Stone Cold’s Zamboni Surprise “Here comes the Rattlesnake…  slowly, but surely.” Leading up to the WWF Championship ladder match between champion,  The Rock, and challenger,  Shawn Michaels, at last year’s King of the Ring the question on everyone’s mind was which of these two real-life ego-maniacs was going to job to the other and what screw-job ending was going to cause it.  As both men lay flat on their backs following a succession of finishing maneuvers, the ladder stood tall in the middle of the ring just waiting to be climbed.  Neither the Rock nor Michaels was going to ascend that ladder again this night, however.  Suddenly, everyone heard the glass break and people assumed that as a result they were gonna see some ass break.  Instead, they saw a zamboni race towards the ring, eventually crash into and destroy it, as Stone Cold laughed maniacally behind the wheel.  Well, that’s what was supposed to happen.  In reality, the zamboni slowly emerged from the entrance, and by slowly, I mean at a literal creep.  As the zamboni slowly crept to the ring the fans went nuts, but after a few inches, they realized something was wrong with the zamboni, or maybe its drunken (speculation) driver, and they silently calmed.  After what seemed like an eternity the zamboni was finally in position to crash into the ring creating chaos.  Instead, as soon as it hit the ring it came to a complete and not so abrupt stop. Although he had no problem working the same piece of machinery just one month earlier, it seems that the zamboni technicians had not properly taught the Rattlesnake the basics of speeding up and slowing down (not that slowing down was ever a problem because the only way for Austin to slow the zamboni down would have been to completely stop it, which happened anyway eventually).  I hope someone got fired for that. After the zamboni came to a halt Austin exited the machine and proceeded to enter the ring and climb the ladder.  One would assume things would go smoothly from here, however, the belt wouldn’t come loose from the dangling clasp, and as Jeff Jarrett smacked him over the back with his balso-wood guitar Austin had not yet unlatched the title belt.  Finally the belt came loose and Austin reacted to the guitar-shot or rather shots (Jarrett proceeded to hit Austin with the broken pieces of the guitar trying to make the whole fiasco work out). Too bad an otherwise classic match was botched by the bionic redneck’s involvement.  Maybe that was the reason McMahon has since gone on to bury him in opening card matches.  Then again, it could just be because he’s terrible.  I’d have to go with the latter.