Chris Jericho recently appeared on Stone Cold Steve Austin's Broken Skull Sessions, and to return the favour, the Texas Rattlesnake has now spoken to Le Champion on his Talk Is Jericho podcast.
The AEW star asked Austin if he's ever seriously considered an in-ring return since his sudden retirement, and the former multi-time WWE Champion made it clear it's not in the cards for him.
"I think Vince [McMahon] tried talking me to coming back a couple times, but you know Chris, I love the business so much. I love it more than anybody else," Austin explained. "I can only speak for myself, but I love the damn business, and it hurt me so much to leave it. And to me, going back for one match, man, why? What am I proving? What are they going to remember? It ain’t about the money. It took me a long time, damn near three years to get over the fact that I left the business."
Austin revealed that he spoke to The Undertaker about the work that goes into wrestling, and admitted that training for a prolonged period of time would lead to him focusing solely on that and nothing else in life. "I’m addicted to the wrestling business," he confessed. "All of a sudden, I’m putting in all the hard work and get back to being around the ring, being around the business, that is my number one passions in my life."
"To get hooked on it again just for one match and to me, it would have been so anti-climactic," Austin added. "Go out there and do it, and then whatever the finish was. And then the people go home, but what does it all mean in the big picture? Stone Cold had a comeback, and the match was a three and a half Meltzer five star rating. ‘It ain’t great enough,’ and even if I crushed it, what would it mean? I just had to say, man, stay away, and I’ve stayed away."
In other words, it seems Austin doesn't want to taint his legacy with an underwhelming return. No one can blame him for that, and while we didn't know it was his last match at the time, it would be pretty damn difficult to top that final WrestleMania bout against The Rock, don't you think?