The Complete History Of The Rock Vs. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin

While it wasn't obvious in the immediate moment, 2003’s WrestleMania XIX marked the end of an era for WWE, an era that belonged to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and The Rock as the two legendary rivals squared off inside the squared circle for the final time. 

At 38 years of age, with a ravaged spinal column and two equally deteriorating knees, Steve Austin was ready for retirement and knew it would be the final match of his full-time career. The Rock, meanwhile, had been more than flirting with life away from the squared circle and he would soon be full-time in Hollywood. 

It has been over 20 years since WrestleMania XIX. The Rock has become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, while Steve Austin has taken part in a whole host of projects.

Despite that, The Rock and Steve Austin have remained perpetually intertwined, dually synonymous with a specific period of time and their epic encounters during those six years. 

The Rock & Steve Austin Before WWE

Back in the autumn of 1995, Steve Austin and Dwayne Johnson were both at a crossroads in their careers, with neither looking likely at this point to become multi-time WrestleMania main eventers. 

Austin had spent the previous four years in World Championship Wrestling, where his general greatness quickly became evident as he won the WCW World Television Title just days after his debut as a 26-year-old and less than two years after his pro wrestling debut. Over the next few years, Austin collected secondary titles and made his mark in famous partnerships like The Dangerous Alliance and The Hollywood Blondes. 

"Stunning Steve" was a bright spot in the sometimes-uneven number two company, and Austin reminded some of a young Ric Flair - cocky, confident, charismatic, and with a keen sense of timing inside the ring.

After so much spotlighting, though, over his final year in WCW, Austin mostly found himself in the dark. He was phased down the card during the "Hoganisation" of WCW, aced out during a very Hulkster-influenced roster turnover which saw Austin drop the United States Title to “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan in around 30 seconds on pay-per-view. 

Austin was also wracked with injuries. He blew out his knee in the autumn of 1994, then tore his triceps during a tour with New Japan Pro-Wrestling the following spring as the injury bug only continued to worsen for Austin. 

Then, in September 1995, WCW Senior Vice President Eric Bischoff fired Austin, reportedly due to the wrestler choosing to no-show a TV taping at which he was scheduled to cut promos. At the time of Austin's firing, he was still overcoming his arm injury, and had few substantial employment options.

One of the few places, though, was Extreme Championship Wrestling and Austin headed to ECW following his WCW exit and quickly took aim at Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan though inspired parodies. 

While Austin was drawing plaudits in ECW, Dwayne Johnson had also lost his job, having been cut by the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League. In college, Johnson played defensive line for the Miami Hurricanes that won the 1991 National Championship, though Dwayne was mostly used as a back-up, rotating in when star players like future Hall of Famer Warren Sapp needed a breather.

Johnson had dreams of one day playing in the NFL. However, an injury-riddled 1994 season diminished his visibility and hindered his output. For the 1995 Draft, none of the NFL's then-30 teams were willing to take a chance on a rotational player, especially one recovering from herniated discs. Johnson’s gridiron dream was then dead after he was unceremoniously cut by Calgary.

A near-destitute Johnson brooded over this sudden dead end for a few weeks before turning to the family business in professional wrestling.

In addition to being part of the prolific Anoa'i bloodline, Johnson had a wrestling father in former WWF Tag Team champion Rocky "Soul Man" Johnson. While the elder Johnson had fostered future wrestlers before, he was hesitant to train his son, knowing how unfulfilling the wrestling business could be. Like any father, he wanted better for his children.

Nonetheless, Dwayne Johnson was determined to try pro wrestling and after enough convincing, Rocky Johnson agreed to help his son, with further help arriving from Pat Patterson and Tom Prichard. 

Dwayne Johnson & Steve Austin Join WWE

Wrestling under his real name, Johnson had his first bout at a WWF Superstars taping in Corpus Christi, Texas in March 1996, defeating The Brooklyn Brawler in a dark match.

To demonstrate how inauspicious Johnson's debut was, in the Wrestling Observer's write-up of the event, Dave Meltzer wasn't even sure what Johnson's first name was. Attendees that sent in reports to the Observer apparently misheard the ring announcer, as some reports called him 'Duane', and others 'Craig'. Even Meltzer didn't put the pieces together at the time that this was Rocky Johnson's son debuting.

By March 1996, Steve Austin had arrived in WWE, having joined the company in late 1995 after Jim Ross and Kevin Nash both advocated for Austin. The new talent wasn't given a winning gimmick, however, as The Ringmaster. "Stunning" Steve was spared the top hat and coattails, but Austin was nearly unrecognisable as the "master of the ring" who wore plain green trunks, and he had little to his look outside of the Million Dollar Title that Ted DiBiase gifted him upon his arrival, having already shaved off his receding blonde hair.

Only adding to the issues was Austin barely spoke as Ted DiBiase cut the promos for his new client while Austin stood around like a robotic near-mute.

When Austin entered into a WrestleMania 12 rivalry with Savio Vega, however, he received a character upgrade, through two unlikely inspirations. First, he watched a documentary on contract killer Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski which provided the foundation for what Austin wanted to portray as a character, while the other inspiration was his then-wife Jeannie, who was from the United Kingdom, brought Austin a cup of tea one night and told him to drink it before it went “stone cold.” 

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin Is Born

On March 10, 1996, Austin appeared for the first time as “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, defeating Aldo Montoya at a Superstars taping. With his head now fully shaved and sporting a gruff goatee, Austin was even further removed from his days in WCW's upper mid-card, but unlike with The Ringmaster, this path seemed to have greater potential, especially after he swapped his Million Dollar Dream finisher for a sit-down variant of the Ace Crusher upon the suggestion of Michael Hayes, creating the Stone Cold Stunner in the process. 

Through fortuitous circumstances, "Stone Cold" ended up on the receiving end of a push as Austin went on to win the 1996 King of the Ring tournament, ultimately winning after intended victor Hunter Hearst Helmsley was punished for his role in The Kliq’s infamous Curtain Call. Austin received the opportunity to prove himself at the pay-per-view too as, with DiBiase exiting WWE in May 1996, Austin began cutting his own promos.

He took full advantage following his King of the Ring final win as Austin used Jake Roberts' outspoken faith against him and cut one of the most famous promos in WWE history when he uttered: "Talk about your psalms, talk about John 3:16 - Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!"

A new name, a statement win, a new finisher, permission to speak, and an unscripted million dollar buzzphrase - all of this came to Austin within a three-month stretch. This was also before Austin acquired his Rage Against the Machine-inspired theme music, complete with the timeless glass-breaking drop.

Suddenly, Austin was the coolest guy on the WWF roster, becoming a valuable commodity at a time when the WWF was losing stars, and struggling to create new ones.

It didn't take long for the WWF to match this Austin against returning hero Bret Hart, with the two talents going one-on-one inside Madison Square Garden at the 1996 Survivor Series in a widely-praised match.

Rocky Maivia 

Survivor Series 1996 also hosted the debut of Rocky Maivia, a mash-up character based on Dwayne Johnson’s grandfather “High Chief” Peter Maivia and his father Rocky Johnson, after Dwayne had spent a few months in the fading Memphis territory as Flex Kavana. 

While Johnson picked his Memphis name, his new WWF name was chosen for him and WWE booked him as a smiling babyface that wanted to honour his family to the point Johnson was specifically told he “couldn’t smile enough.”

While Johnson may not have liked the gimmick, he did receive an immediate push as Maivia was the sole survivor of a traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match when he teamed with Jake Roberts, Marc Mero, and The Stalker to defeat Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Crush, Jerry Lawler, and Goldust. 

WWE did little to endear Maivia to the company’s fans, but Rocky’s push continued regardless as he defeated Helmsley to win the Intercontinental Title on a February 1997 episode of Raw, and he went on to retain the belt against The Sultan (a miscast Rikishi) at WrestleMania 13 which ended with a post-match save from Rocky Johnson for his son.

With WWE having failed to define his character, fan sentiment towards Maivia ranged from extreme disinterest to outright hostility as they cheered loudly when he dropped the Intercontinental Championship to Owen Hart on the April 28, 1997 episode of Raw. Chants of “Rocky sucks” were also common at WWE arenas, with Johnson personally estimating that it was a quarter of the building some nights, and half of it on others. 

While receiving such a negative response, Maivia blew out his knee during a match with Mankind in May 1997 which sidelined Johnson for close to three months, and gave him the opportunity to return with a fresh new angle. 

Steve Austin Suffers A Career-Threatening Injury 

Steve Austin also found himself out of action in the summer of 1997, and his prognosis was considerably more grim. 1997 looked set to be Austin’s year too.

After losing a heated encounter to Bret Hart at the 1996 Survivor Series, he went on to win the 1997 Royal Rumble through dubious means, last throwing out The Hitman after the referees missed his own elimination.

The rivalry between Austin and Hart signified a shift in fan sentiment for both competitors. Hart's now-routine cries of injustice were still mostly met with cheers, though an undercurrent of boos were seeping in. For Austin, meanwhile, his anti-hero, one-man-army shtick made him a ‘cool heel’.

This led to a double turn at WrestleMania 13 during their Submission Match in what some consider to be the best match in WWE history, with Austin losing after famously passing out to Bret’s sharpshooter while wearing a crimson mask. 

While now a babyface, Austin didn’t change from his anti-hero gimmick and he only continued to grow in popularity as WWE sold his ‘Austin 3:16’ t-shirt to the masses. Austin also continued his issues with The Hitman, moving on to feud with the Hart Foundation and Owen Hart over the Intercontinental Title as 1997, which led to a title match at SummerSlam.

The match appeared to be set up for Austin to continue rolling and win his first singles title in WWF. Then, in the blink of an eye, Austin’s career appeared to be at risk when Hart performed a seated tombstone piledriver that spiked Austin on his head, temporarily paralysing “Stone Cold” and damaging the C4 and C5 vertebrae in his neck. With haste, the match went to an improvised finish where Austin managed to roll up Owen to win the title. 

So severe was the injury that doctors recommended that Austin retire from pro wrestling, but Austin decided to continue his career. For the next few months while he recuperated, Austin seldom wrestled and instead made appearances to dish out Stone Cold stunners to the likes of Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Sgt. Slaughter, and Owen Hart, which allowed Austin to remain on TV and keep the audience invested in him. The biggest of those stunners was the one he hit Vince McMahon with on a September 1997 episode of Raw. 

When Austin did return to the ring, his matches were kept short and he changed his in-ring style as the gifted wrestler emphasised his brawling, relying less on bumps and more upon frenetic, ringside-spanning slugfests that weren't so taxing.

Inadvertently, Austin's spinal injury created the new WWF main event style in the chaotic walk-and-brawls that would define the Attitude Era. One of those skirmishes led to Austin winning the IC Title from Owen at Survivor Series 1997, capturing his first proper singles title in WWE.  

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin vs. Rocky Maivia 

While not obvious at the time, Austin’s first defence of the Intercontinental Championship would prove to be a historic one as his challenger was none other than Rocky Maivia, although this version of Maivia was different than the wrestler who couldn’t stop smiling from earlier in the year. 

Shortly after Austin's injury, Maivia returned to the fold without any build-up, interfering in a match between Faarooq and Chainz, before he planted Chainz with a uranage that would come to be known as the Rock Bottom, with Maivia soon being admitted into the Nation of Domination. 

During his injury layoff, Dwayne Johnson had used his free time to take acting classes, and this became evident in Rocky’s promos as he escaped the cookie-cutter speeches of the past in favour of utilising some more venom that was needed as part of the Nation. 

While the expectation was Austin’s first feud would be cookie-cutter and he would swiftly move on, the programme had an inspired build as Maivia - who was being increasingly referred to as The Rock - stole the Intercontinental Title. This all led to December’s In Your House: D-Generation X pay-per-view.

The match wasn't really a match so much as it was a whirlwind of collateral damage. Austin drove his black pickup truck to the ring, beat up all the Nation members, and backdropped D-Lo Brown onto the windshield before giving him the Stunner on top of the cab. Back inside the ring, Austin, still wearing his leather vest, pinned Rock with the Stunner.

The entire melee lasted just five and a half minutes, and the crowd was hooked for its duration in what was easily the best part of a notoriously wretched pay-per-view.

The next night on Raw, Austin and Rock met again, but there was no match. After it was decided to have the on-screen version of Vince embrace becoming Mr. McMahon, the quasi-heel Vince ordered the anti-corporate Austin to defend his title against Rock yet again.

At the end of the night, McMahon presided in-ring with the two rising stars to make sure a distrusting Austin actually defended his belt. Austin resisted giving McMahon what he wanted, though, practically daring his boss to fire him. Then seizing the mic, Rock plainly stated, "Vince, The Rock thinks you should fire him", earning more than a few laughs for his deft comic touch.

After that sampling of wit on Rock's part, the angle carried on with Austin forfeiting the belt to Dwayne Johnson, just to spite Vince. Then Austin beat The Rock up, knocked Vince off the apron, and stole the belt back. One week later, he threw the title off a bridge. 

Steve Austin & The Rock Move To The Main Event

The title change allowed Steve Austin to pursue the WWF Championship and, as expected, 1998 began with the ascension of Stone Cold as he won the 1998 Royal Rumble, last eliminating The Rock, and went on to defeat Shawn Michaels for the Winged Eagle at WrestleMania XIV. 

That match featured the involvement of “Iron” Mike Tyson, whom Austin clashed with in a heated row the night after the Rumble. The Austin-Tyson skirmish made headlines around the world, and gave the WWF their biggest celebrity connection since the mid-1980s.

While Tyson was ringside as the special guest enforcer at WrestleMania XIV, he registered the pinfall for Austin, and Iron Mike’s appearance helped make WrestleMania 14 WWF’s biggest pay-per-view buyrate in nine years, while also solidifying Austin as the promotion’s star. 

Austin was now leading the charge, and his subsequent feud with full-blown heel Mr. McMahon gave Monday Night Raw its first ratings victory over WCW Nitro in nearly two years. The Austin-McMahon melodrama grew to include a cast of notable co-stars, not to mention an assortment of cars, trucks, and other vehicles being destroyed, just for the visual thrills. Such was the momentum of the Austin-led WWF that his match with The Undertaker at the 1998 SummerSlam made it the most bought SummerSlam in history. 

While Austin continued cementing his legacy as WWF’s top star, The Rock continued making long strides toward singular greatness. The self-styled "People's Champ" outgrew his role as the Nation's lieutenant, usurping Faarooq's leadership the night after WrestleMania 14. By then, The Rock had drowned out the faction's militant themes with his designer clothing, colourful turns of phrase, speaking in the third person, and a peculiar elbow drop preceded with silly theatrics.

When Rock first started doing ‘The People's Elbow’, it was basically an inside joke meant to amuse his fellow wrestlers at house shows. When the move came to television, the Elbow was initially met with near-silence. By the summer of 1998, fans were lapping it up and went wild when he performed it against Triple H at SummerSlam 1998 in their famous Ladder Match, and again when he hit Ken Shamrock and Mankind with a double People’s Elbow one month later in a three-way Steel Cage Match. 

Like Austin, The Rock was a heel that was too cool to stay heel, and he was very much ready to be the next top star in WWE alongside “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

That time arrived at Survivor Series 1998 when a carefully-crafted 14-man tournament to crown a new WWF Champion ended with an ostensibly-heroic Rock defeating an oblivious Mankind in the final with a Sharpshooter and a McMahon-authorised ringing of the bell in a callback to the Montreal Screwjob. 

The antics saw The Rock be crowned as the Corporate Champion. At 26, a year-and-a-half removed from being booed out of buildings by crowds for his bland presentation, Dwayne Johnson was the top champion in the top company.

The top star, though, was still Austin, who was screwed over late in the tournament through the usual McMahon chicanery.

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin vs. The Rock

Even as far back as mid-November 1998, it was obvious what the main event of WrestleMania 15 was going to be. Though the path to actually booking the title match was anything but a straight line, Steve Austin vs. The Rock did headline WrestleMania 15 in Philadelphia. True to storybook norm on the grandest stage, the good guy triumphed, netting Austin his third world title win in 365 days.

More important than the predictable match result were the metrics. WrestleMania 15 set a new WWF pay-per-view high mark with 800,000 buys, obliterating a 10-year record. The over 20,000 fans in attendance accounted for $1.4 million at the gate.

In the fiscal year that ended in April 1999, the WWF set new records in both revenue ($251,474,000) and profit ($56,030,000). To demonstrate just how swiftly things had turned around behind the Austin-led WWF, the company had only recorded a profit of $8.4 million the previous year and the year before that, they lost $6.5 million.

The WWF ran an Austin-Rock rematch four weeks later at the spiritual home of rematches, Backlash. There, a shade under 400,000 homes purchased the sequel, which was pretty high for a secondary pay-per-view. 

Shortly thereafter, on the merit of ungodly crowd response, The Rock was turned back babyface, giving the WWF two strong aces instead of just one. Establishing The Rock as a clear good guy ended up paying off that autumn, when Austin was shelved long-term due to needing spinal surgery which meant The Texas Rattlesnake would be out of action for much of 2000. 

Instead of struggling in Austin’s absence, WWF continued rolling with The Rock as the clear top star in the company. The fiscal year ending in April 2000 saw more record profits as the WWF, which was now a publicly traded company, reported a net profit of over $68 million.

Along the way, The Rock bagged a couple more WWF championships and remained the unquestioned star of the show. While still the "Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment", matches with Triple H, Kurt Angle, and Chris Benoit also showed that The Rock had levelled up his in-ring game at a time when the WWF's actual wrestling product had never been stronger. 

While Rock the wrestler was maxing out, Dwayne Johnson the star was getting ready to shine brighter. In 2000, The Rock filmed scenes for The Mummy Returns as the villainous Scorpion King. Dwayne Johnson only received a small portion of screen time in the movie, but his increasing fame was enough to warrant a starring role in a forthcoming spinoff.

After a year on the shelf, Steve Austin returned form spinal surgery in the autumn of 2000 as he sought revenge against whomever ran him over at Survivor Series 1999 to write him off TV. While it wouldn't be The Rock, the culprit Rikishi revealed he hit Austin with a car for The Rock, before Triple H was later revealed to be the mastermind behind the whole thing.

Those old issues with The Rock would soon boil to the surface, though, as the two rivals squared off in the six-way Hell in a Cell Match for the WWF Title at Armageddon 2000. As expected, the fans in Birmingham, Alabama went wild for the interaction, proving there was still plenty of juice in The Rock vs. Stone Cold.

WrestleMania X-Seven

More than a month later at the 2001 Royal Rumble in New Orleans, Steve Austin and The Rock came to blows as two of the final three in the Rumble match. The match was ultimately won by a crimson-soaked Austin, who last eliminated Kane after several steel chair shots to the skull of the Big Red Machine and a clothesline.

With Austin punching his ticket to WrestleMania X-Seven, he was ultimately joined in the main event by The Rock, who defeated Kurt Angle at No Way Out to win his sixth WWF Championship. With WWF staging their first WrestleMania inside a stadium in nine years, the company needed the biggest possible main event and they had it with Rock vs. Austin. 

In theory, this was the biggest WrestleMania main event since the days of Hulkamania. Two fully-formed, genre-defining figures at or near the top of their game, facing off inside a baseball stadium in front of over 60,000 screaming fans, for the consensus richest prize in the industry. 

The fans being familiar with both characters proved to be an issue for Stone Cold, however, as Austin felt his character had lost its edge since his return and he wanted to turn heel by aligning with his sworn enemy in Mr. McMahon. 

The weeks leading into WrestleMania featured an immaculate build-up between champion and challenger, from the passive-aggressive posturing, to the attacks with each other's finishers, to the sit-down interview with Jim Ross where both men laid out their cases for being the best. All of it was perfectly soundtracked ahead of the WrestleMania main event in an iconic video package featuring Limp Bizkit's 'My Way.'

The match was shaping up to be an unforgettable WrestleMania main event and Austin made sure that would be the case, even hinting that something massive was on the horizon during his sit-down with Jim Ross as Stone Cold told The Rock that he “needed” to beat him “more than life itself.” 

To read between the lines, this sounded like an ageing headliner who knew that if his comeback bid fell short at the finish line, he would have been officially eclipsed by the younger star. Austin's faint desperation didn't resonate so much at the time, but the depth to those words rang loudly when the swerve of swerves commenced.

WrestleMania X-Seven was already a pantheon-level show by the time Austin and Rock kicked off their battle for the ages. With a reported 67,000+ fans in Houston cheering madly in the event's fourth hour, Austin and Rock bloodied each other, smashed each other with weapons, and expertly teased humbling finishes.

As the tension grew, Vince McMahon randomly entered, making the long stride down the entrance ramp. Moments later, Austin asked Vince for a chair, and got one.

The next few minutes felt like a bizarre fever dream as Austin and Vince worked in concert to keep the Rasputin-like Rock down after a hail of Stunners and chair shots. After Austin pummelled The Rock into mush with a desperate and sustained steel chair barrage, the champion finally didn't kick out and Austin became WWF Champion once again. 

There was initially an almighty roar from the crowd to seeing Austin crowned champion in his home state of Texas, but the cheers quickly gave way to shock at seeing The Texas Rattlesnake shake hands with Vince, before sharing a beer with his mortal enemy. 

Austin later admitted that while he wanted to turn heel and was in on the plan, he wished he'd called an audible late in the bout because the WWE Hall of Famer believed he had actually rekindled his lost mojo during the course of the title match. Instead of improvising a beating on Vince then and there, though, he and the boss left together in a confounding union.

With 1,040,000 buys, WrestleMania X-Seven shattered the WWF's previous pay-per-view record, and the event accounted for $3.5 million at the box office. The company itself would have set another new record with an annual profit of nearly $85 million, but the near $70 million loss on the XFL disaster prevented that. 

Nonetheless, on the wrestling side, the WWF appeared unassailably strong after ECW went out of business and Vince McMahon bought WCW. Instead of being a continuation of the golden age, however, WrestleMania 17 marked the end of the Attitude Era. 

The Invasion

After failing to win back the WWF Championship from Austin inside a steel cage on the Raw after WrestleMania in an angle which saw the formation of the Two Man Power Trip with Stone Cold and Triple H, The Rock left for months to film The Scorpion King.

During Johnson's absence, Austin replaced his character's ballsiness with increasing paranoia and insecurity as part of his heel run. The quality of Austin's matches was arguably never better than in this heel run, but watching Stone Cold go move for move with the Benoits and Angles of the world wasn't what the masses were clamouring for.

Raw ratings began stagnating as 2001 continued as the World Wrestling Federation failed to pick up many of the fans who found themselves without pro wrestling following the collapse of WCW.

The invasion angle should have been the shot in the arm that the WWF needed, but that was a failure for countless reasons - among them Austin's disquieting and nonsensical leadership of the revolutionaries. Aligning with Vince at WrestleMania was a bad idea, but that was miles better than Austin cowering at wife Debra's cooking or turning "What?" into an insipid catchphrase.

The entire Invasion stunk, and since Austin was at the forefront, his reputation was especially tarnished. The Rock returned from filming in the middle of the war with The Alliance, becoming the de facto leader for the Federation allies.

He and Austin were strategically kept apart over the months ahead until the WWF vs. The Alliance programme drew near its conclusion, as they faced off for the WWF Title at the UK-exclusive Rebellion pay-per-view, with Austin coming out on top following interference from Kurt Angle. For fans everywhere else in the the world, the two longtime rivals didn't interact until the go-home week before Survivor Series, with the Winner-Take-All Match between Team WWF and The Alliance already booked for the show.

In their confrontation, some of the previous magic was immediately evident, even if Austin and Rock did engage in a bizarre karaoke duel. The problem was, however, this wasn't peak Rock vs. peak Austin. This was the beginnings of part-time Rock facing off with an Austin that was playing against type, and poor ticket sales for Survivor Series reflected the feeling that the best was now in the past. 

While The Alliance was killed off at Survivor Series, the most interesting occurrence was in the pinfall as The Rock pinned Steve Austin for the first time ever. 

“Stone Cold” Steve Austin Turns Babyface

From a kayfabe perspective, the ending sequence of Survivor Series seemed to properly re-align the universe as within 24 hours, Vince McMahon was back to being the ruthless heel boss and Steve Austin opposite Mr. McMahon.

While Austin had wanted to turn heel earlier in the year, reversing course was absolutely necessary. Business fell off sharply with heel Austin on top, though not having The Rock or any other well-built challengers to oppose him outside of Kurt Angle didn't help the situation. The heel Austin character was inconsistent - sometimes he was an anxious diva in need of a hug,  other times he was the same bad ass he played in 1999, except he beat up the good guys now. Regardless, fans didn't want to watch this version of Austin.

Months earlier, there were plans to run heel Steve Austin vs. babyface Triple H at WrestleMania X8. With business down and his merchandise cut now much lighter, Austin was in a haste to turn again.

A new golden run of business wasn’t jump-started by Austin’s babyface turn, though. Skits with Booker T were enjoyable but they were more standalone novelties. It wasn't a good sign when December's Vengeance pay-per-view, which strongly teased but didn't actually deliver the possibility of an Austin vs. Rock match to unify the WWF and WCW world titles, did the WWF's lowest buyrate of 2001.

While Austin made desperate changes, The Rock basically stayed his course. He put over Chris Jericho several times in WWF Title bouts while biding his time before the next movie project.

Austin and The Rock then moved into 2002 and found themselves facing off against the New World Order, now composed solely of Hollywood Hogan, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall once again after the collapse of WCW. 

The Rock would go on to create magic with Hogan in the Toronto Skydome at WrestleMania X8, but Austin’s match with Scott Hall was met with mild interest and failed to deliver the goods inside the squared circle, even if Austin did pick up the win. 

After WrestleMania, The Rock and Hogan briefly formed a superteam, while Austin went home. Dissatisfied with how things had gone for him creatively over the preceding months, especially having not wanted to work with a troubled Hall in the first place, the former six-time WWF Champion walked out of the company, missing the following week's brand-splitting WWF Draft.

When Austin did come back to Raw, it was more of the same. This time, Ric Flair stood in as the meddling boss for Austin to contend with, while the now-rudderless nWo meandered in proximity.

It didn't help that Austin was reportedly becoming very hard to work with due to his resistance to change from the tried-and-tested Stone Cold formula. WWE were trying to make him groundbreaking again by simply doing more of the same, very much a catch-22. 

Steve Austin Walks Out

With The Rock away doing promotional work for The Scorpion King, Austin was sputtering through rehashed angles. An attempt to form a Horsemen-like faction of Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Chris Benoit, and a returning Eddie Guerrero to give Austin some fresh opponents seemed to hold promise. Austin's match with Flair on the June 3 Raw was arguably his best match since the dying days of the Invasion angle too. 

Just as things were looking up for Austin and his portrayal, everything fell apart the following week. The plan for June 10 was to have Austin lose to newcomer Brock Lesnar in a King of the Ring qualifying match on Raw, after Flair and co. screwed Stone Cold over. This would have built to Austin vs. Guerrero at the pay-per-view.

Instead, Austin baulked at the contest with Lesnar, feeling that it was too soon to run a match between himself and the theoretical next big star, and throwing out their first encounter on free TV made even less business sense. While the office was originally able to talk Austin into the plan, he changed his mind the day of the show and booked a flight home. For the second time, Stone Cold walked out of the WWF, and this exit was going to be much uglier.

Five days after the walkout, Austin's wife Debra Marshall called the police, claiming that Austin struck her several times during an argument. Austin was not immediately placed under arrest due to Debra deciding not to press charges in the moment.

That night, WWE Confidential did a tabloid-style story on Austin's walkout, with McMahon and Jim Ross offering scathing remarks on the subject of Austin's professionalism. News of the alleged domestic assault didn't break until late in the day Saturday, and was not part of WWE's feature.

Two nights later, The Rock returned to WWE earlier than intended. With the Austin drama clogging both the wrestling and contemporary news mills, Rock took to the mic and essentially buried his peer, focusing mostly on Austin's hasty walkout. It was a pro-WWE speech - love the company or leave it, and if you leave, good, we don't need you.

While Rock was probably the most trusted name to give a rah-rah speech to the common fan, it wasn’t like he was sticking around for the long haul. He worked the next two months, won the WWE Title, dropped it to Lesnar in grand fashion at SummerSlam, and was then whisked away to film The Rundown.

WWE in 2002 may have rolled out its future main event tentpoles, but in the short-term, it was a weird place. Triple H and The Undertaker went from Attitude Era supporting players to the veteran stars of opposite shows. Without the two biggest stars of the time in Austin and Rock, WWE just felt incomplete, and sagging ratings reflected a boom beginning to go bust.

For the rest of his wrestling career, Dwayne Johnson never had a sustained run that stretched past four months. Austin, meanwhile, was in real limbo. The best version of Stone Cold was sorely missed, but that best version was absent long before the last walkout.

Then there were the legal issues. That November, Austin pleaded no contest to the domestic assault charges from June. Per the plea agreement, Austin received one year of probation, a $1000 fine, and had to undergo counselling.

One More Round

Austin's future in wrestling was very much in question at the end of 2002. Given all that had transpired over the previous year, and the combined weight of everything negative around him, it seemed like Stone Cold's book was closing. Shortly into 2003, however, Austin began mending fences with Jim Ross through a long phone call. 

After they got back on the same page, JR arranged for Austin to meet with Vince McMahon in Houston a few weeks later. As Austin recalls of the meeting, he ended up spilling his guts to Vince about the underlying cause of his pair of walkouts.

While the unsatisfying creative pitches were straws that broke the camel's back, Austin noted his neck and back were worsening, and that the reflexes in his legs were fading as well. He pushed himself through the early months of 2002, but found his body was becoming less cooperative.

The physical toll of trying to carry on was equalled by a hefty mental toll in the fear that his career was over. Austin noted he revealed this all to Vince when the boss began pitching a possible return to the ring. By this time, Austin had grudgingly made peace with retirement, but was willing to leave the door open for a proper sendoff. He didn't want the walkout to be how it all ended, and how one of WWE's all-time biggest stars would be remembered.

Austin wanted that theoretical last match to be with The Rock. JR has noted that Austin was insistent that it only be The Rock, underscoring the respect Stone Cold had for his closest wrestling peer. After all, the only thing The Rock hadn’t achieved in wrestling was a one-on-one pinfall victory over Stone Cold.

Coincidentally enough, The Rock was already on his way back into the fold. But - just like in 1997 - not as The Rock that the audience was used to seeing. For the first time since 1999, The Rock turned heel, leaning head-on into the role of a larger-than-life star that let fame go to his head. He even upgraded his music, entering to a pompous, shallowly-divine cover of his signature theme.

Some fans had already taken to booing the now-part time star, so The Rock had fun with it, mocking the denizens of cities like Toronto and Sacramento with especially blistering remarks as he became Hollywood Rock.  

On the night where this more antagonistic Rock defeated Hulk Hogan at the 2003 No Way Out, Austin returned to WWE for the first time in more than eight months, pummelling former WCW boss Eric Bischoff in a truncated beatdown.

A little more than a week later, WWE began setting the stage for Rock vs. Austin III at WrestleMania XIX, the culmination of a storied WrestleMania trilogy. The setup was simple - a bitter Rock was annoyed with Austin winning Superstar of the Decade over him at the Raw 10th anniversary awards earlier in the year, and was still sour about never defeating Austin in any meaningful singles encounter, especially at WrestleMania.

The build wasn't particularly intense otherwise, as it melded Austin's greatest hits with Rock's new discourteous A-lister character. Limp Bizkit's 'Crack Addict' soundtracked the build as a callback to two years earlier, but the era-defining intensity just wasn't there.

As it turned out, the biggest drama surrounding the match took place the night before WrestleMania 19 when Vince McMahon and JR were summoned to a Seattle hospital, where they found a forlorn Austin laid up in a bed. He was feeling mostly fine when they got to him, but earlier in the day, Austin thought he was having a heart attack.

Austin has claimed he overdid it with energy drinks, partially to power himself through the rigorous workouts needed to make his finale against The Rock a fitting one. Stone Cold was also battling panic attacks due to being anxious about not being perfect on the big stage. Austin had been a perfectionist his whole career, and he was scared that his final performance might fall beneath his high standards. Austin knew this match would essentially bring two magnificent careers full circle and he just wanted to hold up his end of the bargain.

Austin checked out of the hospital Sunday morning, and met with The Rock and Pat Patterson that afternoon to plan the all-important match. There, Austin instructed The Rock to milk the final Rock Bottom to signify the end of Stone Cold. To further hint at the final curtain, Austin had the letters "OMR" stitched into his leather ring vest, standing for "One More Round."

That was how Austin felt when he entered second, following Rock's highfalutin trip down the crooked aisleway at Safeco Field. He was going to go out on his terms.

What followed was 18 minutes of Austin giving a performance that he'd take great pride in. The Rock took to his new shtick of elaborate clowning by donning Austin's vest while bringing the fight, only for Austin to duly battle back, doling out that Rattlesnake justice.

Customary for the two, the barrage of finisher attempts began. Rock hit a Stunner. Austin fired back with his own, gaining a near fall. Austin avoided a People's Elbow, while Rock pushed out of another Stunner. After a Rock spinebuster, Austin kicked out of a People's Elbow, but not with the usual gusto.

Then the home stretch commenced. One Rock Bottom, Austin barely kicked out. A second Rock Bottom, which caused Austin to wriggle uncomfortably on the mat. Still, he barely kicked out. Then Rock milked the moment for a long time, shifting in his attack crouch, waiting for an agonised Austin to pull himself to his feet. Usually, this long of a set-up gave way to a reversal.

There was no reversal to come, however. A dazed Austin simply walked into Rock's waiting grasp and stood there, in acceptance of his fate. The Rock took a few deep breaths amid the stillness, picked Austin up one more time, and planted him with a third Rock Bottom.

Three seconds later, the trilogy was over. So too was Austin's wrestling career.

The End

Post-match, Dwayne Johnson dropped the Rock facade and sat beside his pained friend. Johnson later revealed he said to Austin, "I thank you so much for everything that you've done for me. I love you." Austin responded that he loved him back.

The Rock then cleared out of the ring to give Austin the stage to himself. Though not explicitly telegraphed as his retirement bout, Austin's exit spelled out the unsaid as he left to his music, saluting the expansive crowd in his own way from the stage.

The Rock wasn't long for the WWE ring, either. He stuck around for another month to lose to Goldberg in the former WCW World Heavyweight Champion's first WWE match at Backlash, before splitting once more. A year later, The Rock returned just long enough to be part of a couple of TV segments before teaming with Mick Foley to face Evolution at WrestleMania XX. After that, Dwayne Johnson was done with the squared circle for the rest of the decade.

By then, Steve Austin was involved in a mostly-mindless role as the co-GM of Monday Night Raw, serving as the foil to Eric Bischoff. It was a way to keep the Stunners and beer bashes around without having Austin actually wrestle, though that ran its course within a year.

Everything after WrestleMania 19 was just "bonus time" for Austin and Rock. Every time they have appeared in WWE since has been a tribute to what they cultivated and achieved between 1997 and 2003, when they discovered the best versions of their wrestling personas, and reached their maximum potential within them.

At the time of Austin-Rock III, we didn't grasp the importance. Though The Rock had a foot out the door and Austin didn't seem all that full-time either, it just didn't seem like the end of an era. It was, though. Fans had become so used to the omnipresence of Austin and Rock over an entire era of WWE that, even in their absences, their shadows still loomed large.

Though The Rock and Steve Austin have both wrestled sparingly since WrestleMania XIX, their clash in Seattle really is the perfect final chapter for both men.

They were two men in 1995 who lost their dreams jobs. Though they found themselves in WWE soon after, their initial gimmicks weren’t going to lead to anything. Through persistance and a little assertiveness, they each eventually got to play highly-caricatured versions of their true selves, to public acclaim By doing things their way, they came to define an entire era of professional wrestling, so much so that they superseded the business as uncontainable living legends.

They both shared the ring with ageing icons, rising stars, gifted athletes, and unforgettable personalities - but neither had a greater yin to their yang than the other. When you think of one, you invariably think of the other.

So much had changed in the seven and a half years since the two men each found themselves at rock bottom. Since then, both men had experienced absurd direction, professional upgrades, pop culture relevance, dizzying highs, and (for one of them) staggering lows. They've made indelible history together.

The phrase "end of an era" is overused but on March 30, 2003, the era of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and The Rock ended inside the ring of their many triumphs. It ended the only way it could; with one last fight, done their way.