A Forced Retirement
“Stone Cold” Steve Austin retired from wrestling in 2003 at the age of 38, but as he explained on DJD Classics, it was not a decision he made lightly. His career was cut short due to severe neurological issues stemming from a piledriver in 1997.
“When I got dropped on my head, I bruised my spinal cord, and there’s a lot of neurological issues that I still deal with,” Austin said. “I had to pull a plug on myself… I had gotten piledrive on my head, and for 60 seconds I was a transient quadriplegic. And when you’re laying there in the middle of a ring in front of 20,000 people, live on a pay per view and you can’t move, it scared out of you.”
“I Didn’t Handle It Well”
Austin was cleared to wrestle for a few more years before the damage forced him to stop. “Hell, I retired when I was 38 man. You know, much money I left on the table,” he said. “I mean, not just about the money, it’s about the good times, being with the boys, traveling down the road, be in front of a crowd, getting out a drilling rush. That’s what I lived and breathed, and so I didn’t handle it well.”
He described the three years that followed his retirement as a dark period. “When I got out, I didn’t really have an exit strategy,” Austin admitted. “And for about three years, I drank, I hunted and I fished and did a lot of stupid stuff.”
The Pivot to Entertainment
The turning point came from a moment of stark self-reflection. “One morning, I woke up and I went in the bathroom and I just looked at myself in the mirror. It’s true story,” he said. “I was thinking to myself, dude, the things you’re doing are not conducive to living a long life. You need to slow your ass down.”
Austin decided he had to find a new path. “I was driving a forklift before I got in the wrestling business… after being on top of the world in the wrestling business, I didn’t want to drive a forklift again. I said, You better get your ass down there in Los Angeles and try to do something in the entertainment business.”
That move eventually led to hosting the Tough Enough reality show, which helped him reconnect with the industry. “When I first retired, I was so upset that I had to leave the business that I loved. I had to be completely away from it,” he explained. “All those years later… I had been away long enough the wounds had healed, and I wanted to be closer to the business… that put me back in touch with the business, in a position that I really loved.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit DJD Classics with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. You can watch the full interview on the DJD Classics YouTube channel.
