10 Most Radical Wrestler Attitude Adjustments
4. Stone Cold Steve Austin
‘The Rattlesnake’ cemented his legacy as an uncompromising a*s-kicker opposing malevolent company owner Vince McMahon as WWE soared to unparalleled highs on the strength of their conflict. Such creative satisfaction was a high capable of fuelling Stone Cold Steve Austin’s broken body at the time, but the need for mental and physical rehabilitation was his ultimate undoing.
Austin has since admitted just how burnt out he was on the two occasions he simply removed himself from the product in 2002, but the second of his departures in June that year triggered a chain of events that forever stained the incredible body of work he’d amassed with the company in a relatively short space of time.
Austin’s walk-out brought out the worst in Vince McMahon; a night one “Love It Or Leave It” address from The Rock was his first response, but a ‘Confidential’ hatchet piece on Austin’s fragile state was even more scathing. “Taking your ball and going home” entered heel vernacular for the rest of the year until Austin put his toys back in the pram just under a year later. Wounds were healed enough, but Stone Cold himself has since shown enormous contrition for the way he behaved.