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WWE legend “Stone Cold” Steve Austin stunned a whole lot of people on Wednesday when he admitted in the new Mr. McMahon documentary that he doesn’t believe Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, is an actual thing that exists.
Considering the massive amount of time, effort and money that has been spent studying CTE, and the indisputable results of those studies, former professional wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin claiming he doesn’t believe in it is akin to him saying he thinks the world is flat.
During one of the episodes of the controversial new Mr. McMahon docuseries airing on Netflix, the subject of of CTE was broached while discussing the double murder-suicide carried out by pro wrestler Chris Benoit.
That’s when Steve Austin kicked everyone in the stomach and dropped this stunner on them.
“I worked for a long time, I got dropped on my head one time, I got concussed there,” he said. “But other than that I can’t remember having too many concussions in the business of pro wrestling.
“My take on that has always been if you’re just wrestling and you got a bunch of concussions you’re probably doing something wrong. I’m not a CTE guy, I just don’t believe in it.”
Steve Austin is … not a CTE guy.
Naturally, Vince McMahon also doesn’t seem to be a big “CTE guy” either.
“This doctor came up with this ridiculous statement of, ‘Okay, here’s why Chris Benoit did this,'” McMahon said.
“There was some sort of trauma to his head and things were shown where Chris would dive off the rope and hit someone with his head.”
That sort of thing would do it, but not according to Mr. McMahon.
“That’s a complete work,” McMahon said, using wrestling jargon for “fake.”
“It looks like there’s damage and there’s not. We know what we’re doing, we don’t hurt each other.”
So, according to McMahon (and apparently Steve Austin), there was some other, unknown reason why researchers who studied 40-year-old Chris Benoit’s brain said it looked like the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient.