10 Best WWE Title Runs Ever
2. Stone Cold Steve Austin - March 29, 1998 To June 28, 1998 / June 29, 1998 To September 27, 1998
WrestleMania 13, the night on which Steve Austin became a star, drew a scant 237,000 buys.
WrestleMania XIV, the night promoted on the premise and promise of Steve Austin becoming the man, drew the biggest buy rate of the decade up to that point: 730,000.
Austin at his peak was a draw matching (and, one year later, exceeding) even Hulk Hogan, whom Austin for a brief time usurped as the most popular star in the history of the post-expansion era. The most entertaining act of the post-Hogan episodic TV era, this feat is arguably as impressive as the Hulkster's impressive longevity: Austin's character work was unmissable throughout a very busy 1998 and 1999, during which time the legit mainstream TV star made Monday Night RAW appointment television through his hilarious and novel humiliations of the tyrannical and equally entertaining Mr. McMahon act. Austin dwarfed Hogan as in-ring act, too, rewriting the in-ring WWE narrative in a hugely exciting and influential title defence opposite Dude Love at Over The Edge '98. Funny, violent, dramatic: this distilled and perfected the new sports entertainment style.
Even with the two reigns fused to meet the "run" criteria, the underwhelming in-ring series with the Undertaker and Kane tarnishes the back half, at least relatively.