How Good Was 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin Actually?
Drawing Power
Other wrestlers can boast more longevity in the top guy role than Steve Austin.
Hulk Hogan was on top of the WWF for longer, drew comparable business as a babyface, and was infinitely more successful at the box office in the heel role. Hogan elevated WCW business between 1996 and 1998 as the leader of the New World Order; Austin, woefully miscast as a heel in 2001, sparked the decline. Vince McMahon’s decision-making was to blame, primarily, but Austin’s choices didn’t help. Then again, even a more focused Austin wouldn’t have drawn as a heel, because nobody wanted to see him play it.
Ric Flair was a monster draw for years and years and years, a fact often lost to WWE’s revisionist history. How well could he have drawn, when he didn’t get to New York until 1991?
Bruno Sammartino drew more consecutive sell-outs than Austin, but his bonafides are only questioned by the metrics he was too early to crack: national television and pay-per-view. This problem also extends to the likes of the Sheik and Superstar Billy Graham, who obviously can’t be blamed, either. Bill Longson and Jim Londos were essentially in a different business to Austin.
At a time when the business needed a top star - before the monopoly, before inflated rights fees didn’t punish poor performance, before the idea of a home team brand made it more difficult to determine who truly moves the needle - Austin was demonstrably an absolutely gargantuan megastar. Across 1998 and 1999, Austin was the biggest star ever in the medium. Nobody’s peak was bigger than Austin’s. And, while you could argue that many superstar wrestlers did not have the same opportunities to boast their case - PPV only became widely available in the mid-to-late 1980s - the counter-argument is that Austin was under more intense pressure to deliver numbers across more mediums.
He had to entertain you on primetime TV week-to-week, deliver the goods in the ring to convince you that his main event spectacles were worth the eye-watering money on Sundays, sell the t-shirts you could wear without feeling the very real wrestling fan shame, and get you to come along to the house shows domestically and abroad.
Austin twice broke the record number of buys for WrestleMania, and was the first to draw a seven-figure amount. Drawing a 9.5 for a Raw main event against the Undertaker on June 28, 1999, Austin is also responsible for the highest-rated segment in the history of wrestling on cable - a feat, surely, that will never be beaten.