10 Wrestlers Who Got Much Worse (But WAY More Over)
8. Steve Austin
The “What makes a great wrestler?” argument resurfaces on social media most weeks. It’s difficult to answer, since it’s all subjective to a degree, but weirdly, Steve Austin’s name is too often brought up.
No, he wasn’t too ambitious in the ring at his drawing peak, but Austin was superb at brawling - mostly - which is just as difficult a task to do well as technical wrestling (for evidence of this, compare Austin’s 1998 main events to almost every 1998 undercard match).
He also couldn’t be too ambitious: with his shot neck, Austin had to modify his style after it was broken at SummerSlam 1997.
Austin was also an incredible technician. He had already shifted away from the sort of scientific wonders he put together with Ricky Steamboat in WCW when dialling into the ‘Stone Cold’ persona deep into 1996, but the neck injury forced him to limit his range yet further. He wasn’t as good, but the broad beats of his new style were a far better fit for the bloodthirsty fans that the WWF had cultivated when business boomed.
Another argument supporting this “Austin got much worse” take: his constant barrage of worked punches were far more weak than a lot of people remember. He was no Bobby Eaton at that.