With the “Corporation” banned at ringside and Mick Foley acting as the special guest referee, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin dethroned The Rock to win the WWF Championship in the ‘No Disqualification’ main event at WrestleMania 15.
On the latest episode of his Monday Mailbag podcast, the longest-tenured referee in WWE history, Mike Chioda, declared that the crowd pop during the WrestleMania 15 main event is still the biggest audience reaction he has ever experienced. He said,
“The one pop that stood out is when I did … it was Rock and Stone Cold [Steve Austin] at WrestleMania [15]. First 10 minutes of the match and I got hit by a steel chair, and that’s when Stone Cold swings the chair at me. Oh my God, in Philly, and I was like, ‘Bring it, man, just make it look good,’ and he brought it. But I remember the pop when he came out and just being out there. The pop was so huge in Philly.”
“Chioda said that the response wasn’t unexpected, as Austin could elicit audience excitement like no one else during his heyday. “When I always say [Hulk] Hogan and Rock got that huge pop with 68,000 people in the SkyDome [at WrestleMania 18], yeah, I get it — it’s all that. But every night, day in and day out, every week, when Stone Cold came out and that f**king glass used to break, when the music would start and the glass would break, man, the people would just come unglued off their seats. It was just like, ‘Woah, what the f?’ I mean, come unglued!”
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