What’s the story?
As Mentioned ywsaterday on our “DS Breaking News” show on The “Dirty Sheets” Podcast Network, WWE Shop e-mailed everyone on their database today to promote and inform people about the re-release of The Attitude Era, Stone Cold Steve Austin Retro T-shirts. With WWE handing Steve Austin a healthy spike in his royalty cheques, this ends speculation of a rift between WWE and Austin.
In case you didn’t know...
Steve Austin has a net worth of $45 million. Austin’s merchandise sales broke records, and he made millions from it. Anyone who watched wrestling in the late 90’s would have owned at least one Steve Austin T-shirt. There is no arguing the fact that Austin is one of the biggest names in wrestling history.
Some say that Austin even surpassed Hulk Hogan in popularity. This can be confirmed by the fact that when Austin was at his peak, WWF is said to have sold 12 million Stone Cold t-shirts, with Austin’s merchandise accounting for almost half of the merchandise sold by the entire company. Austin made more than $5 million in 1998 from merchandise alone and was one of the hottest stars in entertainment.
The heart of the matter
It’s interesting that WWE would push Austin shirts this close to Mania, with Austin seemingly having nothing to do on the show this year. It has been heavily rumored that WWE even canceled the WWE Network version of Stone Cold Podcast following the Dean Ambrose episode.
Also read: What does Stone Cold Steve Austin's 3:16 actually mean?
In addition to the old Stone Cold Retro T-shirts, WWE has also released a separate range of Retro T-shirts called “Homage.” The range consists of T-shirts featuring: Ric Flair, The Four Horseman, The Undertaker and Razor Ramon. WWE offered a 25% discount to mark 3:16 day. This would indeed indicate that WWE and Stone Cold are not on bad terms, despite the rumored cancelation of his WWE Network show.
You can check out the re-released Retro tees and the new Homage range, by simply clicking on this link: http://bit.ly/2my4ux3
What’s next?
WrestleMania 33 takes place in Orlando on April 2nd, and all of these T-shirts will be sold during WrestleMania week.
Author’s Take
It is doubtful that Steve Austin will appear at WrestleMania 33, with the card already having 13-15 matches taking place, plus segments and musical appearances. The Rock is far more likely to appear as the event is in Florida, the home state of The Rock. Austin may be seen at the Hall of Fame, with his good friends Rick Rude and Kurt Angle being inducted.
It will be interesting to see if reports about the Steve Austin Podcast being canceled on the WWE Network end up being true and if WWE opts to utilize Austin on the Network in a different way. I think a return to WWE TV is very unlikely and the door is now completely closed on any kind of in-ring performance.
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