10 Mistakes WWE Never Recovered From

4. Steve Austin's Heel Turn

Steve Austin, Vince McMahon, WrestleMania 17
WWE.com

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Okay, that isn’t entirely true, it seemed like a terrible idea at the time, but that didn’t stop WWE from turning Stone Cold Steve Austin heel as a shocking ending to WrestleMania X-Seven. The Texas Rattlesnake was reportedly in favour of the move as he felt it was time to freshen up his character, but surely they were creative alternatives that didn’t involve Austin siding with the very individual he had been humiliating for years?

Another problem created by the turn was that it left Austin bereft of credible challengers for his newly-won WWE Championship. Much of the booking in the lead-up to WrestleMania X-Seven involved setting the stage for Triple H to become the number one contender post-Mania, but all of a sudden you had a heel champion and a top heel challenger. To compound matters, they were soon joining forces as the Two-Man Power Trip.

WrestleMania X-Seven was WWE’s peak, but the company never made it to those heights again, at least from a TV perspective. Part of that was down to the death of WCW, but turning the company’s biggest star led to lower TV ratings, lower buy rates and fan apathy. As crazy as it may seem, Austin’s character never recovered. Neither did WWE.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.