Today was the return of The Steve Austin Show. After a 6 month hiatus, the show returned with a bang as Steve Austin had the head of All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan. Both men spoke about a variety of topics including, Double Or Nothing, Jon Moxley, AEW on TNT, the Tag Team division being a focus of the T.V. show, the women’s division, and much more. Here are a few highlights of the show from both Austin and Khan.
Both men talk about the match between Dustin and Cody Rhodes with Austin providing his biggest compliment to Khan. Here’s what Austin he said:
“Here’s the biggest compliment I could give you about that Pay-per-view. That was the most emotion I’ve felt about in a professional wrestling match in I don’t know how many years, and I believe, emotion sells tickets… that damn match was special, dude I haven’t felt that much emotion in a long ass time…”
On how the Bret Hart deal came about from Tony Khan:
“I was on the phone with Cody one night, and this was a title segment where my friend Jack Whitehall introduced Bret Hart, The Best there is, The Best there was and the Best there ever will be, came out and Bret is an all-time great legend of wrestling, and the way it happened was Cody and were on the phone one night talking about the segment and he was like, “yeah maybe like Flair or Steamboat? and then I was like, well what about Bret Hart? and Cody said “yeah I love it I love it, yeah it’s great, I could reach out to him, talk to the guy’s let’s see what they think… Cody did reach out to Bret’s agent, they put something together, and I had never met Bret face to face until that night in Vegas, and uh a couple of nights until the show we had dinner together, and, what a great guy, charming, so kind to work with us. A great wrestling champion who encompasses everyone’s love of wrestling and means so much to so many people around the world…”
On Jon Moxley and Steve Austin’s comments about the last podcast he had the former Dean Ambrose on:
“I’ve been carrying a thousand pounds on my back ever since [the podcast]. I felt so bad about that interview and I was leading it. I was there to get people over and make them come off like a million bucks. We came off on the wrong street, kept making left turns, and were never on track. He had his reasons and I had mine. For all this time, I felt like shit about that interview. People said, ‘the Stone Cold podcast got canceled [on WWE Network] because of that interview.’ No, I had fulfilled my commitment. Everyone thought there was heat between myself and Dean Ambrose [Jon Moxley]. I didn’t really know Dean well but I respected his talent. His fans are crapping all over me. My fans were wondering what was wrong. That interview is one thing I think about almost every single day. It still haunts me.”
“I got his number from a mutual friend and we had the best 30-minute conversation, getting back on the same page. There was never any personal animosity with us. I thought he might hate my guts. He never hated my guts. Whoever thought I was picking on Dean or whatever…I think he’s going to come down to Los Angeles and we’ll do another podcast together. This has haunted me for so damn long and when I make someone look the way they’re not supposed to look, that haunts me. I’m looking forward to talking to Jon Moxley.”
Steve poses the question of “What makes you think “hey man, I’m gonna start a wrestling organization?”
“Well, there’s never been an opportunity like this Steve. Things have tipped over where there are so many people who were fans of wrestling than there are people who are fans of wrestling right now, and the wrestling products out there right now are great, and there’s never been a better time to be a wrestling fan in terms of, in my opinion, if you want to see a lot of really incredible workers, really incredibly athletic high spots and some of the most entertaining matches and really entertaining personalities…but in terms of having a lot of great shows to watch with great production values and hot crowds and a lot of interest around the wrestling business from a mainstream perspective… there’s been a lot of T.V. money coming into the wrestling and that’s been a super positive thing too, and a combination of factors like rights fees around live sports and the media landscape making it possible to have budget together to have production values for a wrestling show that nobody has ever had other than the WWE in many ways ever, because technology has changed so much over the years… we can have all the state of the art technology and run the big buildings and have the hot crowds and have some of the best performers but not only can we do that, but the reason there’s a lapsed fan is because a lot of the wrestling they want to see isn’t out there and it isn’t just one thing that they’re missing, it’s a lot of things…”
Steve asks Tony for an example…Tony continues with: “The promos being overly scripted and probably too much of the show being overly scripted promos on a lot of the current television, and I think that is an issue, so when you see our stuff I think you saw it’s not like any writer gave that script to Cody, and it’s not like Cody went out there with a script…he has a process, everyone has a process, everyone has to memorize things when they go out there, they have bullet points, or alotted details or diction points…”
Tony Khan on how the TNT deal came together:
“The TNT deal came together, uh, it was my friend Kevin Reily, is the president of TNT/TBS, it starts in the fall, two hour live wrestling, I can’t tell you what day of the week…”We will establish a women’s tag team title, focusing on the women’s title and tag team title, and focusing on the singles and women’s tag team title, and building up the roster exactly on who those tag teams are going to be, and focus on having the best world championship in singles and tag team, men and women, that’s going to be the focus of our promotion, when I talk about wins and losses mattering, it’s an important story who won and lost in matches on a PPV…”
Khan is asked about the brand and if it will be a studio or touring brand:
“We’re gonna get out and we’re gonna travel across the united states too but I’m more focused on traveling within the united states for now…”
Steve Austin asks Tony if the brand is interested in the house show business:
“It’s not my core business focus, and i’ve kind of made it part of the business plan is that i don’t want to put too much mileage on the top performers by having them perform on shows where it’s not going to generate as much revenue where it doesn’t make as much business sense to put the mileage on your guys and I also don’t want to put out an inferior house show product that isn’t the top people. So, if you do see us do house shows they are going to be top shows with the top people, but we’re not going to be doing 5 or 6 days a week of them. I’d like to get into a rhythm where we could do 100-120 shows a year…it doesn’t mean that every performer is going to be on the show but it means that you’re going to get a combination of our top performers every night… I’m not going to have an offseason, there can’t be an offseason, if you’re a real wrestling fan you don’t want to take a week off, whether it’s the middle of the summer, the hottest day of the year, whether it’s Thanksgiving, Christmas…rather than have an offseason I believe we can extend the life of the performers which is why we won’t have them 5-6 nights a week ever…it’s just doesn’t make sense… I’m going to give people the chance to still do things they care about whether it be, work some international dates, or work the Indies…”
Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. And check out the Steve Austin show over on the PodcastOne network
