WWE: How Steve Austin Got Donald Trump To Take A Stone Cold Stunner

Before he was well on his way to being President of the United States, Donald Trump was a frequent […]

September 5, 2017, 9:25pm

Before he was well on his way to being President of the United States, Donald Trump was a frequent guest on Monday Night RAW, where he was at odds with Vince McMahon over control of the company.

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Thier back and forth resulted in a match at WrestleMania 23, where the representatives of both Vince and Donald faced off. Trump came out the victor, but he ended up taking a Stone Cold Stunner as a result of it. In a recent interview with Complex (via SEScoops), Austin recalled the events that led up the Stunner, and how they got Trump to do it in the first place.

“Vince says to me, ‘Steve, I’m going to see if I can get Donald to take the Stunner. I said, ‘you think?’ He says, ‘Oh yeah, it’ll be great, it’ll be great,’” Austin recalled. “[Vince] goes up to Donald and says, ‘Hey Donald, this is Stone Cold Steve Austin.’ I shook Donald’s hand. He goes, ‘Listen, I want to know if after the match, when everything is done, if Steve could hit the Stone Cold Stunner on you.’ Donald says, ‘You think it’d be a good thing?’ and Vince goes, ‘Oh, of course it would be. It would just blow the roof off the place.’ And Donald’s right hand guy was saying, ‘No, no, no! You don’t need to do this, we got other things to do!’ He’s trying to talk him out of it. And Donald says to Vince, ‘You think it’ll help?’ and Vince goes, ‘I promise you it’ll help.’ And Donald says, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’”

There’s an art to selling in WWE, and it’s a delicate balance of doing enough of it to sell the move but not too much to make it look comical. Trump’s selling job was somewhere in the middle, and Austin appreciated the job he did.

“It wasn’t a picture-perfect stunner, but I give Donald Trump a hell of a lot of credit for being a man,” Austin said. “He was a stand-up guy, he was there to do business and we did business, so I respect the man for that. If I see him giving a speech on the TV, I don’t think, ‘Hey, I gave this guy a stunner.’ We were doing business and we did business. The fact that he is going to be the next President of the United States, it’s a hell of a story.”

Not many wrestlers can say they gave the future President a Stunner in the ring, and Austin can sleep tight knowing it’s probably not going to happen again in the near future.