Savio Vega Recalls Meeting ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin For The First Time, Explains Why They Had Great Chemistry
Steve Austin calls Savio Vega “Primo” and it’s for a good reason. Vega was the first person Austin stepped onto the canvas with when he began his historic WWE tenure and the pair’s chemistry in the ring was immediate.
Savio Vega recently spoke with Dominic DeAngelo of WrestleZone about working with Austin before he donned “Stone Cold” moniker and it was the legendary Pat Patterson who initially introduced Vega to the Texas Rattlesnake. Fittingly enough, they were set to have Austin’s try-out match right in the heart of The Lone Star State.
“When the great Pat Patterson, God love him, when the great Pat Patterson come to me in San Antonio, TX, we’re doing RAW. and I saw the paper. You arrive and you see who you’re working tonight and I see ‘Savio Vega and Steve Austin.’ I say, ‘Who the hell is Steve Austin?’
“So here comes Pat with Steve, he say, ‘Savio!’ I say, ‘Yes?’ I was lacing my boots. He said, ‘This is Steve, he’s gonna do his try-out tonight. Put it together, let me know, you go over with the spinning kick.” I say, ‘Okay, that’s it.’ So this is what I say to Steve. I say, ‘Brother, I don’t know you, you don’t know me, this is the way I do this,’ He say, ‘Okay.’ I said, ‘Let’s call it in the ring.’ He said, ‘Alright.’ When he said that, I said, ‘Right, I’m cool.’ I know what I’m gonna bring, I don’t what he’s gonna bring. I just want to take care of myself, I don’t want to get hurt.
“My friend, when we finished that match, we got the people up and we went to the back, I wait for him, shake his hand and say, ‘Brother, what a fucking match.’ And he’s like ‘Oh, it was good?’ I said, ‘Brother…’ Pat comes to me and say, ‘Savio! Tell me!’ I say ‘Did you see it?’ He said, ‘Yeah, you tell me!’ I’m like, ‘I think it was great!’ He’s like, ‘It was great! It feel? How it feel?’ I said, ‘Easy.’ He says, ‘Okay, tomorrow you guys working again.’ I said, ‘Alright.’ So we work again and now I’m happy because I know the tools that he brings and man, then from that point on we got married for almost a year.Working every night, they give us PPVs, they give us the strap, they give us WrestleMania.”
Vega talked about that run, even a moment to where Savio found himself on the shelf due to injury, but Vega gives us a major reason as to why him and Steve hit it off so easily between the ropes.
“So I say why we have such a great chemistry? It was easy. He worked for Texas, he worked for Atlanta, he worked for Florida, he worked all that area and guys that come down from that area work here in Puerto Rico and many of them worked with me. So by that time we just have one book of rules: was ‘take it easy, get out of the ring in one piece and make the crowd happy.’ So that’s what we did. We did the basic stuff.”
Savio stated how the his match with Austin at WrestleMania wasn’t their best, but they happened to have better bouts during their house shows.
“One time, we were in this town and we worked for 25 minutes. Steve and me. We forget about everybody,” he said which later got him some friendly flack from fellow Bone Street Krew member, The Undertaker. “We are bumping! We are so happy of what we just did and he come back and we went to the dressing room. I remember, Yokozuna was there, the BSK guys were there and Taker, Taker just look at me and say, ‘Motherfucker…we have to go [next] and you guys want to take the ring!’ I just went like this: ‘I’m sorry, man.’ He’s like, ‘What the fuck! There’s a bar waiting for us.'”
Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone.