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There are wrestling legends, and then there’s Stone Cold Steve Austin. From the late 1990s to early 2000s, The Texas Rattlesnake burned brighter, hotter, and more suddenly than any wrestling star before. He weathered the storm of Bret Hart’s Sharpshooter and refused to submit at WrestleMania 13.
He hit the stunner on Vince McMahon and on Donald Trump. He drove a beer truck into the arena to soak the ring and his nemeses. He collected world championship gold over and over again. There was never anyone quite like Austin.
Also Read: 6 best real-life stories of Roman Reigns
Austin is also uniquely situated to have remained popular into the era when WWE started making professional grade documentaries about Superstars’ lives. In addition, he’s gone on to host one of the most successful wrestling theme podcasts in the world.
The net effect is that fans have collected intriguing stories about not only Stone cold’s career, but his real life. This article takes a look back at five of the best Stone Cold real-life stories.
#5 How Stone Cold got his name
Steve Austin is known as one of the toughest, most hyper-masculine figures in professional wrestling history. It might surprise some fans, then, to learn that his signature moniker, Stone Cold, came out of his ex-wife serving him tea.
Austin has described what happened in a number of interviews, including the WWE documentary dedicated to him. He was studying up on serial killers when the got the idea for launching a new gimmick who was emotionally cold. Anything had to be better than The Ringmaster character he’d been saddled with.
The WWE creative team generated a series of awful names like Otto Von Ruthless and Ice Dagger that failed to generate much confidence. Austin was stressed about figuring out the gimmick when his wife told him to relax and drink the cup of tea she’d poured—before it went “stone cold.”
Sometimes the most important pieces of the wrestling business can truly come from the least expected sources.
#4 Advising Kevin Owens
Kevin Owens is one of the top stars in WWE today. He never wrestled or teamed up with Stone Cold Steve Austin. However, the two did have a chance encounter at an airport many years ago that was important to Owens’s development as a young wrestler.
Owens relayed the story on a visit to the Steve Austin Show podcast, saying that he was in the early stages of his career on the indies when he spotted Austin in the terminal. Though he was nervous, he knew he’d always regret it if he didn’t make contact, so walked over and shook Austin’s hand. Before they parted ways, Owens explained he was trying to make it as a wrestler, too, and asked if Austin had any advice.
Stone Cold told him he ought to never stop talking in the ring. It’s a small detail, but not an insignificant one that if you watch Austin’s matches over the year, he was constantly running his mouth in the ring. He’s discussed elsewhere that a lot of that had to do with selling the attitude of his character and making fans pay attention.
He’s also relayed the practical functions—that on account of his poor hearing, he usually called his matches, and so would intermix directions with the trash talk.
#3 Getting trapped in the ring ropes mid-match
The lights were on bright for SummerSlam 1999. The main event featured three guys who would go down as some of the biggest and best stars in wrestling history—Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, and Mankind. Not only that, but the guest referee was WWE alumnus and governor of the state of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura.
In this super high stakes match, Austin found himself in an embarrassing spot. He climbed on the second rope to lean over and talk trash against Mankind outside the ring. A combination of Austin’s big, awkward knee braces, plus a touch of overzealousness resulted in The Texas Rattlesnake getting tied up in the ropes badly enough that he couldn’t extricate himself.
In the end, Triple H had to go to Austin under the pretence of attacking him, just to help him get untangled from the ropes. The Game was purportedly laughing under his breath the whole time.
#2 Readying himself for confrontation vs. Vince McMahon
Stone Cold Steve Austin rose to fame in no small part based on his on-air rivalry with Vince McMahon. The clash between the beer guzzling everyman and his megalomaniacal boss was instantly relatable to the WWE fan base. The individual talents of each man, and the chemistry they shared created magic across a period of years.
In real life, Austin and McMahon got along nicely, particularly after Austin had established himself as the man in WWE. However, the two hit a rough patch after McMahon handed down the creative that Austin would be jobbed out to Brock Lesnar in an unadvertised, free TV match to qualify for the King of the Ring tournament.
Austin wanted to, at minimum, build to a big payday for the match to draw some money, and wound up walking out on the company.
When Jim Ross orchestrated a meeting between Austin and McMahon months later, Austin wasn’t sure what to expect. He has articulated in interviews that he hoped they might reconcile, but also entertained visions of a fight that would send them crashing through McMahon’s office window to their death.
It seems Stone Cold’s imagination got the better of him then, but it still makes for an entertaining account of what was going on in Austin’s mind.
#1 Inventing 3:16 on the fly
There are a lot of different moments when we could suggest the Stone Cold Steve Austin character truly took flight to reach the highest echelons of the business. There was his first world title win over Shawn Michaels. There was his refusal to submit to the Sharpshooter at WrestleMania 13. There was the beer bath, getting in Mike Tyson’s face, and the first time he stunned Vince McMahon.
Anyone looking at the early stages of Austin catching fire would be remiss, however, to overlook the iconic promo when he announced, “Austin 3:16 says, I just whooped your ass!”
The scene was the 1996 King of the Ring tournament. Austin was set to win, but needed to go to the hospital to get stitches midway through his tournament run. Upon returning to the arena, he demanded to find out what his finals opponent Jake Roberts had said after he won his semi-final match. Upon learning that he’d quoted scripture, Austin had an idea on the fly.
Austin would defeat Roberts soundly, and went on to give one of his most legendary promos after the win. It’s telling that Stone Cold tailored the promo to mock Roberts’s use of Bible verse. Decades later, many fans have forgotten what 3:16 even means.
