8 Times Wrestlers Refused To Work With Each Other

3. Stone Cold Steve Austin & Marc Mero

Steve Austin Marc Mero 1996 King of the Ring
WWE.com

Stone Cold Steve Austin's first televised win over Marc Mero took place on the night that changed his life forever.

Just a couple of hours before the words "Austin 3:16" left his bloodied mouth though, Austin himself had left the building. By the time he was uttering those iconic words, he was fresh off victories over Mero and finalist Jake Roberts, but had already taken a trip to the emergency room in between the two bouts after 'The Wildman' split his lip open with an errant boot. They'd work together again that year, and it looked as though things might head that way two years on when newly-minted WWE Champion babyface Austin was in desperate need of heel opponents post-WrestleMania XIV and mostly before the company realised that Mr McMahon was the perfect foil anyway. Mero was an over-the-top heel; 'Marvelous' by name and a total prick by nature - potentially perfect for the 'Toughest S.O.B' for a month at least.

All until he took a powerbomb from real life wife Sable, anyway. 

As Mero told TMPT in 2025; "I was the next feud for Steve at the time...[We] had a main event match at the Los Angeles Forum, and I remember getting to the arena and I noticed it was changed [and] I wasn't wrestling Steve..and his thought was that: 'If a girl can beat him up, why would I want to wrestle him?' “And I get it. So, it changed the whole thing."

Austin's archaic take on things was rooted in a thought process from a very different time, and failed quite profoundly to note how Sable was right with him in terms of strength of feeling from a renewed and revived WWE audience at the time. Aside from all of that too, it's just sad to think of the potentially great telly we lost. Mero, the douchebag idiot boxer now given the fanciest training facilities from Vince McMahon in order to try and knock out the 'Texas Rattlesnake' would have been a potentially hilarious filler programme for Austin following on from Dude Love before entering into The Undertaker/Kane-verse for the SummerSlam build. 

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation for nearly 10 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with over 70,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana, 411Mania and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has provided in-person coverage of some of the biggest pay-per-views and Premium Live Events in wrestling history, including WrestleMania, Survivor Series, All In & Double Or Nothing in destinations such as New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in music and culture magazines The Crack, Pilot as well as Sunderland AFC's premiere fanzine A Love Supreme. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it every other Saturday at the Stadium Of Light, and at Cribs gigs nationwide.