Shane McMahon on His Start, Austin’s Walkout, Shane-Angle Match

Recent podcast episode of The Steve Austin Show had Shane McMahon as the guest discussing Shane’s start in the wrestling industry, Vince’s reaction to Austin walking out on the WWE, and Vince’s reaction to the Shane vs. Kurt Angle match at King of the Ring 2001.

On the topic of his start in the industry, Shane revealed he always had the goal of working in the wrestling industry but his parents wanted him to wait till after he finished college first. Shane stated he started off as part of WWE’s ring crew before later being promoted to the referee crew.

“Well, [Vince] knew that’s exactly what I wanted to do. The requirements were I had to graduate college. Boston University, I graduated from there. I got a B.S. in Mass Communications/Public Relations. Bachelors of Science. I was like, ‘okay, let me just field this’ knowing full well I wanted to get completely into the [professional wrestling] business.

I graduated ring crew and all the other stuff and that’s when I started refereeing. Well, the original ring crew was Joey Marella, Mike Chioda, and Tony Chimel. Those were the three. Yes, [sadly, Joey Marella is no longer with us]. So I was the kid and so, Joey and I, because his dad was Gorilla Monsoon, and my dad, so what we’d do, and he was probably six or seven years older than me, so we were drinking beers under the stands, just complaining about our dads.”

When discussing Steve Austin’s infamous walkout from the WWE in 2002, Shane revealed Vince was devastated and took it very personal since Austin was one of the few guys Vince considered as a very close friend. Also revealed a lot of people backstage were very upset as well because of Austin’s status at the time and some being very close friends of him.

“[Austin was] the guy that was drawing the houses and everything was built around [Austin]. So when you have that much equity at stake and you have your number one player in there and that’s the one who draws money all of a sudden say, ‘I’m out,’ well, it’s very devastating, obviously, to everyone else underneath and everyone felt it, just like, ‘wow’, so [Austin] specifically, you let a lot of people down.

Vince was hurt professionally and personally because you guys had been building a good relationship. If you guys did have a disagreement, you’d settle it quickly and talk about it. But at the end of the day when it got down to ‘alright, this is the vision we’re going with when I said we’d paint the room blue, well, you didn’t want to paint the room blue at that time, so you took your paint and went somewhere else.’ So that was a big blow personally as well because, again, it’s the machine and we all put effort into building ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, and the company, and everything else around it. And when that cog leaves, it’s like, ‘oh wow! Jeez, that didn’t feel good!’ It didn’t make any of us feel good. [Austin] let us down, man.

Later in the interview, Shane revealed Vince got very worried at the brutality of his famous match against Kurt Angle at King of the Ring 2001. Stated Vince came close several times to getting the match stopped because he was worried about Shane’s well-being during the match.

Vince almost came out about three times during that match. He was going to call it off. I had no idea. Chioda was the ref. Chioda was usually always my ref because we go back in the day, like I said. And it takes three, not just two. It takes three. In the IFB, I guess Vince is talking, saying something. Chioda’s talking to me, but I think he’s just saying gibberish because, again, I got whacked in the head a couple of times. So anyways, Vince thinks that I’m shooing him off, that I’m disobeying an order, that I’m ignoring the order from Chioda, but I never got the order because I would never disobey him. So [the] gorilla [position] was silent. Vince was going ballistic. I mean, throwing stuff.

[Vince] was fuming and he said something very nice to me. He put the match over and that’ll stay private. And he said, ‘but don’t you ever blanking do that ever again.’ He was so hot. We were supposed to ride together, but he got his own car. I was like, ‘wow, I had heat’ because he was nervous, so it was two things: being a father and seeing your son go through a train wreck and waiving him off, which really made him hot, in front of everybody, because he was giving the order in front of everybody, so he thought I was disobeying on top of all that and everyone around knows I was disobeying.”

Other topics discussed in the interview included Vince being a very strict father for his upbringing, the glass used in the match against Angle wasn’t sugar glass but instead safety glass, and his wife being just as furious as Vince was because of the match with Angle.