10 Main Event Wrestling Gimmicks That NOBODY Liked
7. Psycho Killer Steve Austin
This is a stretch, because it's Stone Cold Steve Austin.
He could age into a geriatric, do Legend's Night in 2052, take nine minutes to shuffle to the ring, and the pop still probably wouldn't die down. He's Steve Austin.
In 2001, he didn't feel like Steve Austin, and business entered the sh*tter because nobody (read: nowhere near enough people) connected with the various, contradictory directions his character took.
Many people still recall the Kurt Angle wears a comically small hat stuff, but really, it was an early omen of the asinine direction WWE would soon take elevated by three supremely gifted comedy performers. The memories of a "psychotic" Steve Austin annihilating Lita and Jim Ross are rather less pleasant.
Fans were so resistant to jeer Austin as a heel that the over-correction manifested in the ugliest, most on-the-nose heat angles Vince McMahon ever pitched; the assaults bordered on the disturbing, and the desperation was obvious. Fans were put off by the process and barely reacted to the fiction at all.
Invasion will forever remain the most purchased non-WrestleMania PPV in history. Austin turning face was that much of a relief.
He turned again that night because Vince lost the plot a long time ago.