By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

Steve Austin says he was invited to participate in the tenth anniversary Smackdown special that was taped a week ago Tuesday, but he had prior commitments.

"They called me two weeks ago and asked if I could do the show," he tells the UK Sun. "I said I'd love to, but I just finished filming an episode of 'Chuck.' So on Monday and Tuesday of last week I was doing 'Chuck' and over that weekend I went to Las Vegas to host the Mr. Olympia show and give the trophy to the winner and show the trailer of 'Damaged.' I came back Monday and Tuesday and finished the episode of 'Chuck.' I was working and had already committed to that so I couldn't go do (Smackdown)."

Keller's Analysis: After listening to the interview, it sounds like he'd have done it had there not been a schedule conflict. He had nothing bad to say about WWE and raved about the Hall of Fame video WWE producers put together. In a 30 minute interview, one thing that stood out in the midst of a lot of talk about his wrestling days and movies is that he didn't say the name "The Rock" or Dwayne Johnson once, even when talking about his final WWE match which was against The Rock. I don't mean to imply anything other than it seemed there were times his name would naturally come up and Austin didn't mention him. Imagine if Rock and Austin both cut promos for that special? The fact that Rock found time to pre-record a promo, but Austin didn't, probably indicates Austin's preference would be to do something live with the crowd to play off of or not do anything at all.

[Jeff Hardy art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch]

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