When an assailant, later identified as Rikishi, ran down “Stone Cold” Steve Austin with a car heading into a November Survivor Series Elimination match on SmackDown in 1999, it put the future of the “Texas Rattlesnake” very much into doubt, even if fans didn't know it at the time.

Still reeling from the effects of the neck injury suffered at the hands of Owen Hart two years prior, Austin was seriously questioning the longevity of his WWE career, with a 1999 neck surgery attempting to both help his quality of life and keep his wrestling career alive, as he was without a doubt Vince McMahon's golden goose at the time.

Discussing what it was like to face off against Austin when he returned to the ring in 2020, specifically in a Two on One Handicap match on a November 6th edition of RAW, Kurt Angle revealed on his namesake podcast that he deferred to Austin on matters of his health and felt as though they did a great job all things considered.

“He didn't act like it. When he was structuring the match, he was really cool with me because he was like, ‘What do you want to do?' I was like, ‘You're Stone Cold Steve Austin. We'll do what you want to do.' And he was like, ‘No, no, no. Well, let's talk about this together. Let's come up with some, some good stuff together.' And, so he enabled me to help start like, letting my mind start the motor in my head started moving. So this was good, because Steve was teaching me to learn how to structure matches and put matches together. Because he could have done it all on his own, but he wanted me to do it, too,” Kurt Angle said via 411 Mania.

“And what he was doing was helping me learn. And that was a big asset. That's why I loved working with Stone Cold and knowing that — but Steve was so good in the ring. Whenever, you know, we would be wrestling the match, and the next spot would be coming up and he'd call an audible I'd be like, ‘Well, what are we doing?' He's like, ‘Just stay with me.' And he'd call the audible and do that, and then he'd go back to the spot that we were supposed to do. He was just so good at that. He was really good at improvising.”

Did Austin and Angle put in any magic after his return in 2000? Eh, not really, unless you count a six-way Hell in a Cell match at Armageddon, but 2001 was a banner year for the duo, with 40 matches wrestled between the duo between RAW, SmackDown, Pay-Per-Views, and house shows. Fortunately for Angle, the duo was able to mesh in the ring despite Austin's injuries and ultimately helped to make one of the former's dreams come true.

Wrestling Steve Austin was a full-circle moment for Kurt Angle.

Discussing his work alongside Steve Austin further, Kurt Angle explained that while he was nervous to get in the ring with “Stone Cold,” he was excited too, as no one was bigger at that time or any time.

“He's the biggest star in the history of the business, man. I mean, he's the biggest money guy they've ever had. Maybe outside of Hulk Hogan, but I would put both of them up there. But yeah, Steve was the biggest star in the business at the time.”

Turning his attention to his appreciation for Austin, Angle noted that the “Texas Rattlesnake” helped to inspire his professional wrestling journey, so sharing a program together in the ring was a dream come true.

“It was a complete honor, again, to be in the ring with Stone Cold Steve Austin. I was so mesmerized when I got in the ring with the Rock, but when I got in the ring with Stone Cold — don't forget, he's the reason why I actually joined WWE, right? So I was like a super fan of Stone Cold. So it was a huge honor to be inside that ring with him.”

Now, to be fair to Angle, pretty much everyone was a fan of “Stone Cold” in the late 1990s, as he truly was a transcendent figure who made WWE into what it is today, even if shows in 2023 look nothing like the glory days of RAW is WAR. While Angle didn't get any five-star matches for his efforts during his glory days with Austin, as he famously has no five-star matches to his name, the memories remain as some of the very best of the Attitude Era, which is a very good consolation prize indeed.