Steve Austin Still Gets Emotional Seeing His Final Match With The Rock – See Details

Austin went into his wrestling career with multiple knee injuries from playing football at North Texas State University, which were further aggravated in the ring.

He also suffered from a broken neck (Summerslam 1997) that almost left him paralyzed, which he believes played a role in the shortening of his career.

“Almost nobody on the roster that day knew that was going to be my last match. My nerves were acting up from my previous spinal injury that I knew it was going to be my last one,” Austin recalls. “As you can see, I still get emotional as I’m even talking about the story and going back there.

I damn near started crying [in the documentary]. My love for the business is so much, it’s the only thing I really wanted to do in my life for a living. Deciding to retire from that dream at 38 was extremely hard.”

But what a way to go for the wrestler many consider the greatest of all time — for the record, his vote goes to Rick Flair. Even though he lost, he had his moment to shine one last time thanks to a kind gesture from Johnson.

“Normally when somebody wins a match, they stay in the ring,” he explains. “Rock won but because I was leaving, he let me have the ring so I could do my final farewell. He gave me that moment and it was really cool.”