What’s the story?
“Stone Cold” Steven Austin did an interview as part of Entertainment Tonight’s “Under the Influence” series, and as part of that, he had some criticism for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s role at WrestleMania 32.
In fact, he called the Rock out in a question referring to the “lamest thing (he) ever saw the Rock do.”
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“I gotta call him out on this one, you’re going to love this,” he told host Sophie Schillaci. “His segment just lasted for about 30 minutes, and you could just feel the energy drain out of about 100,000 people.”
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In the interest of full disclosure, Stone Cold never specifically said that which Rock segment he was talking about. But given the details, it’s hard to think of another one that would fit the bill. He did, however, make sure to compliment The Rock as one of the top guys he shared the ring with as well as one of the entertainment industry’s biggest stars right now.
“But that one time, Rock, you didn’t know when to go home, and you should have,” he said.
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The Rock appeared late in the show at last year’s WrestleMania, mainly to announce the record-breaking attendance at the event of more than 101,000. This was after quite the showy entrance including cheerleaders and a flamethrower.
After that announcement, the Wyatt family appeared to challenge The Rock to a match which manifested itself in a 7-second squash match with Erick Rowan. Following that, he was surrounded by the rest of the Wyatts and got assistance from John Cena to clear the ring.
The heart of the matter
The interview had a very interesting format that probably led to Stone Cold giving such an answer.
Both Austin and Schillaci had a bottle of his Broken Skull IPA in front of them, and for every question he answered, the host had to take a drink. For every question he chose not to answer, Austin had to take a drink.
Not that Stone Cold has ever been one to shy away from taking a drink, but he was clearly not going to dodge such a silly question in a competitive set-up.
What’s next?
There probably won’t be much made of this, given the circumstances. Austin has never been one to hold back, whether he’s being interviewed by someone else or he’s doing the interviewing on his own podcast.
In fact, it’s likely that The Rock was already aware that his segment fell a little flat. At most, we’ll get a response from The Rock if Schillaci or another interviewer thinks to ask him a similar question.
Sportskeeda’s take
In all honesty, that segment was kind of terrible. Sure, The Rock made perfect sense to be the guy to make the big attendance announcement, but his long entrance was over-the-top from the get-go for someone who didn’t have a match.
Then, the last thing the Wyatts needed was to get squashed by the Rock and Cena, who wasn’t even fully recovered from an injury at the time. All in all, the appearance took too long and definitely hurt the energy of a show that badly needed it given how long it was.
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