On the heels of Steve Austin's impending return to WWE and the coverage of how he and Eric Bischoff felt about each other when Austin left WCW in 1995, I dug up the following interview that I did with Austin on October, 28, 1995, right after Eric Bischoff fired him while he was out rehabbing a triceps injury and during the time he worked for ECW.  It was originally published in The Wrestling Lariat newsletter.

Scherer: I guess the first question is how's your health?

Austin: Real good. I go back to the doctor in a couple of weeks and it looks like I will be back in action in about 3 weeks. I am just waiting on the green light. Theoretically, I could get into the ring right now, but psychologically I am going to feel a lot better having a green light from the doctor. That's the only thing that's holding me back. To tell you the truth, I don't know if, when I get back in the ring, I am going to be rusty or what, but I am just looking forward to getting back in there. And like I said before, last time I was interviewed, Steve Austin on a bad day, is better than anybody here on a good day. So I am just ready to get back into the ring and go through this cast of misfits here in ECW that call themselves wrestlers.

Scherer: You had an injury to your triceps?

Austin: Yes. I tore the triceps off the elbow, and had it stitched back on. The tendon has reattached itself back to the elbow. I have got a couple of screws in there but they're not really doing anything. The tendon healed back and it's 100% now. I am just getting all of my strength back and training hard and that's it. I'm almost ready.

Scherer: I remember when your career first started, you were Chris Adams' protégé down in Texas. You came out with Jeannie Clark, and the feud was you and her vs. Chris and his wife Toni. What was it like starting out in World Class in, what looking back on it now, was its dying days?

Austin: It was the dying days for that promotion because it seemed like everything was going downhill from there but I had only been working for 6 weeks or two months, on Fridays and Saturdays at the Sportatorium (in Dallas), when they sent me to Tennessee as a babyface. When I came back, they decided to do the student vs. teacher deal, so I turned heel. And I have been a heel ever since. So even though that was a down period for World Class Championship Wrestling, or the USWA whatever you want to call it, Steve Austin with only three months in the sport was the hottest thing there, and there was a little bit of jealousy there from the older guys. And I guess if someone came in right here started doing something better than I could do it, I would probably be mad too. A lot of guys shut me out down there. Gary Young, who I never really thought got a big break, or Billy Joe Travis, helped me out a helluva lot. And both of those guys were great wrestlers and I learned a lot from them. It was a good place to start.

Scherer: You started out as Steve Williams.

Austin: Right.

Scherer: And then you changed the name to Steve Austin.

Austin: I tell ya real briefly how that happened. I went to Mid South Coliseum. Jerry Jarrett sent me down there and forgot to tell Dutch Mantel, who was booking. I show up nervous as hell and I'm in the back dressing room and Dutch comes up to me and says, "What's your name?" I said, "Well, it's Steve Williams." That's what I was wrestling as. He goes, "Well, you can't be that." I said, "Why not?" He says, "You just can't." I guess he was talking about Dr. Death and all that. He says, "You've got 15 minutes to come up with a name." So I said, "S***, it's hard to come up with a name in 15 minutes, one that's going to last hopefully." So, he comes back in 15 minutes and says, "What did you come up with?" I said, "Nothing." He goes, "OK , you're Steve Austin." Well, I used to watch the 6 Million Dollar Man. I said, "Hell, I don't want to be that." He said, "Well you've got five minutes to come up with a name, the show's fixin' to start." He came back in five minutes and said, "Well, what did you come up with?" I said, "Nothing." He said, "OK, you're Steve Austin." So, I started off as Steve Austin there. Me, Dutch, and Chris Champion started running up and down the road in my Hyundai Excel, that I could barely make the payments on, and he told me, "look at it this way, when you turn you can be a cocky, arrogant bastard and call yourself Stunning Steve Austin." So, when I turned heel on Christmas, I said, "Hey, that's what I'm going to start calling myself." The whole thing with the "Stunning" thing is that is was never designed to be some kind of flashy person dressed up nice, like some of the guys do. That was never the intention of that name so I think it was kind of a misnomer or misleading when people would say, when looking at my wardrobe which doesn't consist of a lot, and say, "Well that's not stunning at all!" Well, it was never was that, it was like the Hollywood Blondes thing with me and Brian. It was more a state of mind type thing. Since coming to ECW, and since leaving the basement of WCW, I've dropped that and I am just going as Steve Austin.

Scherer: You had a great feud and great matches with Chris Adams. You went to WCW, had a great run with Rick Steamboat, then what happened?

Austin: When I first rolled into WCW, I was used to making like 20 to 40 bucks a day.  I wasn't making any money. I'm looking around and all of the sudden I am on guaranteed money, making good money, and I hear everybody bitching and complaining, and I'm thinking, "Man, these guys are crazy"! Well hell, a year, year and a half, two years later, after the newness of it all wore off, hell I was bitching and complaining just as much as everybody else, just because of the fact, that...... Well, Dusty Rhodes first had the book when I went in there. After I got successful and proved that I could perform and had a lot of raw talent that could be developed, well that's when they shut me down, they kept me down. They changed bookers. I think Flair stepped in there. Flair's the top heel. He's got the book. What's he going to come up with for Steve Austin? Well, logic's going to tell you nothing. And that's what they came up with. But I think, and I know I going to get these people all out of order here, the thing with me and Brian, I was supposed to get a big push. That's when Dusty had the book again. They put us together just as an interim tag team, someone to switch the belts off of. I didn't like that one bit. I was supposed to get a big singles run with Harley Race. I was pissed off about that. Well, me and Brian became very good friends and we made it into the Hollywood Blondes and came up with everything ourselves. And with a mediocre push, at best, turned it into the best tag team to come along in the last ten years and probably, in my opinion, one of the best of all time. And we never were even given a full, green light push and time to develop and scratch the surface of what we could have done. And then, with things going on right now.....well I know, when they had the booking committee, they weren't real high on me. (Kevin) Sullivan had the book right when I got fired.  I'm sure that he didn't really like me. We never saw eye to eye on anything and he never had anything for me. Jim Barnett came up to me at the Disney tapings one time and asked me if I had any ideas. I said, "Yeah, I have lots of ideas. I am sitting here proving them with this organization. They are not all my ideas, but a lot of them are." I am as creative as anyone there. The fact is, Eric Bischoff and that gang did not want to implement those ideas. So I just took the money and, like I said before, became complacent and slipped down into mediocrity. I always worked hard every night, but like I said, if they are paying you good money, it's their show and it's going to run without anybody there. If they don't want you to have anything, they're not going to give it to you, other than a paycheck. You're only going to be a star if they let you be a star. It was never designed for Steve Austin to be a star in WCW. I was just a middleman, someone to get people over so that pretty much concluded my run there. I don't know. I didn't figure it was time to get out, I got kicked out, you know, over the phone. It's a pretty chickens*** way to fire someone if you ask me.

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Column for: 2/9/2003 3:32:00 PM