10 Missed Opportunities In Steve Austin's WWE Career

5. A Better Payoff For The 'Who Ran Over Austin' Storyline

When Austin went down with a serious neck injury in late 1999, WWE needed to devise a way to write him out off of television, so they shot an angle with Austin (actually a stunt double) being run down in the parking lot during the 1999 Survivor Series. It explained Austin's broken neck and also distracted PPV purchasers enough so that they didn't realise the blatant false advertisement on WWE's part (WWE knew days in advance that Austin wasn't going to be able to wrestle on the card yet continued to advertise him as wrestling in a triple threat match with The Rock and Triple H). When Austin returned, he'd have a ready-made storyline. Indeed, upon his return in autumn 2000, Austin began interrogating the entire roster in order to find out who did the deed at Survivor Series. After weeks of flattening almost everyone in the company, it was revealed that Rikishi was the man who ran Austin over. What a letdown. The original explanation barely made any sense: Rikishi 'did it for The Rock', wiping Austin out so that his cousin could become the industry's biggest star in his absence. Austin completely destroyed the Phat man in their match/angle at No Mercy. It was a weak payoff. The revelation that Triple H had actually ordered Rikishi to drive the car wasn't much better. Really, this was a storyline that had a tonne of potential, but just descended into sillyness very quickly.