Steve Austin on Roman Reigns and Being a Role Model

OH CENSORED YEAH! If you’re a big time wrestling fan, odds are you’ve heard of the “Steve Austin Show”. Austin was one of the first big name wrestlers to have his own podcast and has been going strong for years now. Sometimes he’ll pop up on other shows as well, including a recent appearance on one of the newer wrestling podcasts.

Austin recently appeared on Lillian Garcia’s “Making Their Way to the Ring” and discussed a variety of things in a nearly two hour episode. One of the bigger topics was Roman Reigns, who Austin has been a fan of for a long time. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some criticisms of Reigns though, which he discussed on the show. Here are some highlights with transcription courtesy of Wrestlinginc.com:

“I think Roman Reigns is going to be a big star — he’s a star right now, but he’s going to be a big star if he just keeps going down the road that he’s going and he’s going to figure it all out he’s not necessarily just a natural to the business, but he’s very very good and he’s only going to get better.” “…I think he’s doing fine now and I’ve been watching. You know some of the story lines haven’t been so good and you know when you gotta shove someone down peoples throats they gotta get a gut full of it sometimes and they got a gut full of it because you know maybe some of the lines that they had written for him weren’t the greatest ones.

“’I’m not a bad guy, I’m not a good guy, I’m the guy’, kinda corny, but if you watch and you did Payback when the main event with him and Braun Strowman those guys crushed it and Roman Reigns getting beat 1, 2, 3 and then the steel chairs into his chest, he’s spitting up blood, well people watching the business these days they’re watching what the guys are doing and then they’re thinking about the writing.”

And on being a role model:

“Man, its pretty cool, I get a lot of emails to you know my email address for my podcast and man, literally a couple every week about people that I affected, or they got to live vicariously through the actions of Stone Cold Steve Austin, and you know whether it was like I don’t know just eating disorders or being bullied, just you know single parent households, or some people just lived in a home, but for some reason they found strength in that Stone Cold Steve Austin character, man it’s very flattering

“…and you know I worked my tail off to be successful and what I chose to do with my life —which was professional wrestling, and I had so much fun doing it, and the fact that I could really make a change, or inspire somebody, or give somebody strength, courage, whatever you want to call it, it’s really, really cool and I’m very proud of that, and while you’re doing it you know, I’m not driving down the road thinking okay you know how am I impacting people’s lives here

“…you know I just kicked the crap out of Vince tonight you know maybe someone who’s not doing so well somewhere will see that and have a smile on their face, I’m not, you’re not thinking about that. It’s all these years later you get these emails from people that were watching you ten, fifteen, twenty years ago and they found strength through me or some of the other WWE characters or whoever it was in their life so it’s really cool to be able to do that.”

Here’s the full interview:

'Stone Cold' Steve Austin Interview | Lilian Garcia: Making Their Way To The Ring

Opinion: Austin is one of the better voices to listen to because no one has been out there and done the kind of things that he’s done. He was around for the territory days, the Monday Night Wars and a little of the WWE era so he’s certainly been around long enough to know what he’s talking about. He makes some fair criticisms of Reigns here and knows the talent is there, which a lot of people overlook.

What do you think of Reigns? Do you listen to Austin’s podcast? Let us know in the comments below.