WWE News: Shane McMahon talks about Steve Austin leaving in 2002

What’s the story?

WWE’s Shane McMahon has spoken about when Steve Austin ‘took his ball and went home’ way back in 2002, as reported by Wrestling Inc. The comments from Shane came during his appearance on the Stone Cold Podcast, during which he gave his opinion on a number of wrestling-based issues both past and present.

In case you didn’t know...

Well over a decade ago, Stone Cold was on the verge of beginning a feud with The Next Big Thing, Brock Lesnar. As things were starting to progress on television, Vince wanted Austin to lose to Brock on an episode of SmackDown, but the Texas Rattlesnake took exception to the idea.

Austin would eventually leave the company for a few months, leading to the company poking fun at him on the weekly product.

The heart of the matter

Shane revealed how the WWE and he felt when Austin left the company.

"[Austin was] the guy that was drawing the houses and everything was built around [Austin]. So when you have that much equity at stake and you have your number one player in there and that's the one who draws money all of a sudden say, 'I'm out,' well, it's very devastating, obviously, to everyone else underneath and everyone felt it, just like, 'wow', so [Austin] specifically, you let a lot of people down," said Shane McMahon in Stone Cold’s podcast.

The junior McMahon went on to talk about how Vince felt personally let down by Austin, who has spoken of his regret in the years since the incident.

What’s next?

Shane will continue to serve as the face of SmackDown Live, at least whilst Daniel Bryan is busy with fatherhood. Going forward, it’s not yet known if Shane will wrestle again, however, given the great shape he’s in it does seem likely.

Austin will continue to put out top quality podcasts, but we’ll have to wait and see whether they manage to make it to the WWE Network again.

Author’s take

Aside from the fact that Austin seems to have a fetish when it comes to talking about this story, it was interesting to hear Shane be so blunt and up front about it.

He’s always been a guy who has never been afraid of holding back when it comes to saying what he feels, but that seems to have intensified even further as of late.