Steve Austin Prepared For His WWE WrestleMania 38 Return By Drilling With Drew Gulak

It wasn't always a sure thing, but at WrestleMania 38 "Stone Cold" Steve Austin made his in-ring return after 19 years retired. Now, Fightful Select has learned more details surrounding "The Texas Rattlesnake's" comeback and how his match with Kevin Owens came to be, including the fact that Drew Gulak was heavily involved in making sure Austin was ready. Fightful previously reported that the WWE Hall of Famer was very hesitant about coming out of retirement. Not only that, Austin turned down multiple pitches from WWE until they arrived at the right outcome. That's been the case in the build-up to WrestleMania 39 as well. Additionally, Fightful learned that Vince McMahon himself was very hands-on as "Stone Cold" prepared for his "impromptu" headliner at WrestleMania 38, which led to the WWE Chairman and Gulak flying to Austin's ranch in Texas.

Gulak, who is well-regarded when it comes to training other wrestlers, ran drills with "Stone Cold," who reportedly started calling spots out to the former WWE Cruiserweight Champion almost entirely in-character. This led to a long match between the two on Austin's ranch, but Gulak's work wasn't done there. As we all remember, McMahon ended up having his own match against Pat McAfee at WrestleMania 38 too, so Gulak worked to get him ready as best he could. The Genetic Jackhammer was 76 years old at the time.

Fightful quotes one higher-up in WWE as saying "The funniest thing about all of this wasn't that Vince flew all the way out there, took Drew Gulak with him, and made sure that Austin could still go. It's that while he did all that to make sure that Austin was good to go, he knew he was planning to wrestle himself, knew he sucked, still did it, and ended up having one of the worst matches and Stunner sells of all-time after."