Premier League players feared me on the pitch but WWE crowd left me nervous before teaming up with Stone Cold Steve Austin
There won’t have been much capable of giving football icon and Hollywood hardman Vinnie Jones the jitters over the years.
A veteran of more than 500 career appearances during the 1980s and 1990s, Jones was a tough-tackling midfielder who took no prisoners on the pitch.
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ღMore than 300 of those games were played for Wimbledon in the Premier League and First Division across two spells, where he cemented himself a member of the infamous crazy gang.
🌸He earned the wrath of referees across the land with a flurry of red and yellow cards thanks to his no-nonsense style – he even held the record for the game’s quickest yellow card having been reprimanded for a foul after just five seconds in a 1992 FA Cup tie.
The Watford-born brute featured for Leeds, Sheffield United and Chelsea♚ among others as part of a storied career, but it was often his conduct off it that kept him in the headlines.
Suspensions and bans were common for Jones.
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▨It may come as a surprise, then, that he was once left unable to feel his feet for nerves before taking to a very different field – the WWE wrestling ring.
In 1998 and with Jones transitioning into Hollywoodꦇ and featuring in gangster flick Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Vince McMahon’s grappling empire recruited him to appear at their Capital Carnage pay-per-view in London.
Jones was to appear as an enforcer for the night’s main event – Stone Cold Steve Austin battling against Kane, The Undertaker🅘 and Mankind, with 10,000 Brits chomping at the bit to see him when he was introduced.
ಌThe man made of steel on the pitch quickly turned to jelly, according to Austin, who later claimed: “When we were laughing together, he goes: ‘Man I’m so nervous.’ When he went down there he couldn’t even feel his feet.”
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🎐Jones, an FA Cup winner, admitted the tightly packed crowd at the London Arena had an impact on him, saying: “Ten years before that I’d played in front of 100,000 people at the [1988] Cup Final.
♈“But [this] was a completely different thing. I can’t remember my feet touching the platform going down… It was like I just floated down there and I got just all in to it.”
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Jones, a former Wales international, enjoyed quite the night, threatening to knock out McMahon൩ before shoving The Big Boss Man prior to the main event match – an action enough to earn him a red card from guest referee Gerald Briscoe who ordered him away from the ring.
🌠After Austin had managed to overcome the odds to win, Jones, who later went on to star in Snatch, Gone in 60 Seconds, X-Men and Mean Machine amongst others, rejoined him – kicking Boss Man in chest to set him up for the Stone Cold Stunner.
꧋With nerves seemingly banished, Jones was able to soak up the adulation of the crowd and share a beer with Austin.
♛“It was a fantastic time. For me, it was all over too quick,” added Jones, now 59.
💃“I can see why the boys got the buzz out of it. I certainly got the bug from the wrestling that night. It was an awesome experience.”
🐼The tough talker remains a star of the screen, featuring in Guy Ritchie’s 2024 Netflix series The Gentlemen.
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