8 Times Wrestlers Refused To Work With Each Other
5. Stone Cold Steve Austin & Billy Gunn
The guy with the long blonde hair getting short shrift from the guy with the bald hair and goatee again, is it?
There must have been something in the water at the time, because Stone Cold Steve Austin was about as happy to be sharing airtime with Billy Gunn as Goldberg was Chris Jericho. Looking to figure out who his hit-and-run assailant from the prior year when he returned in the year 2000 to kind of spoil all the fun, Austin destroyed just about everybody in his path, whether they were heel or babyface, actual suspect or completely disconnected jobber. A smart call for 'The Rattlesnake', but not so great for wrestlers that had done just fine getting over in the hyper-functional WWE that existed in his absence. A year later, and Austin's paranoia was just another part of his gimmick during one of the many experimental phases of his heel turn. Here though, he was just cutting knees off for the sake of it, and Billy Gunn was just about the last guy that needed that.
The two former King Of The Rings came face to face on October 2nd 2000 edition of Raw, where the former D-Generation X man made his first appearance on television since February. A fantasy booked suspect for the entire time he'd been away (he was left out of the picture when Austin got ran down by the car to one day arrive at this very moment, red herring or otherwise), Gunn gave Austin loads of valuable intel about the situation before taking a Stunner like every other ham-and-egger tat had crossed the 'Bionic Redneck's path. The rationale? Austin "didn't like him anyway".
The work didn't stray too far from the shoot, as it turned out. Austin squashed any main event aura Gunn might have had in one segment, making real the whispered (at the time) apocrypha that he didn't believe 'Mr Ass' had what it took to carry a feud between the two.