Bruce Prichard On Whether Steve Austin Was Difficult to Work With in 1999, Austin Not Wanting to Do Match With Billy Gunn

– In the latest Something to Wrestle, Bruce Prichard commented on reports that Steve Austin was becoming difficult to work with in 1999. Prichard was commenting on claims that Austin was becoming harder to work with backstage and had signed to do some episodes of Nash Bridges. Austin was popular on the show and there was talk of him getting his own spin-off series.

Amidst this, Austin was banged up and there were reports that he was not wanting work with people, including Billy Gunn. Gunn was in the middle of a singles push and Austin said he didn’t want to face Gunn in a July 26th non-title match on Raw where Austin would have won, saying that the match was “cold” (had no story to it) and that no one could give him a good enough storyline reason to change his mind.

Prichard’s comments, and the full podcast, are below:

On reports that Austin was being difficult to deal with at the time: “Maybe for some people who Steve didn’t particularly want to work with from the standpoint of backstage and what-have-you, not happy with some of the creative. However, if you worked with Steve, Steve worked with you. And I keep going back, because when you hear that s**t and it’s your personal experience — and that’s my personal experience that I can only speak to — where, if you talk to Steve and you face him man up, and you discuss shit, you can work through anything. He’s hard-headed, he’s bull-headed, has very strong opinions. But he’s also reasonable some — most of the time, he’s reasonable. Sometimes he can be unreasonable. But he was never to me, he was never difficult to deal with. You just had to figure it out, you had to go in and work. And that’s what our jobs were, were to go in and make this work.”

On reports he was being considered to star in a Nash Bridges spinoff: “Without a doubt, he was a ratings bonanza for us, and he proved it outside with the Nash Bridges and Jake Cage stuff. And there was rumblings as far as, ‘Does he get his own series? Is this something that can go on and be Steve’s next thing to get him out of wrestling, where he doesn’t have to take any bumps.’ But I don’t think Steve was ever looking at that anything more than, ‘Hey, I can go do this, take a month off, go shoot this series and come back.’ I don’t think Steve was ever looking at this time in his career, that he was looking at something full-time as getting out of this business altogether.”

On Austin not being willing to face Billy Gunn in a July 1999 Raw: “But that’s true [Austin’s reasoning]. I mean, again, he’s stating his opinion. It was an ice cold match. It was just a match for a match. And Steve felt that by having a match with Billy Gunn, he’s gonna go out and he’s gonna beat him, what does that do to help Billy Gunn? This is a guy that you’re trying to get over, then me going out and beating him is not gonna help him get over. And it doesn’t further Steve’s story at all. Steve felt going out and cutting a promo, doing something else to further the story was better than going out and just having an ice cold match against Billy Gunn. It wasn’t anything against Billy. It was more against the writing, and not wanting to hurt Billy Gunn.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something to Wrestle with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.