Rikishi Reacts to Steve Austin’s CTE Comments, Understands Where Austin Is Coming From

– As noted, WWE Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin made some controversial statements during one of his interview segments for the Mr. McMahon docuseries, claiming that he doesn’t “believe in” CTE, and, “I’m not a CTE guy. Just don’t believe in it.” WWE Hall of Famer Rikishi spoke about Austin’s recent comments on Off the Top podcast, and Rikishi reasoned that while he does believe in CTE and concussion trauma, he relates to where Austin is coming from. Below are some highlights of Rikishi’s comments (via Fightful):

Rikishi on the old-school mentality in wrestling: “I mean, ain’t the part of the game? Be it in football or any full-contact sports? We get hurt, man. But when you come from the old-school…I don’t even know or remember did I ever get a concussion, and if I did, back in the day, I’d just shake it off and keep going because out of sight, out of mind means no paycheck on the weekly. You’re already mentally prepared to put your body through it. If it takes me I guess getting a concussion and keep going to get that paycheck to feed my family and put food on the table, we’re talking 25 something years ago, I’m talking about 30 dollars a payday, a match. So I might have got a concussion before I got to WWE and didn’t know it. But I feel great. I’m sure if I did have a concussion, I would damn sure notice by now.”

On understanding where Austin was coming from: “We come from that old school, so I kind of relate to what Steve was talking about. Now, I can’t say I don’t believe in it because I do believe injuries. If it’s a concussion, you’re gonna feel it, and we’ve seen a lot of NFL football players get hurt from these, and whoever’s doing the study for this, I think it’s a good thing for the boys, to be able to know that something’s wrong with your brain, or this is the reason why I’ve possibly been getting bad headaches or I just feel kind of tired on a normal day, when I feel like I shouldn’t be tired. But with people that want to examine a lot of the wrestlers, I don’t see anything wrong with it. I’m not saying that I’m not a believer. Until I know a lot about it, then I’ll be that person to be able to make my own choice.”

On his uncles telling him not to tell WWE if he was hurt: “So I kind of understand where Steve’s coming from. When you get a chance at WWE, you got one shot and one shot only, and that one shot better count. My uncles used to always tell us, ‘When you’re hurt, don’t let the company know it.’ Never understood why. Then years, days, months go by, I start to understand because if you let them know, they gonna just take you out in the back, get rid of you, bring the next person in like that can run. So it was bigger than us, man. We were the sacrifice to make…to put food on the table.”

The Mr. McMahon docuseries is streaming now on Netflix.