"Stone Cold" Steve Austin was adamant on his podcast The Steve Austin Show that he wouldn't want to return to the ring due to all the work he would have to put in for a one-match payoff, and after dispelling rumors last fall that he'd have on more match at WrestleMania XXX, there is still some backstage sentiment that "The Texas Rattlesnake" could still possibly have one last match someday.
While the April 6 WrestleMania XXX show at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans won't feature Austin in a match, there remains optimism that he may return to the squared circle one day to wrestle., though his peers on WWE Tough Enough saw him get banged up when he tried to mix it up in the ring during the filming of the program.
According to Wrestlingheadlines.com, people close to Austin have said even though he has said in the past on his podcast that he doesn't want to put in all of the workouts and effort needed for a one-match payoff, they still believe Austin could come back someday due to seeing him mess around in the ring during the filming of WWE's Tough Enough.
The report indicates that when Austin filmed the program a few years ago, he got into the ring and banged himself around a little harder than anyone could have expected. According to the sources, the incident "set off a light bulb" in Austin's head about how dangerous it would be to get back into the ring.
It's unclear if Austin felt positive about stepping into the ring or was surprised that he got hurt, but his peers obviously saw that Austin was still able to mix it up pretty well in the ring.
Austin, 49, retired early due to injuries in 2003 and had his last match against Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson at WrestleMania XIX in Seattle in a losing effort, and hasn't seemed interested in returning to active competition since, though he's made plenty of non-wrestling appearances.
Austin was adamant that he wouldn't return for WrestleMania XXX back in November.
"If I were to get ready for a match, let's call it WrestleMania XXX, you need about a three-month prep for that," Austin said on PWTorch Livecast in November. "I've been out of the ring 10 or 11 years, if not longer. I don't even remember. So to properly train for that match would be bumping in the ring every single day for a couple of hours along with all of the other things I would need to do and get on the road and get back into timing and stuff like that."
Austin said at the time that he didn't believe the payoff would be worth it.
"Take all this time, dedicate that window of time to accomplish this one goal and then go from that to where? It's a dead-end street," he said on the program. "Yeah, you can cash a pretty good check at the end of the rainbow, but then the rainbow is over and I got to go back to doing whatever else I was doing... I'm very comfortable doing what I'm doing right now. I enjoy my reality television stuff, some of the acting stuff. I enjoy my podcast. I'm pretty busy. I enjoy spending time with my wife and my dogs and going back and forth from Los Angeles to Texas."
While Austin has publically ruled out a return to the ring on several occasions, things can change and the fact that he was able to mix it up during Tough Enough tapings could lead to an eventual return to the ring for "the toughest S.O.B." in sports entertainment.
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