10 Ways Stone Cold Steve Austin Changed WWE FOREVER

Why did Stone Cold make so much money? Put simply, it’s because he was cool. Not cool for a wrestler, but genuinely cool and with mainstream appeal in a way no one had previously achieved. Hogan had mainstream appeal, of course, but he was geared towards children. Savage was cool, but not so easy to sell to the mass market.

Austin was the total package. In and out of the ring, he was the convincing article. You believed that he was going to whoop all the ass he told you he would, and he could convey it in a funny and engaging promo that never became hokey. He was a smart operator, too, who understood his own appeal.

More to the point, he paved the way for performers with even greater crossover appeal, like The Rock. Dwayne Johnson took the inroads that Austin had made, wrapped it up in an even more marketable package, and took it to Hollywood.

It’s fair to say that Austin made all this possible by doing the unthinkable: making professional wrestling cool. That he did all this by, essentially, being himself is all the more impressive.