• Steve Austin & Billy Gunn Comment On Not Getting Paid After Their Neck Injuries
During a recent edition of The Steve Austin Show, Billy Gunn and Stone Cold Steve Austin talked about not getting paid after their neck injuries, Austin not even being accompanied by anyone from WWF, Billy’s drug problems and more.
Below are the highlights:
Billy Gunn on his neck injury and not getting paid after that:
“It was in the ARCO Arena in Sacramento, California. We were working Tom Prichard and (Chris) Candido. We were doing that thing with Sunny. It was kind of weird getting in the groove, doing the thing with Sunny. We were doing this spot, she jumps up, I hit the ropes, and accidentally knock her off and go, ‘oh my God!’ I go down to the floor.
I go check on her because it’s me and I was supposed to be in this infatuation spot with her, and Tom comes right off the top, and hits me in the back of the neck, and I hit the ground, and a lighting bolt shot from my ass clear across the building. Stuff like that normally doesn’t happen to me, stingers and stuff.
I just get knocked out before that happens, so I never feel them. I felt that and went, ‘oh, whoa, it wasn’t supposed to feel that bad! Something’s not right.’ So I work two or three more days, and then my left side kept feeling worse and worse and worse. Yeah, the whole thing. Then I went home and saw a neurologist or whatever and they literally took me right then and went, ‘you’ve got to go, like, right now’ because he said it was so (badly) shattered that there was a piece pushing on my spinal cord. He said, ‘you could just step off the curb and it’d go.’ And I go, ‘oh, well, maybe we go and fix this then.’
It was just about six months because I wasn’t allowed to stay gone that long. It was ’95 and the company hadn’t really gotten hot yet and didn’t do anything, so it was like, ‘if you want to keep your job, we get it – you’re neck’s hurt, but you might want to come back.’ I didn’t get any paychecks.”
Steve Austin on his neck injury and not getting paid for surgeries:
“Back in the day, when I got dropped on my head, the thing with Owen, God rest his soul, and so anyway, that jacked me up. I mean, it was heavy duty, but I was like, ‘I’ve got to finish this match,’ but nothing would work! So anyway, you know the deal, I rolled him up, called it in the ring, and got out. I didn’t get paid either, not on my surgery in 1999, 2000, whenever I got fused up.
This was before they would start paying guys. Let’s just say it was like the stone ages compared to now. These days, everything’s all covered. Back in the day, dude, when I had my neck surgery, I was gone for about a year. Zero. I got a royalty check every quarter, but I mean nothing.”
Steve Austin on no one from WWF accompanying him to hospital, fans giving a ride to hotel:
“There I go, I get x-rayed and there were no MRIs. Nothing’s broken. I bruised my spinal cord. I’ve got a bunch of stuff going on. I walk outside the hospital, (and) ain’t nobody from the company come with me. I’m sitting there, I’m all messed up, and three girls had followed the ambulance to the hospital. I walked out to no support there! ‘Steve, do you want a ride back to the hotel?’
‘Yeah!’ I got in the car with them. They took me by the liquor store. I got my 12-pack of Budweiser. They took me back to the Holiday Inn right by the Newark (New Jersey) airport there. You stay there, dude. And I remember, I was effed up. Dude, I was traumatized! I just sat there and drank that 12-pack of beer. I’ll never forget it. I thought a lot of things about my career, but I drank that dang 12-pack and I was thinking, ‘holy s–t! That was a rough ride!'”
Billy Gunn on his drugs problem and recovering from it:
“I’m a recovering addict, so I’ve been clean for seven years, but when you hurt, you don’t think about it too much and there are easier ways to do it. If I just take this, I don’t have to worry about going and getting a massage or going to a chiropractor or going to a doctor. I just mask it with this. So then you mask it so long and then it catches up with you. But now, nowadays, that’s not an option. You doctor hunt, you have scripts all over the place, you buy them from people you don’t even know and hope to God that they work because it was really bad. I had left the company. It was just everything was going awry.
Like, it was one thing and all going downhill. All addicts do, in my case because that’s all I talk about, is I’m just trying to cover things up. I don’t want to think about them, but when I come out of that, they’re still there, so you just keep covering and they never go away and then it’s worse and worse and worse till your consumption goes more and more and more. I couldn’t keep pills around for (anything), like going through 100 somas in three days. That’s insane.”
• Next Universal Title Feud (After Lesnar-Reigns Storyline) Revealed
As seen on this week’s post-WrestleMania 34 edition of RAW, Samoa Joe made his return to WWE programming and challenged Roman Reigns to a match at Backlash 2018 PPV. This match was then officially set for the May PPV.
But before this match happens, Reigns will battle Brock Lesnar in a Steel Cage match with the Universal Title on the line at the Greatest Royal Rumble event on April 27.
According to DirtySheets.Net, current plan is for Reigns to defeat Lesnar to finally capture the Universal Championship (a Title he’s been trying to win since 2016) and then go on to defend the Title against Samoa Joe at the Backlash PPV.
