Steve Austin Critical Of WWE’s Booking Of Lana

On his recent podcast, Steve Austin talked about the Women’s Title match from the Money in the Bank PPV:

“Naomi deserves better, the title deserves better. Lana wasn’t up for this task at hand, at this point in her career. I thought she had much more mystique as the valet, whatever the term is, with Rusev. Man, they kind of killed her gimmick off, and reinvented her, and I just liked her the way she was. So, if she wants to be in the ring, that’s more power to her, but a lot of the stuff I got on Twitter was, ‘Hey man. For a first match, she did a lot better than I expected.’ Ok. As I say that, good for her. But as a company who’s striving for excellence in sports entertainment/professional wrestling, the best of the best belong on a pay-per-view.”

“They’re not pay-per-views anymore, but the best of the best – whether they’re a top-tier worker, or someone over with X-factor, it factor, or selling merch, or drawing a crowd – those are the people that need to be featured on the pay-per-views. And all of a sudden, you have this person come from nowhere, get a title shot, be featured, now come back two weeks later to be on another featured match on SmackDown, which is gonna do a number or not. But I just thought, you have to treat a title with higher regard and respect than that, and put the people on the pay-per-views, or the events that are broadcast on the WWE Network, the best of the best are on the shows. That’s just the way I see it.”