Stone Cold Steve Austin Tells Story of Early Hazing from Undertaker in 1990s WWF

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During a recent edition of The Steve Austin Show, Austin shared a story about The Undertaker when Austin was first getting into the wrestling business. Below are some highlights (transcript via WrestlingInc.com).

Austin on agreeing to ride with Mark Calaway: “I was the guy who was just new to Tennessee. I’d just driven in. I was working babyface and I was trying to find someone to ride with. I was talking with The Undertaker. I guess he was The Punisher. I don’t know what [ring name] he was working with down there in Tennessee. And so, we were going to ride together, but since he was heel and I was baby, we had to kayfabe, so we didn’t ride together. And I knew we had a six-man tag that night, me and Dutch [Mantel] and somebody else against him and Soultaker and somebody else and I said, ‘alright, dude, I’ll see you tonight.’ I told him to watch out, [and said] ‘I might end up stretching you out there’. You know, just words to that effect and I was just kidding. I actually have a pretty good sense of humor.”

Austin on how Undertaker then stretched him during their match: “Well, Mark is a man’s man and if you know anything about the WWE, he’s the king of the locker room. He’s the go-to guy in the WWE. It has been that way forever. And I didn’t know his sense of humor. He didn’t know me from Adam. And, of course, all of a sudden, there’s a time for me and Undertaker or The Punisher to lock up in that match and because I just got out of [professional] wrestling school, I only know a little bit of chain wrestling. I know how to take a bump and he puts a couple of damn sugar holds on me and I’m just kind of laying there. It was Evansville, Indiana. No, it was a Tuesday. It was in Louisville, Kentucky. And there I was in the middle of the ring for about a minute and a half. He proceeded to put two or three holds that he had learned in Japan and he was a big MMA fan way back in the day, so I’m in there laying in the middle of the ring, getting twisted up like a pretzel. And all of a sudden, he decided enough was enough.”

Austin on how Undertaker made his point: “Now, he wasn’t hurting me, but he was just stretching me and letting me know what time it was. And so, I tagged out and someone else goes in the ring and Dusty [Rhodes] looks over at me in the corner right there by the ring post and he goes, ‘what was that all about?’ and I just shook my head. I didn’t know at the time. I said, ‘hell, I don’t know.’ But hell, I had insulted him on the phone by telling him that I was going to stretch him. This punk kid from Dallas, Texas with long blonde hair, two months in the [professional wrestling] business and I was going to stretch him. And he didn’t take a liking to that, so I quickly learned from that point on. I didn’t call him Mr. Punisher, but I learned a lesson that night that would stick with me forever.”

Jonathan Widro is the owner and founder of Inside Pulse. Over a decade ago he burst onto the scene with a pro-WCW reporting style that earned him the nickname WCWidro. Check him out on Twitter for mostly inane non sequiturs