Some additional information on the Mickey Rourke and WWE situation, Austin’s participation in WrestleMania 25 and more…
WWE had planned to run Mickey Rourke vs Chris Jericho at WrestleMania 25 but then Rourke’s agents and Fox Searchlight demanded that he pull out of the deal for fear of scuppering his Academy Awards chances. WWE’s back-up plan involves Jericho targeting a group of legends, which would include Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka and others, although some feel that less-is-more and they should not be diluting Flair’s involvement by having so many other legends involved. Flair is still slated to be a semi-regular on Raw leading up to WrestleMania but the whole plan remains in flux.
Steve Austin has told everybody who has asked him that he is not interested in wrestling at WrestleMania 25, or ever again. He thinks that he would need longer to get into ring-shape and that being inducted into the Hall of Fame then wrestling the next night is too similar to Ric Flair last year. He is reluctant to put too much pressure on himself as he would want to leave everybody with great memories if he were to have one last match. There has been talk of putting him into the Randy Orton and Triple H match as a special guest referee, which would involve hitting Cody Rhodes and Ted Dibiase with Stunners when they try to interfere, but some feel they have overplayed the ‘Austin referee’ card in recent times – including Cyber Sunday 2008. Up until a few weeks ago there was still talk about who Austin could face at WrestleMania, with Orton, Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker all brought up as possible opponents. Over the course of the past year there was also talk about getting The Rock back to do an anniversary match with Austin but that was a complete no-go. The oft-discussed ‘dream match’ between Austin and Hogan was also considered but Austin has always been rather sour about working with Hogan. He is also in good shape financially and so has no need to work another match.
Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 23 February 2009 (subscribe here)
