In this week’s The Pat McAfee Show, Pat McAfee, a WWE announcer, and occasional wrestler, discussed Wrestlemania 38.
He defeated Austin Theory in singles and lost a match against Vince McMahon, the chairman of WWE. Not long afterward, Steve Austin would make an appearance to present stunners to everyone. The previous night’s Mania card featured Austin wrestling and defeating Kevin Owens. According to Pat McAfee, this surprised everyone.
There was a time, maybe over the weekend, on Saturday where Steve had the KO Show that then turned into a match, which none of us knew was going to happen.
McAfee said:
It’s his last match ever.
McAfee was asked if anyone was surprised that Austin’s Wrestlemania appearance was turned into a match. McAfee also shared some details about Austin’s appearance. McAfee admitted:
All of us, I believe all of us were. I just assumed it would be some sort of fight or whatever. I didn’t know what was going to happen there. But he was working on coming out or whatever and we’re in a different era now of the WWE than we were then. So I got to watch this dude’s entrance with an empty stadium or whatever, you know? He goes right to that top rope f-cking both fingers straight up in the air, right? Straight up in the air, both fingers like this. The old ‘ahhh.’
He’s doing his whole thing and then I see three producers run over and they’re like ‘can’t do that. Can’t do that.’ So he goes to the next one and he does it again. ‘Can’t do that.’ He was like ‘alright.’ So he just put his fists up or whatever. So then, as I was watching him, I was wondering ‘there is no way he keeps that middle finger down.’ Like the middle finger from Steve Austin is coming at some point. Last night he had a couple where he f-cking slipped up.
As cool as it was to see Steve Austin wrestle, Pat McAfee did admit he was not a big middle finger guy growing up watching wrestling during the Attitude Era. In fact, he was more of a crotch chop guy. McAfee said:
I wasn’t a big middle finger guy. My brother was a big middle finger guy. I was more of a crotch chop guy. Yeah, I was a big crotch chop guy. I think they (WWE) heard all those stories and they’re like ‘well, we can’t be doing this. We can’t be this.’ So I think that was the change and then, obviously, the business goes in an incredible way, and then they’re just kind of stuck with it.
But there’s a couple of us, and by us, I should not be saying that. But it’s hard for me not, if I’m in the middle of a fight with someone not to be like ‘hey, f-ck you. How about that?’ And it’s hard not to do that.