Steve Austin is still Steve Austin.
WrestleMania 38 will always be remembered for hosting the final match in the career of Stone Cold Steve Austin. After almost 20 years, Steve Austin had an official wrestling match at WrestleMania 38 against Kevin Owens and he could still play the hits, and take a hit, as good as ever.
Backstage at WrestleMania, as is usually the case, several of Steve's contemporaries, were backstage at WrestleMania. Some of them, like The Undertaker and Triple H, were celebrating their own goodbyes in professional wrestling and some, like Kurt Angle, were reconnecting and reminiscing on days gone by.
Stone Cold Steve Austin and Kurt Angle had one of Kurt Angle's first major rivalries and one of Steve Austin's last. Therefore, when Kurt Angle saw Steve Austin backstage at WrestleMania getting ready for his match, as Steve would in the good old days, he was conflicted on whether or not to approach him.
Kurt Angle's wife, Giovanna, described the backstage interaction between Kurt Angle and Stone Cold Steve Austin on the most recent episode of The Wives of Wrestling podcast.
“Everybody kept coming up to Steve because he kept going back and forth,” said Giovanna. “[Kurt] felt weird about it for a second, because, he said he was getting flashbacks. You don't go up to people while they're getting ready for their match. But he felt like, ‘Damn, am I being disrespectful [by not going up to him]?’ He didn't want that. So he went up to him and Kurt came back and I was like, ‘Oh, how did it go?’ He was like, ‘Steve was Steve.’"
Kim Orton, the wife of Randy Orton, also spoke about seeing Steve Austin pacing in the gorilla position.
“He was in the zone,” said Kim. “I saw him, too, just pissing in front of gorilla. He was just pacing.”
Giovanna said that Kurt Angle was really into what he was seeing and it took him back to the days of Steve Austin in his prime and what he remembered going up against in the ring.
“He said something like, ‘Steve was happy to see me and he knows that he's the man.’ Kurt was like, ‘I dig it. That's the Steve I know. God, he looks so good and he's going to knock the crowd out.’ Whenever I came back to Kurt, he was in a golf cart and he was like, ‘[Steve Austin is] a wrestling god,’ that's all he could say. ‘He's a wrestling God and He will always be one.’”
The next night on WrestleMania Sunday, Stone Cold Steve Austin also closed the chapter on his rivalry with Vince McMahon by delivering a WrestleMania Stunner that fans will never forget.
Kurt Angle recently revealed that he is having both knees replaced. Learn more about that here.
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