8. Shane McMahon Says Vince Was Devastated When Stone Cold Walked Out On Them In 2002

During a recent appearance on the Stone Cold Podcast, SmackDown Live Commissioner Shane McMahon discussed WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin walking out of them (after he refused to lose to Brock Lesnar on Raw) in 2002. Below is what Shane said about the incident:

“Austin was the guy that was drawing the houses and everything was built around Austin. So when you have that much equity at stake and you have your number one player in there and that’s the one who draws money all of a sudden say, ‘I’m out,’ well, it’s very devastating, obviously, to everyone else underneath and everyone felt it, just like, ‘wow’, so Austin specifically, you let a lot of people down.

Vince was hurt professionally and personally because you guys had been building a good relationship. If you guys did have a disagreement, you’d settle it quickly and talk about it. But at the end of the day when it got down to ‘alright, this is the vision we’re going with when I said we’d paint the room blue, well, you didn’t want to paint the room blue at that time, so you took your paint and went somewhere else.’

So that was a big blow personally as well because, again, it’s the machine and we all put effort into building ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, and the company, and everything else around it. And when that cog leaves, it’s like, ‘oh wow! Jeez, that didn’t feel good!’ It didn’t make any of us feel good. Austin let us down, man.”