Stone Cold Steve Austin Reveals the WWE Title Belt He Kept That Means a Lot to Him

– During his latest podcast, former WWE Superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin discussed some memories of his career and answered some fan questions. Below are some highlights (transcript via WrestlingInc.com).

His thoughts on the Intercontinental title: “I’ve always considered the Intercontinental Championship belt to be really as important as the World Championship belt. You always want to be the World Championship, but, back in the day, the IC belt was typically the guy who could work his ass off. And it was also kind of a training belt for the World Championship belt. Sometimes guys get World belts and never get an IC belt and vice versa, but there was really a whole lot of pride that came out of the guys that carried this particular belt.”

On wanting to keep the original Intercontinental title he won: “I have the Intercontinental Championship that I think Warrior had this belt; Savage had this belt; Curt Hennig probably had this belt. f–k, who else had this belt? I can’t even name all the people that had this belt, but this was the belt that everybody had before they started making all the different ones. Man, I wouldn’t take anything in the world for this belt because it just means that much to me.”

On telling Vince McMahon he wanted to keep the belt: “It [has] got so many memories. It means that much to me. Getting dropped on my head and almost getting paralyzed over it. The fact that I was able to get up from that and come back and finish my career as a professional wrestler. And I’ll never forget that moment. The belt means a lot to me. I told Vince, I told him, I said, ‘hey, man,’ I said, ‘I want to keep this belt.’ He goes, ‘you get another one made,’ [and Austin replied] ‘but this one is mine’ and Vince was cool with it and I’ll never sell that belt. Whenever I die, that’ll still be mine. I will have put in my will whoever I’m going to give it to, but it is an important belt. It’s a very historical belt in the sense of who had it. I wish I had a list of all the guys who actually held this belt in their run and now I have it in my safe. It’s just a very special belt.”