What really happened to Stone Cold Steve Austin?
He left the spotlight and left us all a little warmer than we'd like to be.
“Stunning Steve”
Steve Williams broke into wrestling at the Dallas Sportatorium, the home of World Class
Championship Wrestling.
Soon after, the legendary Dutch Mantell suggested that he changed his name to avoid confusion
with the more famous "Dr. Death" Steve Williams — who would have his greatest fame in Japan
as a member of a tag team called "The Miracle Violence Connection" — and suggested that
he work under the name "Steve Austin" instead.
By 1990, he hit the big time in World Championship Wrestling as one of the Hollywood Blondes,
but that didn’t last.
A few years later, following an injury suffered in Japan and a series of frustrations with
the company, he was fired over the phone.
After a stint in Extreme Championship Wrestling, he was hired by the World Wrestling Federation
and repackaged as...
"The Ringmaster."
Austin 3:16
If "The Ringmaster" sounds a little goofy, that's because it is.
It's better than some of the other options Austin was presented with, though.
“I pitched the office with all these ideas and they came back with names like, Fame McFrost,
Otto von Ruthless, Ice Dagger!”
Fortunately, his wife had once told Austin to drink his tea before it got "stone cold,"
and gave him his new gimmick.
In 1996, Austin cut his famous "Austin 3:16" promo, and after a legendary match against
Bret "The Hitman" Hart at WrestleMania 13, he'd go from being a villain to a full-on
fan favorite who spent the next six years as the biggest star in the company.
Adding injury to injury
At SummerSlam 1997, Austin was wrestling against Owen Hart when Hart botched a piledriver and
sent Austin crashing to the mat directly on his head.
While he finished the match and left the ring on his feet, Austin suffered a neck injury
that kept him out of in-ring action for months.
He also had several knee injuries and took to wearing two knee braces in the ring.
Finally, in 2003, the injuries accumulated to the point where Austin finally retired
from competition.
As he said in a 2013 interview after casually listing a pretty horrifying string of injuries,
"It's a rough job.
It's a fun job, but make no mistake about it, it's a rough-ass way to make a living."
Out of the ring, in the spotlight
Even though he was no longer active as a wrestler, Austin's gift for entertaining promos would
see him continue working with WWE years after his retirement.
From 2003 to 2004, he appeared onscreen as an authority figure.
Considering his tenure as a wrestler saw him run over in the parking lot, crucified by
the Undertaker, and occasionally driving up to the ring in a beer truck, he probably understood
that WWE could use a little law enforcement.
From then on, he'd make several special appearances for the company, and was finally inducted
into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2009.
Stone Cold stuns Hollywood
While he hasn't made the kind of headlining appearances that his old rival Dwayne "The
Rock" Johnson has in the Fast & Furious franchise, Austin has made plenty of trips out to Hollywood.
Unsurprisingly, his first major role came from a movie produced by the WWE called The
Condemned, about a convicted prisoner who gets involved in a last-man-standing Hunger
Games situation.
Beyond that, his major cinematic output has involved direct-to-video movies with titles
like Tactical Force and Maximum Conviction, but he’s also appeared in big-screen hits
like The Expendables and Grown-Ups.
The Skullbuster
In 2011, Austin would return to WWE programming as the host of a reality competition show
called Tough Enough, where aspiring wrestlers competed for a spot with the company.
Unfortunately, while Austin was very entertaining, the show went off the rails pretty hard and
the winner never wrestled a single match on WWE Television.
That disaster didn’t keep Austin away from reality shows, though.
In 2012, he became the host of the Survivor-like Redneck Island, and in 2014, Country Music
Television launched a truly ridiculous game show called Steve Austin’s Broken Skull
Challenge.
In addition to a series of exhausting "bust-ass" events that make American Ninja Warrior look
like a beginner’s yoga class, culminating in an obstacle course called the Skullbuster
that’ll wear you out just from watching it, the show has a catch for the winner.
The first person to complete the Skullbuster sets the time to beat, and if any subsequent
winners don't beat it, the person who holds the record gets their prize money.
In other words, you can nearly kill yourself to actually win this thing, and someone else
gets your money if you don't do it fast enough.
The one really great thing about the show is that Austin himself is shockingly encouraging.
Unlike the stone-faced veteran persona that he had on Tough Enough, the Austin of Broken
Skull Challenge is more like an extremely gruff cheerleader, accompanying the contestants
on the course and telling them how great they're doing.
If you're ever having a rough day, just put an episode on in the background and imagine
Stone Cold telling you that you can do it — it makes washing the dishes a much more
intense and rewarding experience.
“Perfect!
Way to go!”
The Steve Austin Show
If you're still wondering why you haven't seen Steve Austin in a while, the real answer
is that his primary work these days is in the wild world of podcasting.
Starting in 2012, Austin launched The Steve Austin Show.
Usually, the show involves Austin having conversations with current and former wrestlers, and occasionally
going in-depth in really fascinating ways, and the video version has become one of the
WWE Network's most popular original shows, even when (or maybe especially when) he's
critical of the current product.
And sometimes, Austin uses the show to voice his support for same-sex marriage.
Probably didn't see that one coming from a guy who was once called "the Bionic Redneck,"
huh?