I Listen So You Don't Have To: Steve Austin Show Ep. 147

Austin yaks about his reality show this week with his male winner
Photo Credit: WWE.com

If you're new, here's the rundown: I listen to a handful of wrestling podcasts each week. Too many, probably, though certainly not all of them. In the interest of saving you time — in case you have the restraint to skip certain episodes — the plan is to give the bare bones of a given show and let you decide if it’s worth investing the time to hear the whole thing. There are better wrestling podcasts out there, of course, but these are the ones in my regular rotation that I feel best fit the category of hit or miss. If I can save other folks some time, I'm happy to do so.

Show: Steve Austin Show
Episode: 147
Run Time: 1:12:19
Guest: Tommy Hackenbruck

Summary: Steve opens the show recounting his weekend visit to the ESPN College Gameday set. At 16:10 he begins the interview with Hackenbruck, the male winner of Austin’s CMT game show The Broken Skull Challenge. They talked about Hackenbruck’s workout regime (he’s a CrossFit superstar), his football background (he played linebacker for Urban Meyer at Utah) and went over the specifics of Hackenbruck’s time on the show, especially the Skullbuster final challenge.

Quote of the week: Hackenbruck , on the Skullbuster: “Oh, it hurts. It hurts. I think I hurt for 20 minutes after I was done, with my legs just achy and shaky and just so uncomfortable you don’t want to — there’s no position you can get in that’s comfortable. You try and squat down, you try and stand up, you don’t know what’s going on. It’s tough, and the harder you go on it, the hardest thing about it is it’s kind of a mental challenge because the harder you go on it, the higher probability you’re going to mess up on an obstacle and then lose time.”

Why you should listen: You watched every episode of Broken Skull Challenge and want to go behind the scenes.

Why you should skip it: You’ve never seen a second of Broken Skull Challenge and don’t care to learn anything about the show.

Final thoughts: It’s a pretty easy call. No matter how much you love Stone Cold, if you didn’t pay attention to his nearly-completed reality show (the women’s final has yet to air), there is no reason whatsoever to listen to this episode. It’s not a bad interview, but Hackenbruck is completely uninteresting outside the context of his big win.