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Steve Austin Praises The Rock For Making Stone Cold Stunner Look Great

By John Canton • Published 17th March 2023
steve austin stunner the rock

Steve Austin had some good things to say about The Rock while reminiscing about who sold the “Stone Cold Stunner” move the best…and the worst.

There are many wrestling fans out there that might think of the Stone Cold Stunner as their favorite finisher because of how cool it looked. It’s a move that Austin started using during his rise as “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

The move sees Austin hook his right arm around the head of his opponent, then Austin drops down to his butt and the “stunner” part of the move is his opponents head/neck smashing into the shoulder/arm of Austin. It looks cool and the fans will always love it as we see in present-day WWE with Kevin Owens using the Stunner as a finisher.

Over the last 25+ years, many people have done a great job of selling the Stunner. Sometimes people would jump up and bump on their backs. Scott Hall at WrestleMania 18 comes to mind. At other times, people didn’t sell it well at all as they just crumbled to the mat. Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 38 comes to mind for that one.

When it comes to the best selling of the Stone Cold Stunner, a lot of people mention Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Shane McMahon. They both went really over the top with it, but that’s also what makes it so entertaining.

Steve Austin was on the Up Up Down Down WWE 2K23 video game YouTube stream where he reminisced about his career. Austin credited the Rock for doing a great job of taking while also taking a shot at Vince McMahon for doing it poorly last year.

“I love the reaction that The Rock would do. Razor took a good one, but it was all like an individual thing. Vince, I mean, he wasn’t even in the top 100. That last one at 38, when we botched that one, I just got up and started laughing because when you blow something that bad, everybody knows what’s up, so you might as well let them all in right off the get go.”

“There’s been a bunch of good ones. There’s been so many. It’s hard to remember, but I just remember Rock really putting the Hollywood in it. He put the oversell into it, but that oversell matched the moment and magnified the story that we were telling. We fed off each other. We were like Frick and Frack out there.”

In 2017, The Rock tweeted about how he would bet cases of beer with Steve Austin about how well he could sell The Stunner.

If you need a reminder of how well The Rock sold that Stone Cold Stunner for his buddy Steve Austin, the GIF below should be a nice reminder of how epic it was.