What’s the story?
On a recent episode of ‘Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard’, legendary manager Bruce Prichard AKA Brother Love spoke about Stone Cold Steve Austin’s phenomenal rise to superstardom in 1996.
One interesting tidbit that he revealed was that Vince Mcmahon hated the original design of the ‘Austin 3:16’ shirt.
In case you didn’t know...
In 1996, Austin defeated Jake Roberts in the finals of the King Of The Ring tournament. Thereafter, he delivered the iconic ‘Austin 3:16’ promo and became a household name in no time.
In the years that followed, The Texas Rattlesnake established himself as the face of the Attitude Era and feuded with the likes of The Rock, The Undertaker and Triple H to name a few. In 2003, he called time on his in-ring career after losing to The Rock at Wrestlemania 19. Since then, he has appeared on WWE TV in various non-wrestling roles.
The heart of the matter
On a recent episode of ‘Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard’, Prichard said that there was no concrete plan of coming up with the ‘Austin 3:16’ shirt. Moreover, he added it was never supposed to be his catch phrase.
If Prichard is to be believed, the WWE creative wanted to use ’Cause Stone Cold Said So’ as the catchphrase for merchandising purposes. However, these plans changed once ‘Austin 3:16’ became a rage.
“The next night when you showed up and we saw all these signs of ‘Austin 3:16’ and everybody’s going like, ‘oh good god we’ve got something here,” he said.
Besides this, he stressed that McMahon absolutely hated the original design for the ‘Austin 3:16’ shirt as he could not even understand the idea behind it. He felt that the shirt would not sell as it did not have a have a face on it.
What’s next?
Austin’s days as an in-ring performer are all but over. So, it is unlikely that the 52-year-old will ever wrestle again. However, he is a recognisable star and still enjoys a strong fan following.
As such, one can expect him to keep making appearances on WWE programming every now and then.
Author’s take
This revelation kind of proves that back in the 90’s, Austin was undoubtedly the choice of the fans all across the globe.
The Attitude Era just would not have been the same without the beer-drinking-and-middle-finger-raising redneck. Enough said!
