The Many Faces Of Steve Austin - Ranked From Worst To Best
Beer-drinking anti-hero, corporate sellout, and everything in-between...
It's impossible to downplay Steve Austin's importance to the wrestling business, and WWE in-particular. He was the biggest star for the biggest promotion during the most successful period that the business has ever seen, and while he always had stiff competition from The Rock, nobody could match Austin's peak popularity.
Stone Cold's rise coincided with a huge upswing in WWE's fortunes during the Attitude Era, and his rivalry with Vince McMahon sent television ratings through the roof. It's hard to imagine WWE turning the Monday Night Wars around without it, and it secured Austin's status as one of the most iconic wrestlers of all-time.
Things weren't always peachy for Austin, however. He was often subjected to poor booking decisions, and while his legacy is rightly revered, Austin has played a number of bland, confusing, and downright bewildering roles throughout his career. His peak run was relatively short (1997 to 2001), and it often feels like he succeeded in spite of the characters he played in the early and later stages of his in-ring career.
How do Austin's personas stack up against each other? Spanning from his WCW debut in 1991 through to the present day, let's find out...
11. The Ringmaster
When you consider how modestly Steve Austin’s WWE career started, it’s almost miraculous that he became one of the biggest professional wrestlers of all-time. He joined the company after moving on from ECW in late 1995, and made his debut in January 1996. Handed the Million Dollar Championship on his first night with the company, Austin wrestled as The Ringmaster, with Ted DiBiase as his manager.
The Ringmaster was as bland as bland gets, and DiBiase’s presence rendered him borderline mute. The gimmick was little more than “guy who is pretty good at wrestling,” and while Austin was regularly churning-out good technical matches, and the Ringmaster persona had few traits strong enough to draw the fans in. Austin was going nowhere, and he knew it.
Fatu accidentally eliminated Austin from the Royal Rumble when he was originally supposed to make the final four, but The Ringmaster was a dead-end gimmick. Less than two months into his WWE employment, Austin asked for a change. The company responded with a hideous list of names including Otto Von Ruthless, Chilly McFreeze, and Fang McFrost, but “Stone Cold” was soon born, and thus began Austin’s rise to greatness.