Give me a "hell yeah!"

When I was younger, around ten or so, I lived for the WWF. This was before the name change to WWE, before the WCW merger, before "Smackdown" and whatever goofy shows they might have now; this was during the "Attitude" era. And my favorite wrestler was Stone Cold Steve Austin. The Texas Rattlesnake. The dude was a bad ass, plain and simple. I had Stone Cold t-shirts. I had Stone Cold action figures. Hell, when we would wrestle on my friend's trampoline, I would come out to Stone Cold's entrance music. He was my guy. I remember watching Wrestlemania XV and Summerslam '98 and being so stoked he won his match to reclaim/keep the WWF title. I get a lot of shit for liking the WWF when I was younger. I don't care. I liked the WWF, and Stone Cold was my guy.

I bring this up because I just finished watching a Wrestlemania XIX special that someone put on youtube. I haven't watched wrestling in close to ten years, other then random youtube clips here and there, mostly Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Stone Cold, and D-Generation X clips. But this was the first time I watched something I had never seen from the WWF (or I guess now the WWE) in nearly a decade. It was behind the scenes on the match at Wrestlemania XIX between Steve Austin and The Rock, which happened to be Austin's final match. And I'll be honest, I got a bit choked up.

We see these wrestlers as pompous, arrogant degenerates. Lowlifes who look like failed porn-stars (or in Val Venis' case, a failed wrestler portraying a porn star) who follow a script. It's not a sport. It's scripted. It's fake. They're not really hitting each other. And while all that may be true, these guys take a god damn pounding. Sure, they might not be throwing real hay-makers,  but that slam to the mat, or flying over the rope; you can't fake that. That's real. That's painful.

Austin, in 1996 or 1997 sustained serious spinal damage after a botched pile-driver by Owen Hart. He was left nearly paralyzed. Watching this video, it as clear that Austin had never fully recovered from that injury, and this is nearly a decade after the the original injury took place. Austin was in serious pain. He needed to hang it up. He knew it.

Only, you could see in his eyes that he didn't want to. Austin choked up when talking about leaving the WWF. He loved what he did. It's a side to these guys you don't often see. Here's Stone Cold Steve Austin, the self proclaimed "toughest S.O.B" on the planet nearly in tears about his wrestling career coming to a close. And it's not like he has no other options other than wrestling. The dude might be the single most successful wrestler of all time, and has appeared in movies such as "The Longest Yard" and "The Condemned."  And as The Rock has shown us, it is possible to be a successful actor following a life in the ring.

Austin lost the match, after three consecutive Rock Bottom's (The Rock's signature finishing move). Austin kicked out of the first one, then kicked out of the second one. I found myself rooting for Austin to find a way out of trouble and to apply his finishing move, The Stone Cold Stunner, on The Rock. It was weird. I felt eleven again. Sadly, The Rock hit Austin with the third Rock Bottom, and Austin was down for the three-count. Right after, Austin would say that he was "relieved" that the match was over.

There was a really nice moment after the match where The Rock shooed away the ref, and whispered something to Austin, later refusing to tell the cameras what he said. Austin would share with the cameras what The Rock told him. According to Austin, The Rock told him he loved him and that it was a pleasure working with him for so long. Austin responded with "I love you too," and went on to call The Rock "one of the few friends" he had from his time in professional wrestling.

It's also worth nothing that The Rock/Austin was one of the greatest feuds in WWF history. When I think of the greatest matches I watched, Rock/Austin at Wrestlemania XV ranks right up there with Austin/Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania XIV, Hulk Hogan/Ultimate Warrior at Wrestlemania VI, and that first Hell in a Cell match between Mankind and the Undertaker. So to hear the respect and admiration the two had for eachother...well...I guess it was nice.

I will probably never blog about wrestling again. I have no interest in it anymore. Once upon a time, wrestling was something huge to me. I remember Monday's at 9 p.m. being so stoked to watch "Monday Night Raw" on USA, and staying up way past my bedtime to watch the end of it. We all had our favorites, and mine was The Texas Rattlesnake. Again, wrestling means absolutely nothing to me anymore, but it was kind of cool watching that retrospective and kind of remembering something from the past that I really used to like.

And that's the bottom line, cause Stone Cold said so.