In his book "The Stone Cold Truth," published in 2003*, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin describes his relationship with Owen Hart, following the botched piledriver at SummerSlam 1997 that bruised Steve's spinal cord:
“Owen Hart never called me after he piledrove me and injured me. I heard that his brother Bret kept telling him to call me, but we never connected.
Did I hate Owen? No. That’s just the business and we weren’t really friends to start with. Did I want to work with him after that? No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to do business with him again. Right or wrong, that’s how I felt.
Sometimes I wonder how it could have happened. As good a technical wrestler as Owen was, he should have known he needed to drop to his knees, not his ass, to protect my neck.
I knew Owen as the consummate all-time ribber. He was always joking with people. I’m not saying this deal was a rib. I’m just saying he was always ribbing people and as good-natured as he was, he never maliciously did anything to hurt anyone. Owen was all about fun, so I couldn’t figure out why he did it that way.
When he didn’t call me at my house afterward, that kind of upset me a bit. It was like, “Hey, if I damn near paralyzed someone, I’d be calling them every damn day of the week!”
The WWE Merchandise Department came out with a T-shirt that said OWEN 3:16, and on the back it said, I JUST BROKE YOUR NECK. That was pretty damn cheesy. If I was going to get any royalties off that one, maybe I would have liked it better, but if he’s going to put the money in his pocket for messing my life up, I wasn’t “ real fond of that.
As I said, I didn’t hold any animosity toward Owen. But it was never the same between us. I didn’t think he was as funny as I used to think he was.
When we’d pass in the hall or in the back, I’d say hi, but we never really spoke much after I came back. I never could figure that out. J.R. thought that maybe Owen was sorry and ashamed that he screwed the piledriver up, but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, admit it. I don’t know."