Steve Austin On How Roman Reigns Is Now, If Reigns Will Be A Big Star, Relationship With WWE, Family
"Stone Cold" Steve Austin was a guest on AfterBuzz TV's Lilian Garcia: Making Their Way to the Ring and discussed Roman Reigns, a future visit to NXT, relationship with his family and biological father and more. You can check out the full interview in the video above, they sent us these highlights:
Roman Reigns' future:
"I think Roman Reigns is going to be a big star ? he's a star right now, but he's going to be a big star if he just keeps going down the road that he's going and he's going to figure it all out he's not necessarily just a natural to the business, but he's very very good and he's only going to get better.
"...I think he's doing fine now and I've been watching. You know some of the story lines haven't been so good and you know when you gotta shove someone down peoples throats they gotta get a gut full of it sometimes and they got a gut full of it because you know maybe some of the lines that they had written for him weren't the greatest ones 'I'm not a bad guy, I'm not a good guy, I'm the guy', kinda corny, but if you watch and you did Payback when the main event with him and Braun Strowman those guys crushed it and Roman Reigns getting beat 1, 2, 3 and then the steel chairs into his chest, he's spitting up blood, well people watching the business these days they're watching what the guys are doing and then they're thinking about the writing."
Relationship with WWE, Vince McMahon and Triple H:
"I'm still a part of the WWE, I still keep in contact with a lot of the guys and girls and Vince and Triple H and everybody, so I'm still you know in with the WWE."
Bring a role model:
"Man, its pretty cool, I get a lot of emails to you know my email address for my podcast and man, literally a couple every week about people that I affected, or they got to live vicariously through the actions of Stone Cold Steve Austin, and you know whether it was like I don't know just eating disorders or being bullied, just you know single parent households, or some people just lived in a home, but for some reason they found strength in that Stone Cold Steve Austin character, man it's very flattering, and you know I worked my tail off to be successful and what I chose to do with my life ?which was professional wrestling, and I had so much fun doing it, and the fact that I could really make a change, or inspire somebody, or give somebody strength, courage, whatever you want to call it, it's really, really cool and I'm very proud of that, and while you're doing it you know, I'm not driving down the road thinking okay you know how am I impacting people's lives here you know I just kicked the crap out of Vince tonight you know maybe someone who's not doing so well somewhere will see that and have a smile on their face, I'm not, you're not thinking about that. It's all these years later you get these emails from people that were watching you ten, fifteen, twenty years ago and they found strength through me or some of the other WWE characters or whoever it was in their life so it's really cool to be able to do that."
His biological father and family:
"We were born in Austin, James Anderson is our father biologically, so my mom Beverly and James got a divorce when I was about two or three, ya give or take?we were young, I remember James, and so she moves down to Victoria, Texas and Victoria is kind of between Houston and Corpus, and so she meets Ken Williams and Ken Williams is an insurance man, and he plays in a dance band on Friday and Saturday nights, and he played lead guitar and he sang. Ao anyway my mom was a telephone operator and she meets Ken Williams and they fall in love, and they get married and then they have two other kids, Jeff and Jennifer who is the baby of the family, and then our family, the way we've come up and the way we've grown together Ken Williams is my step-father technically but I don't look at him as being that, we know there's no blood there but he's my dad he taught me everything I know. I got my genetics from my real dad but he's my dad and as far as Jeff and Jenny goes we don't say half brother in our family, we're all in."
Being a dad to his two daughters:
"I was ready to be a dad, I was just a dad who was in the business of pro-wrestling, and so the times that we were together, you know I was doing my best to tell them hey heres how we do things, here's the chores, here's what you need to do, my oldest daughter started playing soccer, and then you know divorce happened and they ended up in England, I ended up over here and just not a whole lot of time, and so we all missed out on a lot. I gotta say being in the business, to really go out, to really do anything, I could've been a truck driver but you gotta be selfish with your time as far as trying to put the miles in, take that freight down the road, same thing with pro-wrestling man if you're in it and you want to be in on the top, I've known a lot of guys who have been way better fathers than I have and their families are still in tact and that's how it worked out for them but that's not how it worked out for me, it ended up with a divorce and you know am I in touch with my kids? Ya but did I get enough time to spend with them as I could have? No, because I was really in love with the business of pro-wrestling and everything that went a lot with it."