[1997-09-05-WWF-Friday Night's Main Event] Sgt. Slaughter announcement

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Sgt. Slaughter announces that Steve Austin has demanded to return to action immediately. However, Slaughter refuses to let him return until he completes rehab. Slaughter suspends him immediately and demands that he returns the tag titles. They go to Austin's house to get a reaction to this but he's not really in the mood to talk about it at first before changing his mind.

[Kevin Ridge]

Slaughter has his own commissioner seal graphic. He is denying Austin’s return to the ring until he completes physical rehab. The establishment is slowly getting in Stone Cold’s way.

[soup23]

Slaughter does his first Tunny esque promo and strips Austin of the tag belts. Austin's house looks just as I would have imagined it.

[PeteF3]

Pretty sure we've seen Tunney in this exact office before. Footage follows from the Broken Skull Ranch itself, where Austin only wants to speak with someone of authority. He then reconsiders--I assume this is the segment where he shoots crossbows at the images of various WWF wrestlers and executives.

[Exposer]

Sarge announces that Austin has been suspended so that he doesn't risk further damage to his health by trying to compete at Ground Zero. He asks that Austin come to Ground Zero to forfeit his half of the tag team championship. A crew is sent to Texas to get Austin's thoughts & he's pissed off that WWF had the gall to send someone to his house for an interview about this. This is pretty funny. Austin doesn't want to do the interview at first, but changes his mind. I had a discussion with my brother about whether or not Austin being healthy would have been better & he made a strong argument that the neck injury ended up making Austin more special in the last few months of 1997 because he was so out of control & looked extremely tough for even showing up, mess less getting physical a lot, for such a bad injury. I think he's probably right.