‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin: These Four TNA Stars Need WWE Contracts

Each week “Stone Cold” Steve Austin puts out two podcasts — a family-friendly version and an “unleashed” — where he frequently talks about the state of the wrestling industry and answers listener questions.

On this week’s “family-friendly edition,” he took on the question of which TNA stars belong in the WWE at present. If he were running things, who would they be?

While most audiences know Austin for his “toughest S.O.B.” persona, he actually possesses a sharp mind when it comes to the business of professional wrestling, and wrestling fans will probably agree with his picks, which came at around the 55:06 mark of Tuesday’s podcast.

Answering the question of whether WWE “will ever bring in TNA talent,” Austin had this to say.

“I think they should. There’s some good talent. There’s a couple of cats over there that I see potential all over. I’m not gonna mention any names because I don’t want to put the jinks on nobody.”

With that, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin proceeded to mention names.

“Say you bring in a guy like a James Storm. I’ll go ahead an throw one out there. I think the guy can work. I think he’s got a pretty d*** good look. Is he a spring chicken? No. But can you get a couple of years out of him? H*** yeah, you could.”

Not surprisingly, Austin then named Bobby Roode.

“AJ Styles — man, in regards to the high impact cruiserweight style that guy works at, I don’t know that there’s anybody going right now that can top him. Those are three names off the top of my hat.”

But he wasn’t done there.

“One more I’ll give you — Samoa Joe. Maybe he needs to tighten up the physique just a little bit to get him through WWE waters. But you just brought in Kevin Steen. The guy is probably 10, 12 years younger than Samoa Joe, but I always wanted to see Joe in a WWE ring. He told a lot of great stories with some bada** cats and had some bada** matches that I’ve seen, so to go back to the email here and stop rambling, yeah I think they should bring in a couple of the TNA talents.”

As to the what’s keeping WWE from going that direction?

“For a while it was speculated that people wouldn’t bring anybody from TNA over because they wanted the FCW (Florida Championship Wrestling) camp — the training facility in Orlando (now NXT) — to start cranking out talent.”

Austin disagreed with this logic. “Man, if you got a chance to bring in a couple of cats who have a little bit of history with TNA but have got some years in the business and these guys are veteran workers, to me, you don’t have to dump too much money getting these cats on television.”

What do you think about the “Stone Cold” Steve Austin comments? Should WWE bring in TNA workers? If so, who would be on your wish list?