It was announced on the latest “Grilling JR” podcast that David Crockett will receive the prestigious 2025 Gordon Solie Award at the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame. The award celebrates excellence in professional wrestling broadcasting, honoring contributions across TV, radio, and podcasting.
During the latest Grilling JR podcast, Jim Ross reflected on the monumental impact “Stone Cold” Steve Austin had on WWE’s success, emphasizing his unmatched contributions to the company’s financial and cultural growth.
“He’s the best there ever was, and his numbers prove it,” Ross stated emphatically. “You can say, ‘Well, so and so is a better wrestler. This guy was a better technical wrestler’, whatever the hell that means. The bottom line of success for a wrestler is, what do they do to the bottom line? Stone Cold impacted the bottom line enough for a company to go public. That’s significant.”
Ross highlighted Austin’s ability to consistently draw record-breaking crowds and revenue, a feat that made him unparalleled in the business. “That’s better than drawing a big house in New Orleans on Thursday night and going to Lafayette on Friday. It’s amazing,” Ross exclaimed. “I’m biased, which I fully admit, but he was the best I’ve ever been around as far as drawing money, adding to the bottom line. Some of those checks I wrote him, or he received, I didn’t write them, were just amazing.”
The WWE Hall of Famer also praised Austin’s dedication to performing at every show, regardless of the venue’s size. “The house show business, as we called it back then, now Live Events, nobody could touch him because he wanted to make all the towns, no matter if it was El Paso in a small building or Houston at the Coliseum, he wanted to be on every card, and he demanded that I book him in singles.”
Ross recalled Austin’s strong preference for singles bouts and his dislike for tag team matches. “Every now and then, Vince would say, ‘We need to take care of Steve. Put him in a tag this weekend on his next run’, and I would say, ‘Vince, he doesn’t want to be in tags. It makes him angry to be booked in tags, so unless you order me to do it, when we get to the arena, he’s going to not want to work because he’s a singles guy. He’s worked all his life to be a singles Main Event star, and that’s the only thing that’s going to make him happy.’ So, Vince would always relent. Anybody that can remember Stone Cold in a house show tag team match, raise your hand. There weren’t many of them.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
