Its strange to think about now, but for a period Austin went way off the rails and was an absolute nightmare to deal with. His instability is so notorious in fact that his transgressions actually became a subject of discussion in his recent podcast interview with Vinny Mac. It was in 2002 that Austin had a particularly trying time and lost his way travelling the stable highway. He was arrested for domestic assault, repeatedly no showed WWE events, and caused all kinds of headaches for WWE creative in refusing to job to a young Brock Lesnar who the Fed were trying to push to the moon. He ended up bailing on the WWE for a period of months over this issue as he felt that Lesnar hadnt earned the right to beat someone of his stature. And while he might have a point, Brock Lesnar wasnt just a regular rookie he was a future franchise player for the WWE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVicVOH6jXA#t=4m32s Even when he begrudgingly solved his differences with the WWE and returned at the end of 2002, he was still an absolute mess in his real life. The WWE documentary The Mania of Wrestlemania chronicles Austins crumbling mental and physical health on the eve of Wrestlemania XIX which would be his final match. Austin was struggling with everything so badly he eventually ended up hospitalised and there was panic not just about his inability to show up at the biggest show of the year the next night, but initially whether or not he would even survive the night. Plagued with personal problems and a litany of injury problems, the last couple of years of Austins career reveal a very different rattlesnake than that which is normally presented to us on the WWE network, or on his own show.
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