Steve Austin was at the center of multiple reports on Monday night, as both Fightful Select and PWInsider reported WWE had recently reached out to “Stone Cold” to see if he could be involved in a match at WrestleMania 38 in his home state of Texas. Neither report said anything had been agreed to, though Sean Ross Sapp did note the hypothetical match would be against Kevin Owens who went on an anti-Texas tirade on this week’s edition of Monday Night Raw. Dave Meltzer then gave an update via Wrestling Observer Radio hours later.ย
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“They have a lot of tickets left to sell and the impression I have is the match is on,” Meltzer said. “That’s why he started doing the promos. I know that backstage at WWE all day, that’s all I kept hearing about… I heard it early in the day and I kept checking around and more people were saying they heard the same thing. I don’t know that it’s a done deal but people were talking like it was. The Owens promo was a dead giveaway.”
“I was not told that it was a done deal but people were under the assumption that it was and that promo clearly tells you that they are booking with the idea that it is happening,” he later added. “Kind of unexpected but there you go.”
Meltzer also noted the many times Austin has turned down offers to come back for one more match and couldn’t say for certain why the former WWF Champion wants to do it now at age 57. He talked about hesitating to come back while on Talk Is Jericho last year.ย
“I think Vince [McMahon] tried talking me to coming back a couple times, but you know Chris, I love the business so much,” Austin said at the time. “I love it more than anybody else. I can only speak for myself, but I love the damn business, and it hurt me so much to leave it. And to me, going back for one match, man, why? What am I proving? What are they going to remember? It ain’t about the money. It took me a long time, damn near three years to get over the fact that I left the business.
“If you’re really going to make a comeback, let’s say it was gonna be high-profile match at WrestleMania,” he continued. “Taker, when I talked to him, he trained all year or recovered from having surgery, and then write trained for a three or four month camp to get ready for one match. I would really have to undergo a three or four month camp. I’m one of those guys where I don’t have an addictive personality, but I’m addicted to the wrestling business. All of a sudden, I’m putting in all the hard work and get back to being around the ring, being around the business, that is my number one passions in my life.”
