Revisting the time Stone Cold walked out on the WWE.........PWT Newsletter April 5 2009

TORCH COVER STORY (PWTorch Newsletter #710)

Headline: McMahon and Ross bury Austin on WWE TV

Wrestling promoters have long made a tradition out of burying a wrestler when he left a territory on bad terms. WWE took that to a new level this past week regarding Steve Austin.

“It’d be like John Wayne becoming a coward in a big fight. You never saw it happen. You’d never see it coming, and I didn’t see this coming,” said Jim Ross, Austin’s biggest ally behind the scenes as well as on camera over the years. Ross’s comments were part of over 30 minutes of WWE Confidential dedicated to Austin’s fallout with WWE.

“He took his ball and went home and obviously I'm ? off,” said Vince McMahon. “I think this was the single most selfish act that Steve Williams, Stone Cold Steve Austin, could have ever done in World Wrestling Entertainment.”

A combination of professional frustrations and mounting personal demons has led to Steve Austin’s departure from WWE. The events that played out over the past couple of weeks might be considered too bizarre for a work of fiction, especially once McMahon was done putting his surreal spin on the situation.

The burial of Austin on WWE programming this past weekend starting on Confidential and culminating in The Rock’s promo on Raw on Monday is unprecedented in wrestling. The burial of Bret Hart by Vince McMahon for not following a “time–honored tradition” and “doing the right thing” by doing a job to Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series ’97, at that time, was the most revealing any promoter had been on the air about a departed wrestler. Bill Watts, Gene Okerlund, Gordon Solie, Wally Karbo, Eric Bischoff, and others had buried departed wrestlers in previous decades, but never did they reveal the extent of their side in as much detail as McMahon did regarding Bret Hart. The details revealed about the Austin situation took it to a new level.

McMahon explained how he heard about Austin’s latest beef. “I received call at about 10:30 p.m. on Sunday night from Jim Ross telling me that Steve Austin wasn’t happy with the creative planned for Raw on Monday. I immediately called Austin’s cell phone and told him no matter what hour it was when he got this message to call me. So at about 2 o’clock in the morning he called me. So that began my Monday. I went through the entire creative process with him and explained to him how this was good for him and good for the company. He said all right. Not that I need his approval, but it’s important for a talent to buy into what it is you’re trying to do because they feel better about it if they’re part of the creative process. That’s what I tried to do and thought I had done.”

Austin’s gripes can be summarized rather simply: Austin had been upset with the creative direction of WWE for months. He felt his concerns weren’t being adequately addressed despite repeated attempts on his part. He felt he had given Vince McMahon enough chances to fix what was wrong. He was fed up and decided to go home without any notice. He felt being asked to do a job to Brock Lesnar on the June 10 Raw was akin to him giving up years of hard work building his credibility just to partake in a hastily thrown together hotshot angle that was conceived to make “? poor” scriptwriters save face for an extra week. He didn’t want any part of it. When he felt games were being played by people with differing agendas, he went home.

“There’s going to be a lot of things written, half the ? you read is wrong,” Ross said on Confidential. “Didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to do that. People with active imaginations who to try to stir ? . The bottom line is he has some issues that maybe some day will be revealed, will be explored by the public, because that’s what the public wants. That’s why I’m doing this interview now, people want to know.”

Ross, surely referring to Austin’s growing personal demons outside the ring, noticed by wrestlers who saw his infamous mood swings grow greater than ever in recent months, admitted with those words that viewers weren’t getting the full story. WWE, though, made sure their side—or as much as they could get away with saying—was communicated. Did WWE present all of Austin’s side? They’d say, “How could we? He won’t talk to us.” True.

Austin’s conduct at home helped paint WWE as the sympathetic figure. Certainly when Austin received national publicity in newspapers and even on MTV News when his wife Debra called police claiming Austin hit her over the weekend, Austin lost much of the benefit of the doubt he might have received. Austin was difficult to work with, his mood swings had gotten severe, and now he had allegedly hit his wife (who decided not to press charges). WWE could easily paint itself as the sympathetic figure. But why bother?

In the end, what matters isn’t whether the public thinks WWE is the “good guy” and Austin is the “bad guy.” What matters is whether the public still finds WWE television entertaining enough to watch every week. The focus on airing ? laundry and attempting to control how the story is perceived publicly won’t necessarily translate into loyalty unless those who fill Austin’s TV time are at least equally entertaining.

“You can’t calculate the loss of this investment for the long term,” said Vince McMahon. “He just took it and flushed it down the toilet.”

McMahon, in an apparent effort to bury Austin for his actions, drew attention to his resignation that the loss of Austin will “devastate” his company. Sure, he and Ross talked about Austin’s departure opening new doors for others, but the message sent ultimately is: We are a weaker company without him. Does it matter to investors whose fault it is? Will someone hold a stock because they feel sorry for WWE? No more likely than fans watching WWE out of charity if they don’t enjoy WWE as much without Austin.

Perhaps McMahon sacrificed a weekend of TV storylines in order to send a message to other wrestlers not to cross him as Austin did.

To top it all off, McMahon threw his other top star, The Rock, into the middle of the mess, having Rock come out and express gratitude toward the fans for making him a star and vowing to never turn his back on them. WWE attempted to communicate to fans that while Austin may have left them, Rock never will.

If Austin returns to WWE rings some day—and given the history of wrestling it’s more likely than not—this can all be spun into a storyline, perhaps a profitable one. In the mean time, though, WWE personnel and performers are concerned with how the Austin crisis has been handled, especially since McMahon has seemed preoccupied with the Austin crisis at the expense of moving forward with the tools he still has