Stone Cold Steve Austin on Giving Donald Trump the Stunner

Stone Cold Steve Austin was interviewed by Complex and spoke about when Vince McMahon first brought up the idea of taking a Stone Cold Stunner to Donald Trump.

“Vince says to me, ‘Steve, I’m going to see if I can get Donald to take the Stunner,’” Austin recalls, referring to his signature finishing move, where he kicks an opponent in the gut then performs a sit-down jawbreaker. “I said, ‘you think?’ He says, ‘Oh yeah, it’ll be great, it’ll be great.’ He goes up to Donald and says, ‘Hey Donald, this is Stone Cold Steve Austin.’ I shook Donald’s hand. He goes, ‘Listen, I want to know if after the match, when everything is done, if Steve could hit the Stone Cold Stunner on you.’ Donald says, ‘You think it’d be a good thing?’ and Vince goes, ‘Oh, of course it would be. It would just blow the roof off the place.’ And Donald’s right hand guy was saying, ‘No, no, no! You don’t need to do this, we got other things to do!’ He’s trying to talk him out of it. And Donald says to Vince, ‘You think it’ll help?’ and Vince goes, ‘I promise you it’ll help.’ And Donald says, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’

Austin pulled it off seamlessly, leaving Trump splayed on the mat, but it wasn’t one of his best. “It wasn’t a picture-perfect stunner,” Austin says, “but I give Donald Trump a hell of a lot of credit for being a man. He was a stand-up guy, he was there to do business and we did business, so I respect the man for that. If I see him giving a speech on the TV, I don’t think, ‘Hey, I gave this guy a stunner.’ We were doing business and we did business. The fact that he is going to be the next President of the United States, it’s a hell of a story.”