As we’ve been documenting in the retro Best and Worst of 1997 WWF, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was pretty much always destined to be a big old honking megastar. But to many, an indispensable part of his legendary schtick — one of the most iconic things about the guy who is pretty much nothing but iconography — was his penchant for self-toasting beers and pouring them all over himself and the ring after every victory and at the end of most Raws in the Attitude Era. His possible Wellness Policy-violating celebration has been imitated pretty much any time someone has ever held two beverages at the same time. And he’ll get mad at you if you try to claim he wasn’t legitimately pounding brewskis.
On this week’s The Steve Austin Show podcast, the Texas Rattlesnake was joined by the man who was responsible for chucking Austin all those in-ring Steveweisers for years and years: former WWE timekeeper Mark Yeaton. The man was with WWE for three decades, so you better believe they had a whole bunch to talk about, but you also better believe they talked about their incessant cavalcade of beer bashes.
During their discussion, Austin offhandedly threw out an Andre the Giant-level boast about one post-match celebraish in particular.
“Were you in Japan the time we did the beer bash with the Dudleys and Stacy Keibler? … We went through 115 beers that night [in Japan], and that was the most I ever went through. And a lot of people said ‘hey man, was that real beer?’ And I say yes, it was always real beer… except for the one time. We were in Montreal, I think it was Sunday, something like that. Whatever it was, or maybe it was against the rules of the building, but it was NA beer, non-alcohol. And so all of a sudden those pictures start making the rounds and people are thinking ‘oh they’re throwing this guy non-alcohol beer.’ … that was one time.
I can’t tell you how many times I left the ring and I had a little bit of a buzz because of all the beers I was drinking. When you’re shotgunning anywhere from six to 12 beers, and maybe you get half of ‘em in. On an empty stomach, after you’ve wrestled, it goes to your head pretty quick.”
115 beers! Even split between Austin, two Dudleys, and one Keibler … and assuming part of each beer went down the side of everybody’s face or down somebody’s shirt, that’s a good 20-30 cold boys each. That’s truly unbelievable. They probably just wadded up the canvas and left it out in back of the arena after that show.
And in case it’s been a while and you’ve forgotten, even in your pretty standard run-of-the-mill end-of-Raw celebration, they went through dozens of cans of beer. Seriously, just went through the stuff like ICP goes through Faygo. Check it out.
(h/t to Fox Sports for the transcript)
