Dok Hendrix: The fourth prestigious King of the Ring, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, an incredible victory!
Steve Austin: The first thing I want to be done is to get that piece of crap out of my ring! Don't just get him out of the ring, get him out of the WWF! Because I've proved, son, without a shadow of a doubt, you ain't got what it takes anymore! You sit there and you thump your Bible and you say your prayers, and it didn't get you anywhere! Talk about your Psalms, talk about John 3:16, Austin 3:16 says "I just whipped your ass!"
Hendrix: Come on, that's not necessary...
Austin: All he's gotta do is go buy him a cheap bottle of Thunderbird and try to dig back some of that courage he had in his prime. As the King Of The Ring, I'm serving notice to every one of the WWF Superstars. I don't give a damn what they are, they're all on the list, and that's Stone Cold's list, and I'm fixing to start running through all of 'em. As far as this championship match is considered, son, I don't give a damn if it's Davey Boy Smith or Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin's time has come, and when I get the shot you're looking at the next WWF Champion. And that's the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so!
Hendrix: Obviously anything but humble. The fourth prestigious King Of The Ring, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.
Steve Austin: The first thing I want to be done is to get that piece of crap out of my ring! Don't just get him out of the ring, get him out of the WWF! Because I've proved, son, without a shadow of a doubt, you ain't got what it takes anymore! You sit there and you thump your Bible and you say your prayers, and it didn't get you anywhere! Talk about your Psalms, talk about John 3:16, Austin 3:16 says "I just whipped your ass!"
Hendrix: Come on, that's not necessary...
Austin: All he's gotta do is go buy him a cheap bottle of Thunderbird and try to dig back some of that courage he had in his prime. As the King Of The Ring, I'm serving notice to every one of the WWF Superstars. I don't give a damn what they are, they're all on the list, and that's Stone Cold's list, and I'm fixing to start running through all of 'em. As far as this championship match is considered, son, I don't give a damn if it's Davey Boy Smith or Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin's time has come, and when I get the shot you're looking at the next WWF Champion. And that's the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so!
Hendrix: Obviously anything but humble. The fourth prestigious King Of The Ring, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.
—"Stone Cold" Steve Austin, after winning the 1996 King of the Ring tournament.
"You know a couple of weeks ago, when Eric Bischoff told his secretary...to tell her secretary...to leave a message on my answering machine for me to call Eric Bischoff. And then I called Eric Bischoff, and he proceeded to fire me over the phone...I thought a big cloud was lifted off the career of Steve Austin. Because gone were the days where I'd go up to someone and say "Hey, what about me and Sting? We got this big thing going, how about the cage?" And someone says, "No, baby, that's for somebody else. We're just gonna keep you right where you at right now." Well, then I said, "Well, How about me and Savage, man? I got this great idea, man. He comes in, he's got the Slim Jim deal. Well, hell, I got—" "No, Steve, that's for somebody else, baby." Then you go "I got this great idea, I can do it with Hulk Hogan. I'm gonna be the Steve-a-Maniac and we're gonna take this thing all the way. Because Hulk Hogan, Hulkamania was the biggest thing to ever come down to wrestling's pike!" And they say, "No, that's not for you, brother. You can't do that. We're gonna keep you right where you are." I said, "How about me and Brian get back together? The Hollywood Blondes, it was the best tag team to come along in 10 years!" And they say, "No, Steve! We need you in a singles role, man! We need you to do thi—We're gonna put the U.S. Title on you, and then we're gonna take you here, and then you're the number one contender, so then you got this World title shot." Well, all that shit NEVER HAPPENED!
So there I am, floundering along, there's nothing going my way, because the politics in WCW kept the biggest potential Superstar in wrestling on the GODDAMN GROUND! What are you supposed to do? On one hand, they're paying you a bunch of money. They're paying me a bunch of money. While on this hand, they're telling me, "Hey, go out there and give Bagwell a hell of a match. Go out there with an 18-year old German kid, give him seven good minutes. Let the people see what he can do." They say "you are what you eat". In WCW, they didn't feed me nothing but garbage, so I let myself become garbage. I became complacent with everything that they said, as long as Big Ted kept sending in the checks. Maybe I wasn't happy with what was going on, but I became complacent. Then, they sent me to Japan, the big injury. Bischoff delivers the shot, HEARD AROUND THE DAMN WORLD! "Steve Austin's out of of the high-paying job." All of a sudden, the phone starts ringing off the hook. It's ECW, it's the WWF. it's All Japan, it's New Japan, and all Steve Austin's gotta do is make a decision. Tod Gordon, whether he mortgaged his house one time, two times, maybe three times, came up with the right figure for Steve Austin to make a decision. I stroll into the ECW Arena... it's the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen! I broke in, in a building called the Sportatorium in Dallas, Texas, home of the world-famous Von Erichs. Anybody, that was anybody, stepped foot in the Dallas Sportatorium.
For the last two years, all you've heard about, anywhere in wrestling, is the famous ECW Arena. Debut night, I roll in, you got the Sandman, you've got the Raven, you got the Pit Bulls, you got Stevie Richards, you got The Public Enemy, you got the Gangstas, you got Mikey Whipwrep—whatever the hell his name is. You got a bunch of damn misfits...running around, thinking that they can actually wrestle. All I've seen in ECW is a bunch of violent crap! And that's exactly what I'll call it, because that's what it is. Steve Austin is here to wrestle. It's what I do best, it's what I do better than anybody in the world. Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, they got the big sendoff. Tears were in everybody's eyes, it was a big deal. All Steve Austin got was a good swift kick in the ass, as Bischoff hung up the phone and left me high and dry! There's no Hogans here. There's no Flairs here. There's not a Dusty Rhodes, and there damn sure isn't an Eric Bischoff here. There's no one that can hold back Steve Austin now. "Stunning"? Tossed it out the window. Never was meant to be. ECW is gonna find out first hand what Steve Austin can do. And I'm gonna show everybody here exactly what a true superstar is supposed to do. What a true superstar is supposed to be. Because no one here can hold me back. Not Tod Gordon, not Hulk Hogan, not Eric Bischoff, nobody. I'm gonna be the Superstar that I always knew that I could be. Because there's no one... no one in ECW that can stop me."
So there I am, floundering along, there's nothing going my way, because the politics in WCW kept the biggest potential Superstar in wrestling on the GODDAMN GROUND! What are you supposed to do? On one hand, they're paying you a bunch of money. They're paying me a bunch of money. While on this hand, they're telling me, "Hey, go out there and give Bagwell a hell of a match. Go out there with an 18-year old German kid, give him seven good minutes. Let the people see what he can do." They say "you are what you eat". In WCW, they didn't feed me nothing but garbage, so I let myself become garbage. I became complacent with everything that they said, as long as Big Ted kept sending in the checks. Maybe I wasn't happy with what was going on, but I became complacent. Then, they sent me to Japan, the big injury. Bischoff delivers the shot, HEARD AROUND THE DAMN WORLD! "Steve Austin's out of of the high-paying job." All of a sudden, the phone starts ringing off the hook. It's ECW, it's the WWF. it's All Japan, it's New Japan, and all Steve Austin's gotta do is make a decision. Tod Gordon, whether he mortgaged his house one time, two times, maybe three times, came up with the right figure for Steve Austin to make a decision. I stroll into the ECW Arena... it's the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen! I broke in, in a building called the Sportatorium in Dallas, Texas, home of the world-famous Von Erichs. Anybody, that was anybody, stepped foot in the Dallas Sportatorium.
For the last two years, all you've heard about, anywhere in wrestling, is the famous ECW Arena. Debut night, I roll in, you got the Sandman, you've got the Raven, you got the Pit Bulls, you got Stevie Richards, you got The Public Enemy, you got the Gangstas, you got Mikey Whipwrep—whatever the hell his name is. You got a bunch of damn misfits...running around, thinking that they can actually wrestle. All I've seen in ECW is a bunch of violent crap! And that's exactly what I'll call it, because that's what it is. Steve Austin is here to wrestle. It's what I do best, it's what I do better than anybody in the world. Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, they got the big sendoff. Tears were in everybody's eyes, it was a big deal. All Steve Austin got was a good swift kick in the ass, as Bischoff hung up the phone and left me high and dry! There's no Hogans here. There's no Flairs here. There's not a Dusty Rhodes, and there damn sure isn't an Eric Bischoff here. There's no one that can hold back Steve Austin now. "Stunning"? Tossed it out the window. Never was meant to be. ECW is gonna find out first hand what Steve Austin can do. And I'm gonna show everybody here exactly what a true superstar is supposed to do. What a true superstar is supposed to be. Because no one here can hold me back. Not Tod Gordon, not Hulk Hogan, not Eric Bischoff, nobody. I'm gonna be the Superstar that I always knew that I could be. Because there's no one... no one in ECW that can stop me."
—Austin shoots on WCW, ECW Hardcore TV #129
