10 Huge Bust-Ups Between Wrestlers And Bookers
8. Steve Austin Vs. Vince Russo
Steve Austin did not care for Jeff Jarrett.
Jarrett's father paid Austin so poorly when breaking through in Memphis that Austin was forced to subsist on boiled potatoes, and once, when Austin stared in disbelief at the cheque handed to him, Jerry apocryphally said "Keep looking - it ain't gonna get no bigger". Jeff, upon returning to the WWF in 1997, somehow contrived to cut a lurid shoot promo that was boring, in which he claimed Austin's "3:16" catchphrase was "blasphemous". Jarrett blasted himself with his own guitar here, and it wasn't made out of balsa wood; this woefully misguided tirade pissed Austin off into never working a main event-level programme with him.
Since Vince Russo could never remember who was the babyface and who was the heel across two hours of his own car-crash TV, naturally, he forgot this legit tension and pitched the programme regardless. Austin read him the riot act upon hearing the news, and his "bald head boiled red", such was his fury. Or, to write that more accurately in the vein of Vic Venom's RAW Magazine copy:
AUSTIN'S BALD HEAD BOILED RED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Who was in the right?
Austin.
Jarrett resolutely failed to draw in WCW, and Austin had a prodigious eye for who could draw money with him, pinpointing to the month Triple H's 1999 growing pains.