Ranking Every Stone Cold Steve Austin WWE Pay-Per-View Match From Worst To Best

It seems increasingly likely that WWE will treat the week of "3:16 Day" as an annual tradition at this point, and in comparison to the likes of The Slammy Awards or the once-great Raw-After-WrestleMania, it's not without significant merit.

As an excuse to draw him on the show (or at very least draw eyeballs to the WWE Network's cavernous collection of his classics), WWE can use mere mention of 'The Rattlesnake' as a way to remind their biggest demographic of something they definitely definitely once liked in between lots of bits of the current product they probably don't.

It's handy that almost all of it holds up, too.

They're not all bangers in here, but Austin had an energy around him like few others in wrestling history. Rare are the truly terrible matches. Rarer still are the ones without pulsating crowds.

A quick caveat before we get started: as outlined in the title, this will feature the work of Stone Cold Steve Austin as Stone Cold Steve Austin. Austin's WCW archive is loaded with textured favourites from early in his career, and there's a certain charm to seeing The Ringmaster slide into the 1996 Royal Rumble before he accidentally slip-slides out, but this collection - like the 3:16 Day festivities themselves - covers the career of the gimmick as much as the man.

And that's (or this is, actually) the bottom line...

Steve Austin understandably turned his anger towards WWE's creative staffers shortly before his exasperated exit from the organisation in 2002. Should have saved a round of ammo or two for one of his long-tenured colleagues?

A tale of two company icons out of form and out of sorts in general, this match was one told over 27 punishingly drab minutes to tee up a screwy finish. It's criminally one of the longest on the entire list, and not the last appearance of 'The Deadman' at this end, either...