AEW announcer and Senior Advisor Jim Ross recently covered a range of topics on his podcast, “Grilling Jr.” One of the key discussions focused on WWE legend The Rock, who had a pivotal year in 2000. During this time, he rose to the top of WWE while Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was sidelined due to an injury.
Ross said, “Oh yeah, absolutely. It gave him an opportunity, and Dwayne always took advantage of his opportunities. He’s a game day player. That’s what happens when you get the great athlete, the ball player in you to come out. And yeah, he was just at the right place at the right time — and more importantly, he was ready. He was ready to ascend to the top. Austin’s injury gave him the door open, and it seemed to work out really well. At the end of the day, it obviously has worked out extremely well.”
On the challenge of losing the company’s top star at the time:
“Big challenge, big challenge. And you wonder how well you’re going to do without your star, without Stone Cold. Because make no doubt about it, he was — the show was built around him. He was the biggest star we had to that date. He was the biggest star that we ever had. So you never know exactly how it’s going to be received. But those guys came out without Austin and delivered. And I think if they took that as a personal challenge, that ‘We’re going to get an opportunity to shine here, or the spotlight is going to be on us. So let’s deliver. Let’s go out there and take care of business.’ And they did, and I was very proud and happily surprised at the positive results that that match yielded.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
