10 Sweetest Examples Of WWE Payback
4. The Greatest Love Story Of All Time
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return.” - Moulin Rouge
The story of ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin versus Mr. McMahon isn’t really the story of the working class joe, the blue collar icon, versus a tyrannical boss. When you add up all the narrative beats, it’s the story of two violent egos butting heads, and an obsessive, almost sexual need for domination.
To begin with, the central conceit of the angle was that Austin was the most popular guy in the company and McMahon's golden goose, at a time when they needed every cent they could find behind the sofa. Austin was an invaluable commodity, and needed to be promoted in the main event, but he refused to do as he was told.
The feud was all about escalation: it started with persuasion, a gentle reminder of his place in the hierarchy: Austin publically embarrassed McMahon and told him to go to hell. It ramped up into petty disciplinaries and a volatile work environment: Austin publically embarrassed McMahon and told him to go to hell.
It progressed through sanctioned whuppings masquerading as wrestling matches, to out-and-out prison beatings: Austin publically embarrassed McMahon, told him to go to hell and beat the !*$% out of everyone he sent to punish him.
Neither man would ever back down, but Austin remained frustrated. Mr. McMahon wasn’t a wrestler, so payback was almost always by proxy. Finally, at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre pay-per-view in February 1999, Austin used McMahon's obsession with him as the hook, and his WrestleMania title shot as bait. He got his one on one match, inside a steel cage match. It’s the WWF/E equivalent of ‘get a room’.
Naturally, the match wasn’t really a match: it was an excuse for the hated heel to be beaten sh*tless by a popular babyface with a serious grudge, the ultimate wrestling catharsis. McMahon tried using the debuting Paul ‘Big Show’ Wight as his ace-in-the-hole, but Austin still pulled off the beatdown and the win.
Austin and McMahon weren't done there, not by a long, long shot. However, the mutual hatred was by now so over-the-top that it was losing all logic and narrative coherence.
This was the right place and the right way to give the crowd the satisfaction they needed: although it does make you wonder why the pair of them didn’t just sleep together and get it over with.