10 Wrestling Stunts Which Nearly Went Very Wrong

5. Steve Austin's Monster Truck Challenge

Gangrel Being Choked
WWE.com

In 1999, at the very apex of WWE's Attitude era, Steve Austin was a rolling juggernaut - and it'd take one coming the other way to stop him. That nearly happened in a very literal and very scary sense on the 19 April episode of Monday Night Raw, when an incident of automotive inactivity nearly left Stone Cold, well, stone cold.

Late '90s WWE was a carousel of iconic moments, and this early spring edition's needed Austin to crumple his WrestleMania XV opponent The Rock's luxury limo - with a 12,000 lb, 1800 horsepower monster truck. Taming the behemoth was no issue: as he explained on The Steve Austin Show, the Bionic Redneck "don't give a sh*t what it is, I can drive it." Rather, it was the truck's ozone eroding exhausts which very nearly stiffened Stunning Steve.

"So, I’m in this room and they shut the door behind me," remembered Austin on his Stone Cold Podcast. "It was about a three minute commercial break, so the whole time the people back home are watching commercials, I’m in a room, inside a truck, breathing methanol/alcohol fumes – I could barely breathe.

"If they hadn’t have cued me when they did – I was about to die."

Ironically, The Rock had been hosting a mock 'funeral' for Austin throughout the episode, having declared the Texas Rattlesnake legally dead after throwing him off a bridge. A few moments longer, and The Great One may have had to eulogise him for real.

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Editorial Team
Editorial Team

Benjamin was born in 1987, and is still not dead. He variously enjoys classical music, old-school adventure games (they're not dead), and walks on the beach (albeit short - asthma, you know). He's currently trying to compile a comprehensive history of video game music, yet denies accusations that he purposefully targets niche audiences. He's often wrong about these things.