10 Wrestling Gimmicks Created By The Last People You’d Expect
3. 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin
Who You Think Created It: Steve Austin or the WWF's creative services department.
Who Actually Created It: This is a well-known story, but it's one worth including because of the impact it had on modern pro wrestling.
Austin was a struggling midcarder when the WWF's creative services team handed him a list of potential new gimmicks. Most of them were crap ("Chilly McFreeze", for example) and left Steve feeling colder than the 'Iceman' style character he wanted to play. That's when his then-wife, Jeanie Clarke, encouraged him to drink his tea before it "got stone cold".
'Stone Cold' Steve Austin was perfect. That name would go on to become synonymous with success, earn Austin millions of dollars in merchandise revenue and turn him into one of the biggest stars in WWE's history. Clarke had come up with it by accident, but she'd fanned her man's creative flames.