WWE Hall Of Famer Ted DiBiase recently did an interview with The Mirror to talk about fellow WWE Hall Of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin’s career. Here are the highlights:
Getting to work with Stone Cold Steve Austin early in his career: “I did make ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin the Million Dollar Champion on Raw. You know I saw the talent in Steve and I remember telling him – because a lot of people were telling him ‘You need to do more’ – I remember telling him, ‘Don’t do anything different, because what you do is believable, it’s real.’ And I said ‘That’s what I’ve always tried to sell is real.’ I said ‘It will take you a little longer, but once you’re over, you’re over.’ Well nobody knew just how over he would get! It was unbelievable.”
Helping cultivate Austin in WWE: “Yeah, well, I was just that rub. It’s kind of like in the movies, they see a potential great young actor and they put him in a movie as a co-star to an A-list guy and that helps elevate them. That’s what they did with Steve and I happened to be an A-list guy at the time. So I was just the right guy at the right place, at the right time.”
Austin’s Stone Cold character exceeding WWE’s expectations: “I think he exceeded everybody’s expectations, I really do. What’s funny is you know everybody is talking about how we’re now a PG program. I think that’s great, because I’m a minister now and I have been for a long time, so I was not a big fan of the Attitude Era. There were some things they did that were very funny and that was great, but I was never a fan of the sleazy stuff. What’s funny is, I was part of a panel, Steve and I, and they said ‘Ted, you have been quoted as saying that you would never allow your son’s hero to be a beer guzzling, swearing, finger-flipping wrestler’. I said ‘exactly, I still believe that today’. Steve was sitting by me and he looked at me and said ‘That’s the same thing my mother said!'”
You can read DiBiase’s full interview with The Mirror by clicking this link here.
