"Michael "PS" Hayes showed Austin the "Ace Crusher", the weapon of choice for Johnny Ace (aka John Laurinaitis), and suggested a sitdown version of the move - and thus the Stone Cold Stunner was born..."
Jun 10, 2020
The wrestler that would come to define an era, a period in industry lore, was once dismissed as generic, a flavourless nothing in black trunks and boots. His in-ring skill was never questioned, nor was his mere admittance into the wrestling realm. But Stone Cold Steve Austin was not destined to be just a face among the crowd. Instead of receding into the background as a bit player, Austin amplified the entire pro wrestling world at max volume, revitalizing the medium in a way few could have ever predicted.
Almost universally, Austin's face makes the subjective Mount Rushmores that fans and critics assemble. The mere utterance of his name transports us all to a moment in time when being good was great, but being bad was best. The promise of unrestrained mayhem and danger on Monday nights held an allure for fans worldwide, as no wrestler has ever felt more authentic defying authority than Stone Cold.
We here at Cultaholic never need a reason to delve into the Book of Austin, to flip through the pages of a brilliant wrestling career that could never possibly be duplicated. The bottom line on Steve Austin is that while few could ever equal his greatness, nobody has ever surpassed it.
The wrestler that would come to define an era, a period in industry lore, was once dismissed as generic, a flavourless nothing in black trunks and boots. His in-ring skill was never questioned, nor was his mere admittance into the wrestling realm. But Stone Cold Steve Austin was not destined to be just a face among the crowd. Instead of receding into the background as a bit player, Austin amplified the entire pro wrestling world at max volume, revitalizing the medium in a way few could have ever predicted.
Almost universally, Austin's face makes the subjective Mount Rushmores that fans and critics assemble. The mere utterance of his name transports us all to a moment in time when being good was great, but being bad was best. The promise of unrestrained mayhem and danger on Monday nights held an allure for fans worldwide, as no wrestler has ever felt more authentic defying authority than Stone Cold.
We here at Cultaholic never need a reason to delve into the Book of Austin, to flip through the pages of a brilliant wrestling career that could never possibly be duplicated. The bottom line on Steve Austin is that while few could ever equal his greatness, nobody has ever surpassed it.
At the age of 24 in 1989, Austin wrestled his first-ever match under his given name of Steve Williams. While Austin would prove to be an absolute natural, to the point where he was holding his own with gifted veterans after just two or three years in the business, his first match didn't indicate much in the way of his future success.
Austin's first match took place in Dallas, TX at the famed Sportatorium, against a wrestler by the name of Frogman LeBlanc. Austin by this point had a fundamental understanding of the basics, but knew very little about how to structure a match. Through the course of the bout, which Austin called both "brutal" and "horrible," Austin remembers arm-dragging LeBlanc upwards of eight different times. It was so bad that the referee, a veteran wrestler named Tony Falk, had to verbally guide him through the sequences, calling some spots, to get Austin to the end of the match, since Austin was lost. For the experience, Austin claimed he was paid $40, a far cry from where he would be after just a few short years.
After navigating his early struggles, Austin would prove valuable as a star villain in the Dallas and Memphis regions, and it didn't take long for somebody in a major promotion to notice this blonde-haired blue-chipper. Austin began his four-year stay with WCW in May 1991, and his first foray with a worthwhile championship would come in short order.
Just three weeks after his WCW debut, Austin would defeat Bobby Eaton to become the company's Television Champion. Eaton had only just defeated Arn Anderson for the title at the SuperBrawl pay-per-view, which ran a mere six days after Austin's first match in the company. All of a sudden, the belt was being transitioned to "Stunning Steve". Austin won the belt on June 3, 1991, and to show the faith that the WCW brokers had in him, he would go on to hold to belt for 329 days, just five weeks short of a year, before losing it to Barry Windham. In less than three years as a professional wrestler, Austin was given a title run of such length by a national promotion, and very few people, if anyone, would've said he wasn't worthy.
One of the all-time greatest short-lived tag teams was The Hollywood Blondes, "Stunning" Steve Austin and "Flyin'" Brian Pillman. The two natural heels oozed obnoxious charisma, and complimented each other's wrestling mastery, combining the best elements of The Midnight Express and the Andersons into one impressively-glitzy package. Though the team lasted less than one year, the Blondes are still cited today as one of the best duos in wrestling's long history.
While one can't imagine Austin and Pillman not making magic together, the truth is that Austin wasn't too happy with the partnership at first. Austin remembers in early 1993 being in line for a major singles push, with the unanimously-respected Harley Race as his manager. Austin was quite excited about his prospects as a solo act, before finding out from Pillman himself that they were all of a sudden a tag team. Dusty Rhodes told Austin quite simply that they'd "changed their minds" on Austin's usage, but promised him that the team had bright times ahead. Considering how memorable the Blondes are to this day, "The American Dream" told no lie.
You've probably heard the story by now about how WWE creative came up with some truly dumb ideas for Austin's name, once he pitched a new character idea. Austin had watched a documentary on a frightening contract killer named Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski, and thought a character with that sort of cold-bloodedness was the avenue he needed to go down. He suggested the character, only for WWE's "creative services" to suggest horrible names like "Chilly McFreeze", "Ice Dagger" and "Fang McFrost". How's McFrost 3:16 sound to you?
Austin's then-wife Jeannie blurted out the words "stone cold" in regards to the hot tea Austin was drinking, and then she put the words together: Stone Cold Steve Austin. Austin liked it and thought it sounded great, but remembers worrying that it was too long of a name, that four words may have been excessive. But Austin went with it, relating it to Gerald Brisco, who got the necessary approval for Austin to use the name. So thank you, Jeannie Clark, for brewing tea on that fateful night - you changed professional wrestling forever.
Austin's earlier finishing moves like the Stun Gun and the Million Dollar Dream were fine, but they lacked the oomph of the Stone Cold Stunner, one of the simplest yet coolest manoeuvres in the history of wrestling. Austin had struck gold from the time he began using the Stunner in May 1996, and anyone who was anyone in the business for the next six years would feel the wrath of Austin through that move.
The man who taught it to Austin was somebody that "Stone Cold" used to love to hate as a fan growing up in the Dallas area: Michael "PS" Hayes. Hayes, with his imaginative mind, was by now part of WWE's inner circle, showed Austin the "Ace Crusher" that was the weapon of choice for Johnny Ace (aka John Laurinaitis), and suggested a sitdown version of the move, as opposed to laying out like Ace, or even Diamond Dallas Page. Austin practised the move a few times on some local enhancement talents at a TV taping and debuted it later that night when he defeated Savio Vega in a King of the Ring tournament match.
The list of wrestlers who've fallen before Austin is mighty impressive: Shawn Michaels, The Rock, The Undertaker, Mick Foley, Ric Flair, Chris Jericho, Triple H, Kurt Angle, Ricky Steamboat, Owen Hart, and countless others have been professional victims of the "Texas Rattlesnake". As WWE's top star for a several-year period, Austin was fed a hearty diet of icon, and his wrestling legacy takes a backseat to no one's.
That's why it feels so strange to realize who, exactly, was the last wrestler Austin ever defeated in a match. The answer to that little bit of trivia isn't even a wrestler, but rather an executive: Eric Bischoff. When Austin returned to WWE in early-2003 following his June 2002 walkout, Austin only wrestled three more matches: his WrestleMania finale against The Rock, and two matches with Bischoff: one at the No Way Out pay-per-view, and one on Raw in St. Louis two weeks before 'Mania. If you were to tell Steve Austin that the last win of his career would come against the man who fired him from WCW in 1995, what would he have said?
Austin was the man on top of the WWE mountain when Raw is War took control of the ratings war with WCW's Monday Nitro. His segments were must-see, whether he was destroying somebody's vehicle, doling out a Stunner or two, or even just simply taking part in a match. Austin was a ratings magnet in his time as WWE kingpin, and even in retirement: the Raw 25th Anniversary show did insane numbers, thanks almost solely to Austin abusing the McMahons in the opening bit.
Austin can also take credit for being part of the highest-rated segment in Raw history. While some sources erroneously claim that The Rock's "This is Your Life" skit was Raw's zenith, in truth, Austin's victory over WWE Champion The Undertaker on the June 28, 1999 shows has never been topped. The match did a 9.5 TV rating, accounting for just under 11 million viewers. To put that in perspective, today's episodes of Raw average about 2.7 million viewers a show. When Austin was gunning for the belt, his constituents had his back, even at the 11 o'clock hour.
When Stone Cold Steve Austin defeated Shawn Michaels in the main event of WrestleMania 14, it was the culmination of an eight-year journey, the flag-in-the-turf moment that heralded Austin's reaching of pro wrestling's pinnacle. It also made him the fifth man in WWE history to capture the classic triple crown of the WWE World, Intercontinental, and Tag Team belts, joining Pedro Morales, Bret Hart, Diesel, and Shawn Michaels.
To make matters more impressive, by virtue of his win over Kane the night after the 1998 King of the Ring, Austin became the first man to capture the triple crown twice, after Hart and Michaels. The fact that Austin was booked to win all three necessary belts twice each in a matter of 13 months (the first belt, the Tag Team, was on May 26, 1997) only further demonstrates how much value was seen in Austin by a WWE that needed a hero.
Austin's performances inside the ring oftentimes get overshadowed by the mayhem he created as the grand marshal of the Attitude Era, but make no mistake, Austin was a "ring master" in a positive sense. His timing, psychology, technique, and instincts were flawless, and an Austin 20 years younger would've been able to hang with any of your favourite indy darlings.
Dave Meltzer can attest to Austin's greatness as a gifted worker, rating many of Austin's top matches quite highly. In fact, using Meltzer's subjective ratings, Austin is the only man to have had a five-star match in both WWE *and* WCW. The WWE half of the equation was his transcendent submission match with Bret Hart at WrestleMania 13, the bloodbath that launched Stone Cold into the stratosphere for good. On the WCW side, Austin shares the distinction with nine other wrestlers (plus Madusa and Paul Heyman) as the War Games match from WrestleWar 1992 may have been the best battle of its type. But hey, you don't need Dave Meltzer's permission to declare an Austin match perfect.Â
Three WrestleManias have concluded with Stone Cold capturing the WWE Championship, accounting for three of his five overall WrestleMania victories. The first two matches, victories over Shawn Michaels and The Rock, were, respectively, Austin's first visit to wrestling's Everest, and his reaffirmation as the top guy at the end of a big money 'Mania.
It is through those two victories that Austin made a unique bit of history: with the win over Rock at WrestleMania 15, Stone Cold became the first man to challenge for, and win, World Championships at consecutive WrestleManias. Not even Hogan, who won the belt at Manias 5, 7, and 9, can make that claim. Since then, the feat has only happened twice - The Undertaker won the World Heavyweight belt at WrestleManias 23 and 24, while John Cena won two different World titles at 25 and 26. But Austin always was a trend-setter, one that others have had a difficult time following, even 15 years after his last match.
