“Stone Cold” Steve Austin knows more about professional wrestling than 99 percent of fans will forget; he's wrestled all over the world, taken part in some of the biggest bouts of all time, and near-singlehandedly launched a WWE revolution that garnered some of the biggest rating numbers the company has ever seen or will ever see again.

So naturally, when Austin comments on the state of professional wrestling and compares the WWE to AEW – even if he doesn't feel there is a comparison – it's going to get fans talking and heads turning. Sitting down for an interview with Fox News Digital, Austin was asked if he feels like professional wrestling is having a moment right now, and unsurprisingly, “The Rattlesnake” agreed.

“Seems like it is to me by all accounts,” Austin said. “Man, they just had WrestleMania 39 at SoFi in LA and it was spectacular. Those guys and gals put on two nights of extraordinary matches. I think the crowd went home truly satisfied each night. The main event in the second night, they got it right. The right finish, the right execution. It was magnificent. So, I think it’s in a great place.

“I know (AEW) is out there. Some smaller organizations and I wish them all the best of luck in the world, to have full houses and for everybody to stay healthy and for the business to continue to thrive. There’s this perceived, like, I don’t know. It’s not AEW versus WWE like it was WWE versus WCW back in those days.

“But you know, there’s competition there but will they ever reach … when you look at the production of that WrestleMania that just happened, that’s a production level that would exceed anything that the NFL could put on. Any organization in the world, you look at the production value that WWE delivered at 39 or 38 or whatever they do, you can be on the same level with them but I can’t say that there’s anybody better at putting on a live event much less an extravaganza like WrestleMania, like WWE does.”

Whoa, now that is a quote. While AEW fans, wrestlers, and performers alike would probably disagree with Austin's statement, as 40,000, 50,000, maybe even 70,000 fans will be filling Wimbley Stadium for All In II come July, it's certainly hard to argue that WWE didn't put on a world-class spectacle at WrestleMania 39, as those 80,000 fans seemingly all left SoFi Stadium happy, even if they didn't necessarily agree with the ending of Night 2.

“Stone Cold” Steve Austin wasn't ready for a big-time match at WrestleMania 39.

In another one of Austin's media tour stops, this time with Bleacher Report, “The Rattlesnake” was asked about why he didn't work some sort of a match at WrestleMania, even a small segment like the ones The Miz worked on both nights of the show. For Austin, it wasn't so much a lack of opportunity as it was a lack of readiness.

“People have asked me, ‘Why didn't do you do ‘Mania?' They asked me, but I didn't know what my life was going to look like until I was done with this show. I finished up on the show four days before WrestleMania,” Austin said. “I drove every single mile in an RV and I brought dumbbells with me, a sandbag and a kettle bell, so I got my workouts in. The concrete idea was a match. It was a match with one of the top guys in the business, period. I'll let everybody speculate about that, but yeah, it was a match and I just didn't think I could get ready for it in time because I didn't know my schedule, which is what I told them. ‘I don't know what my life looks like until I finish this show.'

“There was an internal stop-down with stuff that was out of our control, so we were down for a little over a month. Originally, give or take, this show was going to take three months to shoot, but it took close to five and it chewed up a lot of time.”

While it would have been nice to see Austin get back in the ring for an important match at “The Showcase of the Immortals,” especially in the proposed match between himself an LA Knight, it's understandable that Austin turned the bout down and opted to focus on his show instead of turning in a sub-par effort for millions of fans watching around the globe. With Austin reportedly open to working matches in the future, why rush into something bad when Paul “Triple H” Levesque could build towards something better?