Steve Austin told the UK Sun this week that he reached out to Jeff Hardy "a while back" but he can only do much to help someone with personal problems.

"I called him a while back and talked to him," he said. "He's a good looking kid, he's got a really unique style, people love him, he has his own kind of charisma. I wish he could put it all together and get his personal demons behind him... He got caught with a lot of stuff and we'll see what happens."

He said he's reached out to wrestlers before who he heard had issues with drug abuse or addiction. "I've called a few guys when I hear some of them getting into problems," he said. "I try to give my two cents to the situation. They'll all swear that everything is cool, it turns out things aren't cool. [Vince McMahon] has offered to pay for rehab for anybody who wants it. Some people have taken him up on it, some people haven't. I get made when people point the finger at Vince and say it's his fault. It's not his fault. He's a third generation promoter who runs a wrestling company. I take responsibility for all my actions. I think everybody should. I refuse to think that it's Vince McMahon's fault for any of this."

He said Jeff Hardy has created challenges for WWE, because he's so popular and talented, yet there's a risk with pushing him as much as they might like to otherwise. He said the recent arrest just accentuates their need to be cautious with him over the years.

"Man. This last thing I just heard about the other day when I was driving back from Texas to L.A.," he said. "They never gave that guy a full green light push, but you can't keep him down. All the calamity and trouble he gets into, but people love him. If they ever fully gave him a green light push, who knows what would happen? But you can't do that because you don't know what he's going to do because all of a sudden you have all of this time and money invested and then he screws up. So who knows what's going to come out of it, if he's going to do time or whatever. He has some serious stuff going against him."

Keller's Analysis: It's good to hear Austin has reached out to wrestlers having problems, but you can understand the frustration if it's a long-distance call because it's not likely a wrestler with problems is going to listen to Austin and suddenly seek help. But it's worth a try, and Austin has done that. I remember talking to Austin years ago about Brian Pillman's death, because Pillman was a very good friend of his, and I sensed there was some regret about wanting to have done more, but at the same time short of kidnapping someone and chaining them to pipes in your basement for six months until they go through withdrawal, what can one person do, even a good friend?

As for the whole argument about whether wrestler deaths are "Vince's fault," that's a high threshold for anyone to reach short of outright murder. I think the argument about McMahon's role in the deaths and broken lives of so many wrestlers isn't blaming him for their mistakes and personal decisions, but rather his lack of taking full preventive measures to minimize incentives that historically create a pattern of drug abuse and deaths. So it's not that it's McMahon's "fault" a wrestler dies, but rather a case of knowing over the past 20 years he's had more power to do more to offset the incentives the industry creates for wrestlers to take that path. My argument is McMahon should have done more to mitigate the causes and incentives that led to personal choices by wrestlers to get caught up in dangerous drugs. He didn't push pills down anyone's throat, but when the money and fame and schedule of WWE led one wrestler after another to make self-destructive choices, rather than saying it's each person's choice and pointing to those who endured the challenging lifestyle as proof, the focus could have been on helping those more susceptible not fall prey to the obvious temptations to pop pills to keep up with the professional expectations built into WWE's structure.

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

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