Free THE STONE COLD TRUTH by Steve Austin, J.R. Ross, Dennis Brent, J.R. Ross Page B

not sports or wrestling related, but something I’ve had since birth.
    I had my tonsils and adenoids taken out and was always going to hearing doctors as a kid because I had a lot of fluid in my ears. I never considered it a disability; I just dealt with it. It was something that wasongoing, and then when I listened to lots of loud rock ‘tí roll music and made my loud wrestling entrances, it got worse.
    I’m exaggerating when I say I’m half-deaf. But if there’s a lot of background noise, I don’t hear very well. Outside of wrestling, I lean into people and kind of watch their lips and face. In the arena, in the ring, I just can’t hear the other guy.
    One time back in Memphis I was working with Undertaker, who was going under the name The Punisher at the time. He was an intimidating guy, pretty jacked up, and had been in the business a good year longer than I was. He was green, but not as green as I was.
    He told me before our match, “Well, we’ll put over your strength in the beginning, so you’ll grab a headlock,” and we talked about it for maybe one minute. So we go out in the ring and he was trying to call me a spot. He was making the “sha-sha-sha” noises so the fans didn’t know what he was saying. He was telling me, “Okay, kid, one tackle, sha-sha-sha, drop down, sha-sha-sha, hip toss, sha-sha-sha.”
    I said, “What?”
    So he said it all over again.
    I said “What?” about three times, and after that third time, here it came.
Bing, bam, boom,
he just hammered me. He couldn’t get any high spots out of me so he just beat me up.
    So I guess I did have a disability coming in, and that’s why I learned how to call a match early on. That way I was the guy talking in the ring, and I didn’t have to listen to anybody. I talked and they listened.
    It wasn’t anything that was a hindrance to me growing up. I just had to try and listen better.
    Then there were Gary Young and Billy Joe Travis, who were part of my education too. They were journeymen wrestlers who would go out there and have a killer match, but they didn’t get any great breaks. They never had great physiques or were at the right place at the right time. But when it came to working a weekly territory, going around and around and around the horn, these guys were doing something different every night.
    I’d ride sometimes with Gary Young. If I did something in a match, he’d say, “Hey, kid,” and give me a bit of advice. He showed me how to do different things I hadn’t known how to do. He was a big influence on me.
    A ton of fine wrestlers, some stars and others not, helped me throughout my time in Memphis. That’s one of the great things about this crazy business—people helping each other, the boys helping the boys.
    J.R.: The Memphis territory was a unique place by all accounts. Some guys passed through Tennessee and made a few bucks. Some guys literally stayed there their whole careers, like Jerry “the King” Lawler, and endured the cyclical ups and downs of a wrestling territory. Some guys went to Memphis and starved, hut got a great education in the process. Steve made virtually no money wrestling in the Tennessee territory, hut he was provided with an opportunity to learn his craft and to pay the dues necessary to make it in this business. One thing I can tell you from personal experience is that when you make long car trips with veteran wrestlers, and you are the new guy or the rookie, you had better be a good listener. The old timers do not enjoy hearing newcomers speak, and resent you if you do.
    May I suggest that Steve’s “tuna and raw potatoes only” diet, which he utilized out of necessity in those days, be one of the last ones you consider if you are looking to lose a few pounds. It would certainly not be AMA approved.
     

9
Dallas: Endings and Beginnings
     
    W hen I first went to Memphis, the wrestlers there were beating the crap out of everybody from Texas, including me, on a regular basis. After two