WWE Hall of Famer Jake “The Snake” Roberts spoke about the iconic Stone Cold Steve Austin on the latest edition of his DDP Snakepit podcast, which saw the Master of the DDT discuss the Rattlesnake’s career in-depth, and how he knew he would be WWE’s next big star. Highlights can be found below.
Says he told Vince McMahon that Steve Austin would be a megastar:
“He came up there as The Ringmaster, which stunk. And he knew it stunk, I knew it stunk, but Vince has this thing, man. He’s going to make it work. But it wasn’t working and it wasn’t doing anybody any favors, and it finally got bad enough that they gave him some time off and he came back Stone Cold. At that time, I was helping write the storylines and I looked at the whole thing there and I told Vince ‘that guy’s going to be your next megastar.’ And Vince laughed at me, he said ‘no way. Middle of the card. Maybe.’ I said ‘no, you’re wrong. You wait and see.’ And that’s probably one of my better feel-good moments too because I was right.”
How Austin would ask him for advice:
“Every night he would call me and tell me about his match. And he would ask me ‘what did I do wrong? What should I have done?’ And I wouldn’t tell him what he should do, but I would tell him what he shouldn’t do. I did the same thing with Dallas, let him figure it out. Once you figure it out, you understand it. You really understand it. That went on for several weeks. I kept pushing him in the meetings and stuff and everybody was just looking at me like, ‘really?’ I was right.”
(H/T and transcribed by Wrestling Inc.)