Stone Cold Steve Austin at 57 years old: Still got it.

For men (man-children) of a certain age, that glass shattering will always do something to us the second we hear it. It’s visceral. I was about 13/14 years old at the height of the Attitude Era in the WWF (deal with it panda bears), and there was nothing, AND THE ROCK MEANS, NOTHING, bigger than watching Raw every Monday night. The Rock, ‘Taker, The Corporation, DX, Vince and Stone Cold. It was simply electric.

Now with that said, I haven’t watched wrestling regularly since about 2003/2004. I think Wrestlemania 20 or 21 was the last one I watched where I was really invested, knew all of the storylines, etc. But when I heard that Stone Cold was going to be a big part of Wrestlemania 38, I knew I had to at least watch that portion, and the above video was the beginning of that segment on Saturday night.

It was billed as a, ‘confrontation,’ between Stone Cold and Kevin Owens, but in no way did I expect Stone Cold to actually wrestle. I thought there’d be some trash talk, Austin stuns KO, drinks beers, end scene. And I was here for just that! But when Austin agreed to an actual match with Owens, I was stunned. Stone Cold is 57 years old, hasn’t wrassled in 19 years, and has had about a million neck and back surgeries. But there he was, taking bumps and actually mixing it up for a match that lasted about 20 minutes. Of course it ended with a stunner and beers, so the end game was the same, but for about 25 minutes I was 14 years old again.

And I’ll admit, watching it the entirety of the Saturday night portion kind of got me locked in for Sunday night as well. I was not expecting another appearance from Stone Cold and I literally jumped up from my recliner when this happened:

First of all, can we talk about Vince McMahon for a second? I don’t know what to make of what’s going on there. The guy is probably the most in shape 76 year old since Izzy Mandelbaum but he clearly moves around like you’d expect a 76 year old who’s been through what he’s been through to move*. It put me in a real mental pretzel. But you knew what was going to happen next:

Vince hasn’t sold a stunner well since 1997 and appropriately that might have been his worst effort on what is likely to be the last stunner he takes. Again though, a WAVE of nostalgia.

Somewhat related: Pat McAfee was born for this. The guy was legitimately entertaining in the ring, he’s electric on the mic, he’s got the world by the balls right now. People laughed when he retired from the NFL at 29 years old when he could have cashed $2-$3 million a year for 10 more years. Well now he’s a media/entertainment mogul who’s making about $60 million a year. Crazy. HOF gif after he took a stunner last night:

I’ll admit it: It was one of the most entertaining shows I’ve watched in a LONG time. I might be back in.

*I am as guilty of this as anyone when I see someone on TV I haven’t seen in a long time: ‘Man Vince is looking ROUGH.’ Yeah dude, he’s 76 years old. He doesn’t look the same as he did in 1998.

PS: I watched Saturday night at my buddy Nick’s house, and we were trying to explain to his daughter how difficult it was to get PPV’s back in the day. Kids today will never understand it because you click one button and Wrestlemania is on. In 1988 you needed to call a 1-888 number, get verbal approval from your credit card company, have access to a special black box  and a written letter from the President of the United States of America. And even THEN it only worked maybe 50% of the time. I remember MANY Sunday nights from 1996-1999 sitting on hold with Charter because a PPV we paid for wasn’t working.

Double PS: ‘Don’t even bother coming to school on Tuesday if you’re not ready to recap Stone Cold getting crucified by the Ministry of Darkness on Raw last night.’ A sentence only people of a certain age will understand.