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http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2004/02/08/340728.html

Stone Cold says he'll be back

By TIM BAINES, Ottawa Sun
  
Stone Cold Steve Austin wants to get back in the ring, he wants to lay
a big can of whoopass on someone, but the time isn't right, not now
.. or even at next month's Wrestlemania. But the time will come.

"Hell, I might have one or two matches left in me down the road," he
says over the phone. "You want to be in the main event. It's like an
NFL QB or a hockey great who are not doing it anymore. They still want
to play.

"Sometimes it's a little frustrating. Wrestlemania would be too soon.
The circumstances would have to be right. Wrestling just for the sake
of wrestling doesn't do anything for me."

Until that time, Austin is just lapping up his success in WWE; as a
beer-swigging, middle-finger-flipping rebel, he's probably the biggest
star in wrestling. He wants to be a crowd pleaser and thanks his lucky
stars WWE fans have accepted him back after a couple of lengthy
absences.

"Each time that glass breaks and the music starts, in my heart I'm
saying 'thank you very much.'

"Out of sight, out of mind sometimes creeps up on you." 

Austin is currently cast as the sheriff of RAW. 

"I enjoy it so far, but I wish they'd get me busier and pluck me in a
few more storylines," he says. "It's Stone Cold's law. It frees me up
to raise some hell."

Born Steve Williams in Victoria, Tex., in 1964, Austin says his
in-ring role has a connection to his real-life character.

"Stone Cold is an extension of Steve Williams," he says. "It's like
I'm a junkie and I'm getting my fix by raising hell. Out of the ring,
I pretty much keep to myself. I've got a short attention span and I've
got an aggressive side.

"(As Stone Cold) all I'm doing is grabbing the volume knob and turning
it up. What you see is what you get."

Austin says wrestling has undergone a huge metamorphosis. 

"The product is sometimes a little too polished, it needs that edge,"
he says. "Bret Hart. He's one of my favourite guys. He was no
nonsense, he'd tell a story (when he was wrestling). He didn't have to
reinvent the wheel. He had a style I still appreciate. Same thing with
Ric Flair. You don't have to do the crazy high spots."

So how about the nomadic life of a wrestler? 

"We'd get in a car and drive several hundred miles a day," says
Austin. "We weren't making any money. I'd ride down the road with guys
like Mick Foley, Brian Pillman and Kevin Nash. You're a wrestler, but
you're also a truck driver.

"I kind of feel more at home in an arena than at my own house. I guess
I kind of have gypsy in my blood."

Austin, who jokes that he "wrestles on the side and drinks for a
living," wasn't always king of the hill. He remembers sitting in Grade
6 math class when the football coach came looking for him.

"Coach John Adams ... I was a pretty decent football player and I
figured he was coming to talk to me about that," says Austin. "But the
coach (whose wife taught the class) told me if I didn't stop acting up
he was going to make things real hard for me. I listened."

So Steve Williams became a National Honours Society student, a good
kid.

"We got the belt at home if we screwed up," he says. "That's just the
way I was brought up. If I did something wrong, I got my ass whipped."

So now he's doing the ass-kicking. Stone Cold Steve Austin is an icon
.. and no amount of beer can wash that away.

- Rikishi and Scotty 2 Hotty won the tag titles from The Basham
Brothers.

- Word is Macho Man Randy Savage could appear at TNA's Bound for Glory
pay-per-view in April. Joanie Laurer (Chyna in WWE) could appear on
Feb. 18.

- One-legged Zach Gowen has been released by WWE. 

- Mark Henry hurt his shoulder in a match against Chris Benoit on RAW.
He could be out of action for a few months.

- The winning e-bay bid for a photo of Miss Jackie's breast flash was
$40 US.

- Tammy Sytch (Sunny) says she's quitting wrestling to become a flight
attendant.

- Could the Wrestlemania main event be a three-way match between
Benoit, Triple H and Shawn Michaels?


--- Internet Rex 2.29