10 WCW Stars Who Were Fired For Unprofessional Conduct

Before he ever became ‘Stone Cold’, he was ‘Stunning’. The most successful professional wrestler of all time was an upper midcard feature of WCW’s programming for four years, winning the tag championships twice, the United States championship twice and the WCW television championship twice. That’s an enviable list of kayfabe achievements… but he was destined for far more than that, of course.

But in order to reach the WWF with the fire lit inside him to become the Rattlesnake we all know and love, Austin would have to be let go from WCW. Sidelined by a triceps injury, he was recovering at home when he was contacted by Bischoff’s office asking him to come in and cut some promos. Bischoff’s version of events has him not really rating Austin as a future main eventer, but valuing his place in the organisation, and wanting him to stay relevant to the WCW audience during his downtime: all well and good, but Austin wasn’t interested.

Bischoff claims that Austin had his wife answer the phone to his office and that Austin could be heard in the background telling her in reasonably colourful language to tell them that he wasn’t in. When Bischoff found out, he hit the roof, not being the most level-headed of people when he thought he was being taken for a ride. Austin was called back and sacked on the spot.

The future toughest SOB in the WWF was legitimately furious. Invited to ECW by Paul Heyman (that’s right: Stone Cold is a Heyman guy, too) to cut promos, Austin briefly became ‘Superstar’ Steve Austin, then the damned Ringmaster, if you can believe that, before finally using that anger and frustrated ambition to heel it up as the nastiest redneck in Texas history, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin.

Austin and Bischoff have cleared the air since his firing, Austin even going so far as to admit that he doesn’t remember refusing to attend a taping, but that it definitely sounded like something he would have done.