10 WWE Injuries That Came At The WORST Time
1. Steve Austin's Career - And Industry - Changing Injury
Some of you may be looking at this entry and quoting the man in the picture's most infamous catchphrase - "What?" After all, it's not like Steve Austin's injury stopped him becoming the biggest star in all of professional wrestling.
But when you look at the long-term impact Austin's injury had on his career - and WWE as a whole - it's hard to argue against this being one of the most significant injuries suffered in the history of the company.
When Owen Hart inadvertently broke Steve Austin's neck at SummerSlam 1997, it heralded a change in the company's in-ring style that would haunt it throughout the Attitude Era. Prior to the injury, Steve Austin had been a master technician (check out his overlooked match against Bret Hart at Survivor Series 1996 - an arguably even better encounter than their lauded WrestleMania bout). Afterwards, Austin's neck simply wouldn't let him move around the ring as smoothly as he had before, meaning he had to reinvent himself as a wrestler. Gone was the expert grappler of old, and in came the brawling badass of the Attitude Era.
Austin's matches became a routine of crowd brawls, slugfests and chair shots - a style that trickled down into the rest of the company and resulted in some of the worst wrestling in modern history. After all, without someone with Austin's charisma or stature to carry the action, watching two non-entities endlessly throw punches and weapon shots at each other gets old, fast.
As well as drastically shortening Austin's legendary career (he was forced into retirement in 2003), Stone Cold's injury changed the WWE's in-ring style for the worse just when professional wrestling was at its most popular.