Steve Austin Isn't Thrilled With WWE's WrestleMania Plans According to Jim Ross
Steve Austin confirmed this week that he'll be at WrestleMania 38 to confront Kevin Owens on The KO Show for the disparaging comments he's made about Texas. Rumors had been spreading since last month that WWE was trying to get Austin back for a straight-up match, his first since WrestleMania XIX, and Austin flirted with the idea of it being a full-on fight. He said in his announcement video, "Whether you want to call this a KO Show, a match, a fight, a brawl, whatever. I will guarantee you this, in Dallas, Texas, where I started my career at WrestleMania, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin is going to open up one last can of whoopa— on you, Kevin Owens."
Austin has been against WWE's multiple attempts to get him back in the ring over the past 19 years, and on the latest Grillin' JR Jim Ross revealed the conversations he has recently had with Austin about WrestleMania haven't been positive. He said, "He and I have talked, but at the time we talked, he didn't know what he was going to do and he didn't sound overwhelmingly enthusiastic about it. People have to understand that Steve is a perfectionist. Even though he stays in great shape and he looks wonderful, especially for a guy his age, he looks great. He can do a photo shoot and it looks like that can be Steve from any era, but that's the athlete in him. He likes to train, eat right, and all those things.
"If he was going to wrestle at WrestleMania, and this is just me talking, I would suggest that it should have been decided six months ago, not only to build a story to that crescendo in Dallas at WrestleMania, but to give him time to train better and have more peace of mind. You know he's going to handpick his opponent," he continued. "Why wouldn't you let him handpick his opponent? If you're the promoter, all you do is you want him on the card so he will sell tickets or pay-per-views. I don't have a lot of optimism for it. I don't want to be a negative nelly, but he's not going to do it unless he thinks he can pull it off as something perfect, and I don't know that he can do that even in my mind or his mind with only a few weeks to prepare for it.
Ross concluded on a somewhat optimistic note — "It all can change by the time people hear this. It could be the biggest announcement of the day, the trending news of the day, I have no idea, but I know him, and he doesn't like surprises. He likes to prepare, and if anything, over prepare because he always wants to give the fans their money's worth. He's got a legacy that he's built around the Stone Cold brand that he's not going to purposely, or by his own hand, make himself look bad, and I don't blame him."