During his appearance on Talk Is Jericho, Steve Austin spoke on the impact that Bret Hart had on his career. Here’s what he had to say:
It was really interesting because Bret had seen me coming in WCW as he always says, and I’d been an admirer of Bret Hart’s work. I was big into the Hart Foundation – him and Anvil, I loved them as a tag team. I’d been watching Bret for a long time because got to Vince [McMahon] before I did. I remember he was going to do surgery to get his hip cleaned up, and he needed an opponent for Survivor Series. He told Vince, ‘Hey, I can make money with this guy.’ I get a phone call from Bret, and he wants to work with me. So, he hand-picked me to come back from his surgery. We would go out there, and it’s an old-school match. It’s kind of classic pro wrestling style. It’s a sold-out crowd in The Garden. We went out there and just turned in an instant classic, and Bret was coming back.
And if you go back and you watch that match and you watch the finish with that gimmick roll-up off the Million Dollar Dream, then as I roll out because he’s outsmarted me – if you watch his face and this is a shoot, he mouths ‘f**k’ because he’s dead-dog tired. He was blown up because he’d been at the house healing up, and it was that grueling of a match. Bret Hart is one of the greatest of all time, so the fact that he hadn’t done a whole lot of in-ring work or none really and had to knock a little bit of ring rust off, he was gassed. To that note, Bret was always great 30 minutes into a match of just looking dead-dog tired but fresh as a daisy. But on this occasion, because it was a comeback, he was actually tired after the match because it was that grueling. It was a classic style match that I was very proud of, and at that time, putting in a match like that Vince started to see who and what I could do as a performer as Stone Cold Steve Austin. That match at WrestleMania 13, Bret Hart put me on the map. He made Stone Cold Steve Austin. I had to do a lot myself obviously, but that’s how important Bret Hart was to my career.
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Credit: Talk Is Jericho. H/T 411Mania.