Steve Austin Explains Why He Refused To Lose Against Brock Lesnar

WWE wanted Steve Austin to lose a King Of The Ring tournament match against Brock Lesnar with no build on television. Austin knew this was a money match and he didn’t want to lose it on television just to be another body for Lesnar to walk over.

2002 would see Brock Lesnar win the King Of The Ring, but he didn’t defeat The Rattlesnake to make it happen. While speaking to Pardon My Take, Austin explained why he refused this loss so many years ago.

“And the time they wanted me to fly down to Atlanta for Monday Night RAW and put over Brock Lesnar. The night before, I was working in Columbus, Georgia working with Ric Flair in a cage, so I was like a kid in a candy store working with the GOAT, so of course I didn’t show up because it wasn’t time for me to do the favors yet for Brock in an unadvertised match in a tournament style TV match whereas, hey man, I love Brock Lesnar, I’d lose to him any day of the week, but build it up so we can all make money off of it and it’s going to mean something.”

“And when you get a guy red hot, and I just had Hogan on the podcast, and I’ll put myself there, but when you get guys who really, really draw stupid money, it’s a very delicate balance that you just don’t take stupid liberties with or you’ll kill it off and you can never recreate it. So I was very protective of myself, maybe too much so, but it took me seven and a half years to get there so no one was going to yank the carpet out from underneath my feet, not even Vince.”

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Brock Lesnar went on to have an impressive run with WWE through WrestleMania XX. Then he took a long hiatus from WWE. Goldberg remembers how angry Lesnar was about their WrestleMania match as well.

In the end, Steve Austin probably made the best decision possible in this situation. Now he can talk about it all these years later while explaining it with his veteran wisdom.

Thanks to 411 Mania for the quote