Steve Austin is still currently scheduled to wrestle a farewell match at WrestleMania 25. The details of the match remain unclear but he is not going to work with Hulk Hogan. Randy Orton appears to be one option but nothing has been set in stone yet. At one point there was talk of having Austin face off against The Rock again but Dwayne Johnson has expressed no interest in wrestling again and is thought to have declined a recent offer made by WWE.
Vince McMahon told the WWE creative team to get a potential storyline ready for Mickey Rourke the week before the Royal Rumble. Most people in the company had no idea about the Rourke deal until he mentioned it at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. At that point Rourke had yet to be nominated for an Academy Award, although his Golden Globe win made that almost a certainty. WWE added The Wrestler segment to Smackdown only a couple of days before the show aired, which was also when they removed the angle about Triple H being given the #1 spot in the Rumble. Rourke has of course been criticised in certain quarters for working WrestleMania, which is not uncommon for celebrity participants. Floyd Mayweather took some flak for doing last year’s event, although that was defused by WWE claiming that they were paying him $20 million for it. Of course, by the time the true number became apparent the media had long since lost interest. Lawrence Taylor was criticised for doing WrestleMania XI, so much so that it almost cost him an NFL Hall of Fame induction. He backed out of a scheduled second appearance a few months later, telling people he regretted getting involved in the first place.
Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 02 February 2009 (subscribe here)
