Steve Austin had to take the long road towards superstardom. Hulk Hogan was handpicked by Vince McMahon to lead the company. The Rock was a third-generation wrestler and as such, was treated like royalty.
John Cena had a few rocky years but once he found his shtick, of a quick-witted rapper, a rocket was strapped to his back and he took off, and from that point onward, the face of the company was untouchable.
Meanwhile, Austin had to struggle for a number of years and his popularity exploded several years later, as a result of his hard work and perseverance. Unlike John Cena and The Rock who were in their twenties, Austin was in his mid-thirties during his historic main-event run and wrestled much of his twilight years with neck issues.
Austin Had A Rough Couple of Years
Before he was Stone Cold, the biggest badass in the history of the company, Steven James Williams was wrestling as Stunning Steve Austin down in WCW. Despite the cap on his mic-skills and charisma, Austin did quite well for himself, getting sufficiently over with the crowds but Eric Bischoff deemed him “unmarketable” and during one fateful day, the president of WCW fired Austin over the phone. In hindsight, this may very well be the biggest blunder committed in the history of the business.
Austin was then approached by Paul Heyman and during his brief ECW tenure, fans were finally able to witness a few glimpses of Stone Cold. His very first promo saw him spitting fire at WCW management as he had developed a mean streak and a chip on his shoulder after how he was mistreated by management. After a couple of months in the land of extreme, Austin was brought over to the WWE, thanks to the efforts of Jim Ross and Kevin Nash.
The character was all worked out and his brief tenure in ECW had demonstrated that fans adored a morally ambiguous antihero in the land of black and white characters. Instead of running with the idea, WWE presented Austin with a different gimmick and the name given to him was The Ringmaster, and he was managed by the Million Dollar Man, Ted Dibiase.
Despite being popular as a brawler during the later stages of the Attitude Era, Steve Austin was a proficient in-ring technician and quite capable of putting on a masterpiece inside the ring.
With his new gimmick, the commentators were putting him alongside Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, two of the greatest wrestlers in the industry. Austin wrestled his first match against Matt Hardy and despite being booked to be in the final four of the Royal Rumble 1996, a botch led to his early elimination.
With the Royal Rumble in the books, Austin feuded with Savio Vega during WrestleMania season and he defeated Vega during the mega-event. After losing to Vega at the next PPV (In Your House 7: Good Friends, Better Enemies) a stipulation was put in place for the third encounter. The contest was scheduled as a Caribbean Strap Match and if Austin were to lose, his manager, Ted Dibiase would be fired.
In the end, Austin lost the match and his manager was shown the exit. Later on, during an interview (kayfabe, of course) Austin declared that he had lost the match on purpose so that he could get rid of his manager. During his feud with Vega, Austin would shave his head bald and start stomping his opponents in the corner as a part of his signature offense.
With Ted Dibiase gone, Austin was all on his own. The commentators heaped a ton of praise on his technical skills, but Austin considered the Ringmaster gimmick a complete failure.
After mere months of working the character, he went up to Vince McMahon and requested a character change. After conceiving the idea of the character of Stone Cold, Austin informed the company and he was given a list of cheesy and cringe names, such as Fang McFrost and Ice Dagger.
The Ringmaster Was Short-Lived
Austin was more down rotten than ever about the direction of his career but thankfully, his then-wife, Jeanie Clarke, assured him of his success and then told him to drink his tea before it turned stone-cold. Just then, everything clicked, and the rest is history.
Austin retained the ringmaster character for a few months and the highlight was a feud with Vega. His run was nothing too out of the ordinary but according to Bruce Pritchard, the strap match between Austin and Vega was the true breakthrough for Austin as Vince McMahon was enthralled by the contest and finally came around to the fact that Steve Austin was special and the many to carry his company.
The Ringmaster character served as a transitional period for Steve Austin and despite being presented as a generic, pure wrestler, a few glimpses of his Stone Cold character shone through and years later, fans were given the best character in wrestling history.