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Former WWE Writer Brian Gewirtz Admits to Proposing Brock Lesnar vs. Steve Austin for WWE Raw

August 9, 2022 | Posted by Jeffrey Harris
Steve Austin WrestleMania 38 Image Credit: WWE

– Speaking to Peter Rosenberg on The Cheap Heat Podcast, former WWE writer Brian Gewirtz discussed proposing the Steve Austin vs. Brock Lesnar match for Raw, which ultimately was the straw that broke the camel’s back, leading to Austin infamously walking out on WWE in 2002. Below are some highlights (via Fightful):

Brian Gewirtz on proposing Steve Austin vs. Brock Lesnar on Raw: “I cop to it. I’m the one who proposed Austin vs. Brock that led to…it didn’t lead to good things. The story is, at the time, this was supposedly going to be a brand split that was a true brand split where it was going to be ‘these guys are not going to face each other anytime soon.’ The idea at the time, as we were talking with Vince in the creative meeting, was to really use it as a springboard for this Austin and Eddie Guerrero angle that we were doing at the time.”

On the plan for the match: “Eddie was going to do a run-in and cost Steve the match. We had done stuff like that in the past. We did something somewhere similar with Austin causing a distraction that led to Hurricane beating Rock. I know Hurricane vs. Rock isn’t a future main event and potentially the biggest match in WWE history, but at the time it was, ‘we’re not going to have this for years. When we do it, we’re going to treat it like the biggest match in existence. We can afford to do this match and have it with a (distraction) finish,’ and eventually, Vince (McMahon) changed it from a finish to a non-finish, with a DQ. ‘Let’s do this as a last hurrah kick-off before we truly split the brands.’ I think everything, my part included, if I didn’t know any better, when Steve gave an interview at the time to WWF Magazine and said, ‘I don’t need some kid straight out of sitcom school handing me a piece of paper.’ I kind of deduced that he might have been talking about myself at that time.”

The plan was to have the matchup take place as a King of the Ring tournament qualifier. Ultimately, it never took place. Austin would later return to WWE in early 2003.