DNA. Ancestry DNA gives you so much more than just. the places you're from. Ancestry

connects you to the places in the world where your story started. Mine started in Germany. They use precise geographic detail and clear-cut historical insights. And to amplify your results, you can start a free trial on ancestry and build a tree so that your ancestors become more than

just a name. And it's easy to do. Within days, they'll mail you a ancestry DNA kit, which includes full instructions and a saliva collection tube. You mail it back. It's very simple. You spit the tube. wrap it back up, send it back to them. It goes to their lab and the journey begins.

Go to Ancestry.com slash Dale Jr. today for 20% off your AncestryDNA kit. That's Ancestry.com slash Dale Jr. For 20% off your ancestry DNA kit. Ancestry.com slash Dale Jr. All right this week on the Valvelin DIY question of the week. Dale Jr. This is a good question. Who taught you how to drive?

Not race cards. Just anything. How to drive, when what happened? Who wasn't? That's all, folks. Did you do better than I did just delivering that question? Well, I mean, I have to, Dad probably would be the one that would be at the top of that list.

Believe it or not, Kelly, my sister Kelly. Of course. Really? Right. I don't know that she was intentionally doing it at the time, but when we were, when she was, when she was. was getting ready to get her license. I was 14. She was turning 16. Dad got us a Volkswagen, an old stick shift Volkswagen, and it was dad, dad thought, man, it would be a great way for

Kelly to learn how to drive a stick. Kelly wanted to drive a stick. Um, a dad wanted her to know how to drive a stick. So he got us this old Volkswagen and would just encourage us to drive it around on the property. It was 300 acres of dirt roads. And Kelly and I would hop in this car and she would just go motoring around the property and for whatever reason it doesn't sound like a ton of fun now to just aimlessly roam the property

because we didn't have a radio and no cell phones and stuff like that so you just kind of are just teetering around. Literally driving driving around. Driving around. To learn how to drive. Yeah, she, she, oh, she drove it into trees

and ditches and just goofing off and I would, we, oh, I'd get mad. I'm getting out. She spun it into a tree one time. I'm like, I'm done. I'm walking back. And it was like, you know, half a mile. I ain't riding with you no more.

And I tried to open the door and the damn running board was crushed into the door and they couldn't get out. She's laughing. But so riding with her and watching her, I think that taught me, you know, a lot about driving, especially using a six shift and a clutch and all that. Because it's, I mean, it's really intimidating, I think, the first time you try to do it when you're 15 years old. And so. And if you're by yourself. I mean, I know that you were with your sister, but my gosh, I mean, he wasn't with you?

No. And I remember, too, though, even before that, we would get, you know, we drove this 15-passenger, well, not a 15-passenger. We drove a custom van, but it was a 15-passenger van, but customized for us by Comfort Coach, which was a popular van-customizing line at the time. A lot of the teams had them. Whereas today, race car drivers have a giant motor coaches, all of them have them, and the cruxies have them.

Everybody had a van, a comfort coach van back then. And we drove that to every race pretty much. Didn't fly to any races. Driving to Dover, Pocono, all these places. And when we would get within, you know, the road we lived on was a couple miles long. And as soon as we got near there, me and Kelly would start to lobby to get ourselves on dad's lap so we could drive, you know, drive the rest of the way to the house. So that's more about getting your hands on the wheel, putting them in the right place,

him telling you attending to and all that, and keeping your hands where they need to be and not running off the road and paying attention to the side of the road. So there was a lot of that going on when I was probably 12, 13, 14 years old. And then I got my permit. I would drive sometimes with Teresa in the car. If we were going somewhere, she might let me drive, which was pretty brave on her part.

And I think one time we were driving and I dropped and I dipped the tire off the road. Everything was fine. But she went back and dad said, hey, how did he do? Driving. She said everything was fine. He dropped the tire one time, run off the road once. What? How do you run off the road, you know?

And so the next time me and him are in the truck, I think we're leaving the shop, leaving his farm driving back to the house, which at the time was on the lake. So we had a 15 minute drive. and he's the whole time here's how you run off the road this is how you take it back on you go real slow you don't jerk it you jerk it this is what happens and he obviously you know he's trying to show me how

you can spin a car out if you jerk it back up on the road if you drop a tire and you yank it and then how to do it real calm and natural and slow and take your time and that was another lesson of how to drive I would put that in that box maybe driving off the road was more comfortable for you considering you learned on a Volkswagen

and dirt roads yeah I suppose how could he drive off the road. All that stuff I gave him and told him to do on his own without being there. Oh, he was just blown away that you could even do it. You could drop a tire off the highway, you know, I don't know. When you're 15 and you got your permit, you're all over the place. Tell them pass through the grass, dad. You ever heard of it? Yeah, right. So that was me. I mean, I can't think of any other scenarios where I was where I would say, you know, I was getting taught how to

drive on the highway. You know, it just occurred to me. parents I mean you know because it's going to happen for us one day how how brave do you got to be to get into the car I mean you got to teach your kids how to drive but to ride shotgun with your kids when they're riding for the first time that is got to be terrifying to be honest with you I mean no doubt I mean I remember when I was driving on an interstate for the first time and my whole family was in the car with me that was terrible it was a stick shift I mean good grief I could have got us killed it was terrible anyways listen good question this is the valvaline DIY question of the week from high mileage rides that need that thick anti-ware film to newer engines that have carbon buildup head over to valetan.com slash dale to find the product spec for your engine hey everybody ask junior presented by nationwide cranking up again on youtube what's up at dirty moo media uh leah they got some great questions pouring in yeah we have a lot of questions um obviously revolving around the fight topic yep that's kind of going on so mandy rodinch wants to know i don't ever recall seeing you in a post race fight. Did it ever happen? If so, when, where, and who?

I don't know. Mike's laughing. Why are you laughing, Mike? I was going to make a joke because he got his ass kicked every time, but that's not true. He actually didn't fight. I was just a joke. I was going to joke. That's not a joke. It was kind of a real whole thing. You would never get in a fight. You never got to fight. I remember some dust-ups. I remember some Mark-B-B-Bark-Bark-Markins. Chirpins. Cherpins. You and Denny did one time. Yeah. Did we? Yeah, after the shootout? Yeah, you wrecked him. That happens.

I wrecked any? Yeah. Don't you remember? No. Yeah. You always forget when you wreck people, but you never forget when you get wrecked. Oh, man. Yeah, I don't, I really, like I'm thinking back, street stock days, late model days.

I never gotten a punching match with anybody. But didn't you have like the cops or something coming after you after a late model race? What is that story? Was that a fight? Yeah, no, it wasn't a fight. That was at Hickory, and we were running a late model race, and they said, this is a long conversation. It's a long, long story, but it wasn't a fight.

It wasn't a fight. We just sort of got in a little trouble. You ought to leave it at that so we can. We need to use that. Yeah, we'll tell that story another day, and we've got a little more time. But, yeah, I haven't ever been in a physical. altercation that I can remember at the racetrack. Yeah, he's right. Yeah.

I mean, you're racing in Darlington. Oh man, would that not be perfect? That would be awesome. Bill Jr. goes out. That would not be awesome. It's a technicality yet. No, I'm going, I don't. Still racing. You know what? I think about like, you know, when I get out on the racetrack and I get out of the car and I'm pissed off, I'm thinking about what would I do that would piss off or embarrass my mother? And if it's on that list, I'm not doing it.

So, and especially, it could be the very last race. I ever run. I'm not going to end my entire career. I'm going to book in my career with a damn fight on pit road. Yeah, I'm pulling for it. All right, one more fight related question before we move on. What's the best fight between drivers that the fans never got to see or hear about? I mean, obviously, I think when Stewart went into the hauler and supposedly might have punched Kurt Busch at Daytona. They had a little dust up in practice, I believe. I remember that. And so I would, you know, that's the question. I think what has happened in that hauler that we don't know about?

We'll never know about. We even try to push Stewart to tell us a little bit about what happened that particular time in the hauler at Daytona with Kurt Bush. And he didn't go into detail, wouldn't go into detail about it. He did say that there was some physical contact that he might have punched Kurt. You know, those things, I get, you know, oh, I just remember. I was in a fight. Oh. In the holler.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. We've talked about that one. Right. Yeah. No, with Tony's crew chief. Yeah. Okay.

Zippy. Did y'all swing? It wasn't Zippy. It was way before Zippy. It was way before Zippy. Yeah. Drag Zippy into this. Zippy's going to be coming.

You're like, hey, what fight were we in? It's coming, bud. I don't even know. I don't remember this guy's name. He was Tony's crew chief when he's in his first season in Xfinity and, and, uh, it was, I don't even think he, I punched the guy, but, We were wrestling and shirts got, you know, ripped off shirts. It was pretty, it was pretty, that's as close as I ever came to be in there.

So you threw a punch, but it was more like Spencer Gallagher, John West Townley, is what you're saying. That ended up being sort of like that. It was a little bit like that. In the hallway of the NASCAR hauler. You know what happens? Like, so you would think that when you, you would think, hey, man, the haulers are like the principal's office. Right. When you go in there, you set your ass down and you don't say a word.

but it's weird. Like when you go in there and the other driver or whoever else you're having this confrontation with comes in there, it's like, oh, I can beat his ass or I can do whatever I want. Nobody can see it. Nobody can stop it,

but the officials that might be in there and you feel, I don't know, it's more likely to be a fight in that space than it would be either on pit road on the racetrack, in the garage. For some reason, when you go in that holler,

you just feel like you can unleash. Does that make any sense? Well, I would expect you to feel that way. That would be cool. That's what those doors are. They don't let people in there for any other reason. Yeah. So you can air out your differences.

Yeah. Right? And sometimes you just come unglued. You stay glued until you get into the holler. Then you get to holler and you come unglued. It seems like it'd be the other way around, right? But it's not. You go in there and you're like,

Oh, I'm going to do it. it now, you know, here it comes. There you. I wish I had seen Blisk at the black eye from Gordon that supposedly happened at the airport. Okay, yeah. There's another one we don't know the whole story. Interesting. Been a lot of those a bit.

Keith Aikinson writes in and he said the All-Star qualifying race was fantastic and a blast to watch. What do you think if NASCAR did that every week? 20 laps where he finishes where you start. Do it in two groups. I don't know. Like every week at Pocono or Dover or Sonoma, like 20-lap segments, boom, boom, boom, hammer it out. I don't know. I don't think I'm pretty good with the All-Star Race being...

See, the great thing about the All-Star Race, and we read it in our odd history from last week, when they're trying to come up with these rules, even back in the 80s, for the All-Star Race, they said, hey, this race needs to be different than anything else. It needs to have components and a unique format and profile that no other race has. And so I think if you take this template and apply it to every other race, then the All-Star race loses its uniqueness and the equity that you have built up in it. So I think you've got to leave that kind of stuff where it belongs. And that's an All-Star race.

Dale Hall wants to know if you could start a four-car cup team using past or present drivers, who would you pick? Four-car cut team. with past or present drivers, you definitely have to have Dale Earnhardt in there. I probably want to put Kell Yarbril on my team. David Pearson

would probably be on my team as well. And I think the fourth driver, boy, I'm going to probably make this decision then change it every five minutes for the rest of the day. But I mean, it'd be like Jeff Gordon,

probably have Jeff in there, Jimmy. I mean, there's a lot of guys, but the top three for me would be Dad, Yarborough, Pearson, and then probably Gordon would be the fourth. Is that? Yeah. Am I break any rules there? Oh, there ain't no rules.

No rules. It's your show. You do what you want. Dale Burke once know, what's the most surprising thing about Isla that you didn't expect? I guess the most surprising thing about being a dad or Isla that I didn't expect was the worry, the constant worry. So I already have like real bad anxiety and I've sort of always dealt with, you know, being super shy and really nervous going into a lot of situations. So I already have this heavy sort of layer of anxiety all the time.

And then you got this little girl that like yesterday, all right, we go to this, we go to a brewery and Amy's having a glass of. of champagne and I'm sitting there watching Ila and at this brewery there's a the patio is gravel and Ila is trying to eat the rocks and so I'm sitting there thinking god man I you know every five seconds I've got to watch her and she's trying to eat the rocks and you tell her no and she don't know you know she's trying to eat more rocks and so I spent two hours like you know freaking out about like her eating or swallowing a rock and I'm I'm Googling on my phone like what if baby eats rock what did it say oh man it's like you know no it's like you got to stay after them you got like what I was doing was what I should be doing and that's basically following her everywhere she goes and you know as long as she'd let me hold her I would and then you know when she wants to get down and walk around a little bit you got to let her do that and then when she tries to eat a rock you got to be there to stop her and so So, you know, I didn't drinking beer or anything and just sit there and try to keep Ila from swallowing a rock for two and a half hours. And I did not.

So the most surprising thing about being a dad or Ila is the added worry of her being safe all freaking day. And I didn't know. You know, everybody tells you all kinds of advice. about, oh, man, this is how you're going to, you got to get them on the nap schedule. You've got to get them on a food schedule. You've got to do this and that and the other and buy this trash can. Everybody's got all kinds of advice. Nobody ever says you're going to worry to freaking death now.

Nobody ever tells you about the worry. Nobody ever tells you that you're going to be paranoid 90% of the time. Did you ever go on like a spring break trip with your buddies in high school or anything like that? Did you, Matthew? Spring break? No. No? I'm a dork.

I went to race. Can you imagine sending your kid? No. Like, like you think about worry. I don't even, I can't imagine. I can't even, it doesn't give me any anxiety even thinking about that because I can't even comprehend how that would be. Just we were talking about driving, learning how to drive and stuff like that. And I can't imagine her pulling out the driveway for the first time.

You know, you got a car. you got a license, you're free to go. Just be home by X. I can't, I can't, I can't, I know that I'm not going to be able to do anything that I want to do because I'm going to be sitting there worried about what she's doing. Yeah. And you damn right, I'm going to have some GPS on that car. Yeah.

Yeah. That part is the most surprising part. Nobody ever, so to all the new parents out there, everybody who's expecting, your ass is getting ready to have a huge dose of anxiety that does not go away no matter what. It is there all day, all night. It's just ridiculous. So I was already a worry ward, and now it is off the charts. All right, guys.

I think that's all we have time for today. Appreciate everybody for tuning in to Ash Jr., presented by Nationwide. Remember to follow all of our social media handles at Dirty Mo Media, our YouTube channel, Twitter, Instagram. Don't forget to watch the show on NBCSN. White flag right there, white flag. All right, let's read some Apple iTunes reviews from the past week's cool hand. Zero, 087 says this podcast is like butter for your ears.

It's always entertaining and makes my ride into work just or just chilling at home an easy feeling time. So Connell 324 says stumbled across this podcast after my brother shared you and Clint's shotgunning beers on Twitter. You Shotgunning Beers is evangelizing the podcast. So you should do more of it. More of it. I definitely need to do a redo because I was obviously, I obviously forgot that when you shotgun a beer that that is a fast activity. No, you're just fine.

You're enjoying that. I definitely could do it a little quicker. Typical damage. All right. Well, listen. I just was like, yeah, there's nobody around. I'm just, I slowed down drinking my beer here. You had no idea that you were turning somebody onto a podcast by doing it, though, right?

He says, I grew up watching NASCAR in the 90s with my dad and brother. Now he texts back and forth about. the podcast throughout the week. Thank you for reconnecting us all. Op.070593, a lot of numbers in his name. I love the podcast. I listen to it when I drive my semi. I want a dirty-mo racing sticker to put on my racing cards.

M-TU-JRL says I never was a junior fan, but I also never appreciated what a genuine forthright caring man that he is. He's won me over. And P.S., hats off to you, Kelly Earnhardt Miller. It takes a special relationship for a sister to join her brother at military school. Dang right. And lastly, listen, there's a bunch of people, a bunch of people who are still commenting about the gold that was John Force and also the gold that was Richard Childress.

So to everyone who enjoyed those episodes, thank you for the comments. We read them all. Just can't read them all here. But yeah, John Forst still getting a lot of traction on the ratings and reviews on Apple iTunes show page. Dale, a couple upcoming things in your calendar. You will be visiting nationwide children's hospital this week. That's always a good time going up there, checking that out. Next week, you have a speaking engagement at the Ohio State Brain and Health and Performance Summit.

That'll be fun. I know you enjoy that. On June 8th, you will be doing an autograph session at the Cabellas in Greenville, South Carolina, on behalf of True Timber. And lastly, thanks to all our sponsors this week. And also to our friends at Cadence 13 for all that, all the work you do, and that's it. All right, since I just got back from the Indy 500, I got a little odd history from Indianapolis. Listen, this one's hard to believe. I would say that even though it's said to be true,

you're still not believing it? I don't believe it. I do not believe that this happened. Okay, let's hear it. Maybe some of our listeners can get us some factual evidence. On the final day of qualifying for the 1978 ND500, USAC officials told Jim Hurtabee, he wouldn't be allowed to make a qualifying attempt because he hadn't gone fast enough in practice. Herdaby was enraged by this because there was no rule requiring a certain minimum speed.

During a track cleanup period, he climbed in Bob Harky's car and refused to get out, claiming if I can't qualify, nobody can. He was convinced to get out of the car but stood in front of it when it was Harky's turn to qualify. When Harkie was on the backstretch on his warm-up lap, Herdby walked on to the front stretch in one last protest before being tackled and led away by police. He was banned from the speedway for the rest of the event. And I'm surprised if this really happened. He wasn't banned for life for all these crazy things.

And I've heard this guy's a respectable racer. Yeah. Jim Herderby's. Yeah. I mean, he's ran Daytona, stock cars and late on a sportsman cup, all that stuff. He was pissed. He was a, he's not some random back marker. This is a, this is crazy.

I've never heard. I know, I think I've heard everything, but then you read this. Shot in the dark here. Is her to be still alive? Do we know that? I think he is. If so, we'll get him and verify this. Jim, if you're listening and you're still alive, I apologize.

Call us. Oh, bummer. Did he get run over? Did he die by a, no, that's just a bad joke. I know. Hey, I backed her down. I backed her down before. I just can't believe it.

Well, so you can't believe that somebody, not, did he would go to the length at all he says he, they say he did. Is this, I just feel. This one could be embellished. But, hey, who am I to refute it? Well, listen, let's get some verification here. Matthew Dillner is sort of like a rain man for this kind of stuff. I'm sure we're going to get plenty of it. Once our entire listeners get a hold of this podcast.

All right. Good show, guys. Yeah, awesome. A lot of fun, man. Stone cold. Y'all ready to go wrestle? You all feel like you got body slam or not? Anybody want to rassel right now?

Rassel. Let's go wrestling. All right, good stuff. This bit of bad assery was made by Dirtymo Media. Dirtymo!