Steve Austin Teases One More Match At WrestleMania 40
WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin ended his nineteen-year retirement at WrestleMania 38 when he squared off with Kevin Owens but another bout could be in The Texas Rattlesnake’s future.
Austin hadn’t competed since WrestleMania 19 in 2003 when he lost to The Rock when he was scheduled to be a part of The Kevin Owens Show at WrestleMania 38. The real reason for the segment soon became apparent as Owens challenged Austin to a match that the veteran gamely accepted.
The two men brawled around the AT&T Stadium in a fun bout which ultimately saw Steve Austin pick up the sixth WrestleMania win of his career.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Steve Austin explained how filming for his new show kept him from a major match at WrestleMania 39 but he isn’t ruling out one more outing on the grandest stage of them all in 2024:
“I could. I’m not necessarily going to lobby for one because that would be silly. That’s a year away, but a year away in this business is like that [clicks fingers]. They asked me to be a part of 39, they really did, but I couldn’t do it, just because there is no way.
“I knew what my life was going to look like due to the filming schedule of the show. We had some internal stop downs where the show took about 5 months to film, that’s a long time. We finished filming about 5 to 7 days before WrestleMania 39. And the position that they were going to put me in, which was a big one, you can’t prepare for WrestleMania and do yourself justice or do that crowd justice.
“Dallas was set up for a Stone Cold return, and the way we framed that with KO, who I love, was perfect for the time and setting. For this match to play out, I needed to perform at a high level. I didn’t work out before 38, I haven’t thrown a working punch in 19 years. I was killing KO right there, I truly was, ask him.
“When we got to the back I said, ‘Man, I can’t believe you didn’t throw a receipt.’ And he just laughed because his job was to just take care of me. So anyway, in the future, I am not lobbying for it, but could anything happen? Yes. Because I say never say never.”
Austin previously noted that WWE’s pitch to him for WrestleMania 39 was to face “one of the top guys in the business” but he stopped short of confirming exactly who that was.