Stone Cold Podcast Report: Big Show Talks “Please Retire” Chants, Mayweather Match, More

-Stone Cold welcomes us to the podcast and he is alone as he waits on Show to get back from the ring. Austin throws a shout out to Daniel Bryan and says he has his respect. He is also proud of what he did and admits he had a tear in his eye last week when Bryan announced his retirement. Austin then wishes all the best to Bret Hart in his fight against prostate cancer and says that he loves him.

-Show finally arrives and brings Austin the Slammy he won for his podcast show on The Network. Austin brings up Daniel Bryan again and Show mentions he cried as well. Austin then gives Show one of the beers that he brews and Show isn’t sure if he can drink it yet. Show is messing with his mic as he talks about Braun. He says Bruan is learning and he is going to be a player if he keeps working.

-Austin asks Show how he is doing and he says that he is blown up from running down the hall. They talk about the tour of Germany and Show says he got no sleep because he can’t sleep on airplanes due to size of the seats.

-Austin asks Show if he still loves the business and he says he does. He is still having the time of his life out there. They discuss the current state of the business and Shows says he misses the babyface comebacks in tag matches. He feels things have changed a bit and has cut off the art of the hot tag.

-Austin mentions one of the questions he got from fans was about Big Show needing to retire. Show has a big laugh at that, and crushes those who don’t know what all he is doing for the business. He says that he has only won like 8 matches in the last year and he has more turns than NASCAR. He can universally work heel or face and thus they turn him as needed.

-Austin asks him how long he has left and Show says 2 years. Austin goes into an awesome Dusty Rhodes impression in regards to Show needing to have money to pay his bills. That was tremendous! Austin wants Show to share his story about being a giant. At 5 years old, Show was nearly 5 feet tall and weighed 100 lbs. They put pictures of Show as a kid and he says at 12 he was 6’2″ and 220 lbs. The parents of the other kids were afraid to let them play with Show because of his size and fact he looked like a grown man.

-Show was diagnosed with acromegaly at 19 years of age though doctors believe he had the tumor at 9 years old. Basically it is a tumor on the pituitary gland and Show goes into the science behind the disease in great detail.

-Austin puts over Show as one of the funniest guys in the business. Show says that he is a naturally nice person that lives everyone. He developed his humor to show people that he was a nice person that shouldn’t be feared. They talk about sports now and Show was recruited to play basketball at Wichita State. Show calls it one of the worst years of his life as they is when he found out about the tumor and he also lost his grandfather. Show says he turned down a lot of D1 schools because he had a great relationship with the coach. That coach was fired and it left Show in a bad place. Show’s father had cancer that returned and all that led to him quitting at Wichita State. They put up a photo of Show’s dad and the big man starts crying because he hasn’t seen the picture in a long time. Just crazy to see this big man get choked up and flustered that quickly.

-Show talks about how low he got in that period of his life. He even contemplated suicide at one point as he theoretically pulled the trigger of an empty gun to reset his mind. It was a way for him to see what he would be missing out on if he really had killed himself.

-They talk about how he got into the business, and he mentions that he went to a charity basketball game run by Danny Bonaduce. He was on a team playing against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. Bonaduce knew Show played ball and used him as a ringer basically. He met Hogan and did a impersonation of him. Austin has Show do his Hogan impression and yes, it is still great. Show was worried he blew it with Hogan, but Austin says that Hogan probably saw dollar signs. Show says that is what Hogan said as he told Show he had dollar signs on his forehead.

-Show admits that he was trained by Triple H and Terry Taylor in the Power Plant. His first lesson was learning about how much cardio he needed. He says they blew him up every day as they constantly took turns riding him for about an hour straight. Show says he went to piss once and snot came out because he was so dehydrated. Damn! He puts them both over for being kind to him and he admits to being a fan and he came in with the right attitude. He puts over Arn Anderson as one the greatest heels ever and says he is proud to call him a mentor and great friend.

-They talk about how HHH told Show to ride out his contract in the power plant (he was getting paid great to just be there) and then head to the WWE. Show says that 8 months into the contract, Jim Ross called and offered double what WCW was paying him. Show told JR that he wanted to finish his contract in WCW and then would talk which he thinks made people realize he was a straight shooter.

-Austin ask about the influence Hogan had on Show’s career. Show says that Hogan could see the way the wind was blowing and he even told Show at one point that to be a great star he needed to go to New York and work for Vince McMahon. This was years before it happened and even before WCW blew up as the top promotion in the world. Austin brings up how Show’s first match was beating Hogan for the WCW Title. Show says they needed an opponent for Hogan and it was Hogan’s decision to put Show over for the title on his first night.

-Austin asks Show what he thought after winning the title that night. He says he was scared to death because he knew what the Title represented, but he had no clue how to handle it. Austin asks how the boys reacted to Show winning the title. He says that the were all pulling for him and he mentions how he was so much younger than the rest of the roster outside Alex Wright.

-Show goes into a great story of how Hogan told him that he had to wear the belt in the airports to promote their was a new champion and Austin immediately jumps on Show for believing that line. Sure enough Show wears the belt everywhere with the boys calling him champ and waving while he walks around proud. Sting pulls him aside and tells him he looks like an idiot and that is when Show realized they were ribbing him. Tremendous! Austin has a great laugh at it as well as he talks about how you don’t wear titles no matter if heel or face.

-They talk about how Show lost the belt and he says it was stripped from him because of the stuff with The Yeti. They discuss the Monday Night War and naturally we brings up DX invading Nitro. Show also mentions Bischoff challenging McMahon to a fight and Hogan told Show that Vince was crazy enough to show up and kick Eric’s ass.

-Show talks about Hall and Nash jumping ship and how it changed everything. Austin asks Show about the difference between the two companies. He brings up the morale in WCW sunk because of the guaranteed contracts and that nobody knew who was in charge. He says WCW was fun in the beginning and it changed as they got more successful. When he got the WWE it was a roster full of hungry guys that were all trying to do better than the guy that went on before them.

-We get to the end of his run in WCW and he says that he just listened to what Terry told him. They talk about Show’s debut in WWF and we get video of him throwing Austin threw the cage. Austin says that he was going to sell crazy for what Show was going to do, but he threw him around so easily it caught Austin off guard. Show says Vince told him to be overly physical because Austin may not sell things.

-Show talks about working under Taker’s learning tree. He became a mentor and would often chew him out when needed. He says he didn’t deserve all the attention he got from Taker, but he appreciated it. He did feel everyone in WWE hated him at times, except Austin because he was always about business.

-They go into a great story about working against each other for weeks in Europe. Show talks about how Austin gave him nothing for weeks on end and how Finlay was telling him he needed to stand up to Austin in the ring. They are in the back and Vince tells Austin to put Show over and what we get is Show’s hilarious impression of Austin. As Austin he says the fans paid a lot of fucking money to see Stone Cold kick ass and not put over Big Show and he says this while Show is standing right there. Just so awesome! Austin is nearly in tears laughing over the story. Vince and Steve have a talk and Show knows this isn’t good as he sees the two of them laughing and hugging. Vince tells Show that Steve has a point but he wants him to give Steve a great match and show some aggression. Show says that Steve hasn’t given him shit in the ring for weeks and when he goes to toss Steve back in the ring he screws up and pulls Steve’s trunks up his ass crack basically. Austin says he had to protect his gimmick so he started beating the piss out of Show and told him to lay off the tights. That pissed Show off and he starts beating the hell out of Austin and Steve yells up to him that is the way to fire up. The match seemingly ends with Austin hitting a stunner, but he tells Show to kick out and then he hits him with another Stunner for another kick out. All totaled Show ate 7 Stunners and he says that crowd exploded with each one and when the winning 3 count was finally made it was one of the loudest pops Show has still ever heard. He says that match changed his career and he learned so much psychology wise. He learned he is a giant and that he doesn’t have to wait for someone to give him something. Just a fabulous story!

-Austin brings up how Show has turned over 30 different times. Show says on one hand he is sad that his character never got respect no matter heel or face, but it also proved he was a good hand. He could do whatever the company needed whether it as turn to work with Mayweater, or turn back to fill in for an injured babyface.

-Austin wants an honest assessment of how Show feels he has been booked in his 17 years in the WWE. Show says horrendous (DAMN) and that he is a victim of his own success. He was never like Shawn or Austin in that he would fight against things he wasn’t happy about doing. He was always a team player and his thought was Vince was paying him a lot of money to do a job so he did it. Austin asks Show if he has any regrets as far as if he should have been more like Hogan and took more hold of where his character was going. Show says it is hard to say and that he isn’t a smart enough like Hogan or Austin to have their pulse on the world. He is just a guy that goes out and works.

-Talk shifts to the match with Floyd Mayweather at Mania and Shows says originally it was to be Show/Floyd vs Rey/Batista, but injuries ended that idea. Show says he told Floyd to break his nose and that he was legit pissed when it happened though. He says the match was great though and he enjoyed working with Floyd.

-They discuss the relationship with Vince McMahon. Show says it was hard at first because he didn’t live up to what Vince expected. He got a second chance when Brock said he wanted to work with him and that is when his attitude started to change. Their relationship has been great since 2003 and he calls Vince a father figure.

-Movies are discussed next and asks Show how auditions go for him. He is doing a lot of cold reads just for the experience to help him with future roles if he doesn’t get that role.

-Show wants to be remembered as a guy who loved the business and that he doesn’t need accolades and hall of fames. He just wants respect of the guys he worked with and he is thankful for what the business has given him. His greatest accomplishment has been earning the respect from guys like JBL who rode him for years to get better. Show gives some advice to the NXT guys by telling them to be versatile and be able to adapt to anything like also having their fundamentals and basics down.

-Austin wraps things up on what was a fantastic podcast. Again, I am not sure if being live helps that much, but this was tremendous. Show is a great guy for this type of forum because he is a great story teller and is comfortable in these settings. Hopefully they keep these live in the future. Thanks for following along!