Vince McMahon probably owes his greatest period as a television performer to his rivalry with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin but apparently didn't see him as being anything higher than mid-card during Austin's early days.
According to Jake Roberts, the WWE boss did not consider the Texas Rattlesnake to be main-event material after he came over from WCW but, thankfully, he (Jake) did.
“When Steve Austin came to WWF, I was helping write television, and I watched him, and I said, ‘This motherf*cker got it, man," Roberts said to Premier Live TV. "He’s got that ‘it’ factor and he don’t even know he’s got it.’
“I’m starting to scoot him into places. Sort of as an afterthought so nobody was watching. Well then one day I told Vince [McMahon], I said, ‘That guy right there is gonna be your next super, superstar.’ ‘You kidding me Jake?’ He said, ‘That guy, he’ll never make it past fifth, sixth match. He’s not a main-eventer.’ I said, ‘The f*ck he ain’t.’ He said, ‘Do you think so?’ I said, ‘Yeah I think so,’ and we tried the thing and I guess it might’ve worked huh?”
Stone Cold turned out to be one of the biggest names in wrestling and, while Vince might not have believed in him at first, he can take credit for the outcome. Roberts obviously deserves some of it too as he claims to have had a part to play. McMahon, though, has the final say on nearly everything and did even more so back in the day as he was a much larger presence on TV.
Soon To Be Immortalized
Both McMahon and Austin are having documentaries made about them. It was recently announced that McMahon's will be a four-part series set to be be released on Netflix.
As for Stone Cold, his documentary will be produced by the same producers who made Michael Jordan's The Last Dance.
Source: Premier Live TV (Transcribed by Post Wrestling)