Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Mr. McMahon (Sep 1997 – Jul 1999)

Background

Steve Austin arrived in the WWF in early 1996 already twice cast off, cut loose by WCW in September 1995 rather than have the company eat the final year of his contract after a torn triceps, then run through a short and rough stint in ECW before signing on as a nondescript enforcer called The Ringmaster.[1] McMahon's own first impression of the character wasn't promising; he later admitted his reaction was simply, "He's wasting my time."[17] The Ringmaster gimmick went nowhere, and Austin was handed a blank slate instead: "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, a sneering Texan with no interest in fan-friendly gimmickry.[1]

The turn came at King of the Ring on June 23, 1996, in Milwaukee. Austin beat a born-again Jake Roberts in the tournament final and, riffing on a religious promo Roberts had cut on him earlier that night, delivered an improvised line on live television: "Talk about your Psalms, talk about John 3:16. Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass."[14][15] The line became the most quoted promo in wrestling and the foundation of a merchandising business, and it carried Austin from midcard curiosity to the top of WWF programming within a year.[14]

Austin held the WWF Intercontinental Championship for most of 1996 and 1997, and on August 3, 1997, at SummerSlam, he defended it against Owen Hart in a match that reshaped his career for reasons that had nothing to do with the finish. Hart's piledriver landed with Austin's head jammed into the mat, and Austin lay on the canvas legitimately unable to feel his arms; he whispered to referee Earl Hebner to keep going and finished the match, weakly schoolboying Hart for the pin at 16:15 while barely able to move.[3][21] The injury, later diagnosed as a bruised spinal cord, sidelined Austin from full-contact wrestling for months and put him on WWF television as a talking, not working, character: an angry employee who wanted back in the ring and a boss who, on camera, wouldn't clear him.[13]

That boss was Vince McMahon, still working as the WWF's lead broadcaster and, unrelated to Austin at first, only weeks from becoming the company's defining on-screen villain. McMahon had been shading his commentary persona toward company authority figure through 1997, and the November 1997 Montreal Screwjob, in which he orchestrated a fake submission to strip Bret Hart of the WWF Championship, hardened the character overnight into the corrupt, controlling "Mr. McMahon" the promotion would build around for years afterward.[12][16] Austin's shelved, talk-only status put him directly in that character's path.

Build-up

The first collision came on September 22, 1997, on Raw is War from Madison Square Garden. Owen Hart had taken out a kayfabe restraining order against Austin the week before; Austin walked to the ring anyway, attacked Hart in front of real New York City police officers, and looked headed for a genuine arrest. McMahon climbed into the ring to talk Austin down, saying he only wanted to help him avoid jail time. Austin thanked him for caring, then leveled him with a Stone Cold Stunner in front of a delighted MSG crowd, and was hauled out on charges of trespassing, assault, and assaulting a police officer.[1][13] It was the first time Austin had turned the Stunner on his own boss, and it set the template for everything that followed.

Six weeks later, the Montreal Screwjob turned McMahon into a full-time heel character, and by early 1998 he was using that authority against Austin directly. Austin won the Royal Rumble on January 18, 1998, in San Jose, last eliminating Rocky Maivia to earn the WWF Championship match at WrestleMania XIV, and McMahon spent the weeks before the show publicly campaigning against him, telling the audience he did not want Austin representing the company as champion.[4][13] To try to stop it, McMahon brought in Mike Tyson as a paid ringside enforcer for the match. On March 29, 1998, at the FleetCenter in Boston, in front of 19,028 fans and a 730,000-buy audience, Tyson turned on McMahon instead: Austin caught Shawn Michaels with a Stunner in the closing stretch, and Tyson made the count himself, giving Austin his first WWF Championship and McMahon a very public defeat.[5]

McMahon didn't wait long to retaliate. On Raw the next night from Albany, he confronted the new champion over his appearance, telling him he needed to look and act the way a WWF Champion should; Austin answered with a middle finger and a second Stunner, and was arrested again.[1][13] Two weeks later, on the April 13, 1998 Raw, Austin goaded McMahon into agreeing to wrestle him for the title outright. The match never happened as advertised: Dude Love interfered before McMahon and Austin could lock up, turning it into a no-contest and setting up a new program with Mick Foley's alter ego. The same night carried a real-world footnote neither man had scripted: that week's Raw beat Nitro in the Monday night ratings for the first time in nearly two years, a shift that never fully reversed.[13][22]

McMahon spent the rest of 1998 chasing the title back through the office rather than the ring. At Breakdown: In Your House on September 27, 1998, in Hamilton, Ontario, Austin defended the WWF Championship in a triple threat against The Undertaker and Kane under a stipulation that the brothers couldn't pin each other. Undertaker and Kane both chokeslammed and pinned Austin simultaneously, leaving no winner in the ring; McMahon walked out, took the belt from the referee, and declared it his.[6] He then built a 14-man "Deadly Game" tournament for the vacant title at Survivor Series on November 15, 1998, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Austin fought through to a semifinal against Mankind, hit a clean Stunner, and watched Shane McMahon slow-count the pin, flip him off, and let Corporation members club him with a chair before finally calling the fall for Mankind. Vince McMahon stood at ringside afterward and told the crowd he had "successfully screwed Steve Austin, Mankind, and the people," revealing Shane as his ally all along.[7]

The Corporation escalated into physical danger for Austin at the Royal Rumble on January 24, 1999, in Anaheim. McMahon put a $100,000 bounty on Austin's head, then entered the match himself at the second slot specifically to face him. When Austin got the better of him, McMahon fled through the crowd into the arena's hallways, luring Austin into a bathroom where Ken Shamrock and Test were waiting; the ambush left Austin carried out on a stretcher.[8][27] Austin returned to the ring anyway, only for a taunting Rock to distract him long enough for McMahon to dump him over the top rope and win the Rumble himself, earning the WrestleMania title shot he intended to hand off rather than use.[8]

McMahon converted that Rumble win into one more obstacle: a February 14, 1999 steel cage match at St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Memphis, with Austin's WrestleMania XV title shot on the line. Austin battered him around the cage for most of the match while McMahon spent long stretches trying and failing to climb out. The finish belonged to nobody's plan: Paul Wight made his WWF debut by cutting through the ring canvas as the Big Show, meant to help McMahon, and instead threw Austin into the cage wall with enough force to spring the door open, letting Austin simply walk out and win.[9] A little over a month later, on the March 22, 1999 Raw, Austin crashed a Corporation coronation segment for new champion The Rock by driving a Coors Light beer truck to the ring and hosing down McMahon, Shane, and Rock together, the last comic beat before WrestleMania.[13]

The Matches

Austin and The Rock finally met one-on-one for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania XV on March 28, 1999, at the First Union Center in Philadelphia, in front of 20,276 fans and an 800,000 North American buy count.[10] McMahon tried to install himself as special guest referee before the bell, only for WWF Commissioner Shawn Michaels to order him to the back and bar every Corporation member from ringside; Mankind, who had won the officiating job by beating Big Show earlier in the night, took the whistle instead.[10] The match spilled outside the ring repeatedly and chairs came into play once Mankind lost control of the pace, and McMahon still forced his way back down the aisle late, only for Mankind to throw him out again. Austin absorbed a Rock Bottom on the fallen referee, recovered, and finished Rock with a second Stone Cold Stunner for the pin, taking the WWF Championship away from the Corporation's own champion in the building McMahon had spent a year trying to keep it out of his hands.[10]

That win didn't end the story; it moved it forward. The real stipulation match landed four months later at Fully Loaded on July 25, 1999, at the Marine Midland Arena in Buffalo, New York, in front of 16,605 fans.[11] Austin defended the WWF Championship against The Undertaker in a First Blood match with a stipulation built entirely around McMahon: if Undertaker won, Austin would never get another WWF title shot; if Austin won, McMahon would be barred from WWF television. The match doubled as the payoff to a separate mystery running through the Ministry of Darkness storyline, since Undertaker had spent months answering to an unseen "Higher Power" who was revealed, over the same weeks, to be McMahon all along.[11]

Austin won by busting Undertaker open with a shot from a television camera for the first blood, and the show closed on the stipulation rather than the title. Austin walked to the ring, shook McMahon's hand, and dropped him with one last Stone Cold Stunner before McMahon was led away, banished from WWF programming under the terms of the match he had written for himself.[11] It was a strange way to close a year-and-a-half program: Austin's opponent that night was Undertaker, and the two men who had carried the whole story barely wrestled each other again that summer. But the banishment was the real finish line, the first time in nearly two years that Mr. McMahon wasn't scheduled to be somewhere on WWF television the following week.[11]

Aftermath

McMahon's exile from WWF programming didn't last long. Within weeks the Ministry of Darkness storyline folded into a new alliance between Undertaker and the McMahon family, and by the fall McMahon was back on camera building fresh authority-figure programs, first against Triple H and then around his own family as Stephanie McMahon's storyline wedding to Test became one of the next major angles of 1999.[13] The specific Austin-versus-McMahon program was done, though; the two men crossed paths again in the years that followed, but never again as the company's top weekly story the way they had been from late 1997 through Fully Loaded.

Austin kept the WWF Championship into the summer, defending it against Undertaker again and moving into a fall program with Triple H and the reformed Corporate Ministry, still without full use of the neck he had jammed at SummerSlam two years earlier.[1] The Rock, who had lost the title at WrestleMania XV, stayed in the main event mix and would face Austin for it again before the year was out, the start of a long-running Rock-Austin rivalry that outlasted the McMahon program itself.[1]

The stretch this feud covered wasn't free of real tragedy. Owen Hart, whose SummerSlam 1997 piledriver had put Austin on the shelf in the first place and set this whole story in motion, died on May 23, 1999, when a stunt harness failed and he fell from the rafters of Kemper Arena in Kansas City during the Over the Edge pay-per-view, roughly two months after WrestleMania XV and two months before Fully Loaded.[28][29]

For the WWF as a business, the timing of the Austin-McMahon story could not have been better. The company had spent 1996 and most of 1997 losing the Monday night ratings war to WCW's Nitro; by the second half of 1998, built substantially on this rivalry, Raw was winning most weeks, and the company carried that momentum into an October 1999 stock offering.[13][24]

Behind the Scenes

The character everyone came to hate had a real, personal engine behind it. Vince Russo, the WWF's head writer through most of this run alongside Ed Ferrara, has taken credit for shaping the Austin-McMahon story alongside D-Generation X and Mick Foley's push during the same period, though Russo has always insisted the credit belongs to both names together: "I will always say Russo-Ferrara, Russo-Ferrara, Russo-Ferrara till the day I die."[22][23] By Russo's own account, he and Ferrara worked up angles for the roster and brought the outlines to McMahon, who reshaped them with his own input before they went to air, meaning the finished Mr. McMahon character was a collaboration between the writers and the man playing him.[23]

McMahon has said the character drew on real feelings from his own childhood rather than pure invention. "When I was growing up, I was dirt poor," he said of the arrogance and contempt for ordinary people that defined Mr. McMahon. "Coming from that environment, I don't like rich people, because I was around some people who thought they were better than me because they had more money." He has also drawn a hard line between the character and himself: "Mr. McMahon is no way in the world like me."[16]

McMahon's read on Austin himself took time to come around. When Austin arrived as the flat Ringmaster gimmick, McMahon's honest first impression was dismissive: "He's wasting my time."[17] Once Stone Cold clicked, McMahon came to see the two of them as made for the story they were telling. Austin has said the same thing from his side: "Vince and I were tailor-made for each other to work together. Vince was unique because he was the owner, and now he's feuding with me, it's a real storyline. All of a sudden, it wasn't just about wrestling, it was about this guy who's an employee, against his boss."[18]

That didn't mean the real relationship stayed simple. Austin has described McMahon across different interviews as a father figure, a mentor, a friend, and, at points, someone he genuinely resented, saying there was "a lot of times some animosity there" even while insisting he loves McMahon and respects his work ethic.[18] Austin has also credited McMahon's read on the business directly, recalling that McMahon once told him he had "the best gut instincts of anybody in the business" when Austin pitched him creative ideas.[18]

Some of the real friction underneath the story predated McMahon entirely. Austin's shelved, talk-only status that made the whole angle possible traced back to Owen Hart's SummerSlam 1997 piledriver, and Austin has said he never felt Owen showed enough concern afterward, saying Owen called him only once while he was in the hospital. "If I almost break someone's neck, I'm calling them 25 times to apologize," Austin has said. The single call, and Owen's return to his family the moment he left the arena, cooled a friendship that had been close before the injury.[19][20]

The story also ran on genuine family stakes. Shane McMahon, the real WWF executive vice president, spent 1998 and 1999 playing Corporation and Ministry storylines directly against his own on-screen father's kayfabe villainy, blurring an already thin line between the McMahon family's business decisions and the McMahon family's television characters.[7]

Underneath all of it sat a business emergency the writing team has been candid about. The WWF was losing the Monday night ratings war to WCW through most of 1997, and Austin-McMahon was, by design, the story meant to turn it around; when Raw finally beat Nitro on April 13, 1998, the same night Austin had goaded McMahon into a fight that never happened, it validated the approach in a way no internal memo could have.[13][22]

Legacy

The Wrestling Observer Newsletter named Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon its Feud of the Year for both 1998 and 1999, one of a small number of rivalries to win the award in back-to-back years across the newsletter's history.[2][26] Retrospective coverage has regularly ranked it among the most significant rivalries professional wrestling has produced, crediting it with carrying the WWF through the roughest years of the Monday Night War against WCW.[13]

The business case is on the record. Raw overtook Nitro in the ratings for good in the spring of 1998, substantially on the strength of this story, and WWF revenue nearly doubled the following fiscal year as the company built toward taking itself public. On October 19, 1999, the WWF listed on the New York Stock Exchange at $17 a share, and the stock climbed past $30 within days of the opening bell, with Austin himself among the wrestlers who rang it in at the ceremony.[24][25]

The format outlasted the feud itself. The idea of an on-screen authority figure whose corporate power was the actual obstacle a wrestler had to overcome became a recurring template for the company afterward, echoed years later in storylines like Daniel Bryan's fight against The Authority.[13] Mr. McMahon remained a fixture of WWE programming in one form or another for years after this specific program ended.

For Austin, the run cemented him as the biggest star of the Attitude Era, built on a body of neck and back damage that had started with Owen Hart's piledriver two years earlier and never fully healed; he kept wrestling into the mid-2000s but never again on the pace he carried through 1998 and 1999.[1] For McMahon, playing Mr. McMahon opposite Austin defined the public image of him held by a generation of wrestling fans, well beyond the specific years this program ran.

See Also

Sources & Further Listening

1. Stone Cold Steve Austin — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Cold_Steve_Austin
2. Vince McMahon — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_McMahon
3. SummerSlam (1997) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SummerSlam_(1997)
4. Royal Rumble (1998) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1998)
5. WrestleMania XIV — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_XIV
6. Breakdown: In Your House — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakdown:_In_Your_House
7. Survivor Series (1998) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Series_(1998)
8. Royal Rumble (1999) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(1999)
9. St. Valentine's Day Massacre: In Your House — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Valentine%27s_Day_Massacre:_In_Your_House
10. WrestleMania XV — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_XV
11. Fully Loaded (1999) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Loaded_(1999)
12. Montreal Screwjob — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Screwjob
13. "Steve Austin and Vince McMahon - The Story Behind The Feud!" — Pro Wrestling Stories. https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/steve-austin-vince-mcmahon/
14. "On this date in WWF history: The birth of Austin 3:16 at King of the Ring 1996" — Cageside Seats. https://www.cagesideseats.com/2012/6/23/3062221/on-this-date-in-wwf-history-the-birth-of-austin-3-16-at-king-of-the-ring-1996
15. "Steve Austin Reminisces About Ad-Libbing Infamous 'Austin 3:16' Line" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2022/03/steve-austin-reveals-he-came-up-with-austin-316-promo-on-the-fly/
16. "Vince McMahon reveals surprising details behind the Mr. McMahon character" — Sportskeeda. https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/news-vince-mcmahon-reveals-surprising-details-behind-mr-mcmahon-character
17. "'He's wasting my time' – Vince McMahon reveals his first impression of Stone Cold Steve Austin" — The SportsRush. https://thesportsrush.com/wwe-news-hes-wasting-my-time-vince-mcmahon-reveals-his-first-impression-of-stone-cold-steve-austin/
18. "'There was a lot of times some animosity there' – Stone Cold opens up on his relationship with Vince McMahon" — The SportsRush. https://thesportsrush.com/wwe-news-there-was-a-lot-of-times-some-animosity-there-stone-cold-opens-up-on-his-relationship-with-vince-mcmahon/
19. "The Injury That Led To The End Of Owen Hart And Steve Austin's Friendship" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1108081/the-injury-that-led-to-the-end-of-owen-hart-and-steve-austins-friendship/
20. "Did Owen Hart apologize to 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin for breaking his neck?" — Sportskeeda. https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe/news-did-owen-hart-apologize-stone-cold-steve-austin-breaking-neck
21. "On this date in history: Owen Hart breaks Stone Cold Steve Austin's neck at SummerSlam 1997" — Cageside Seats. https://www.cagesideseats.com/2013/8/3/4569246/on-this-date-in-history-owen-hart-breaks-stone-cold-steve-austins-neck-summerslam-1997
22. Vince Russo — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Russo
23. "Vince Russo Reveals What He Has Never Said About the Attitude Era and His Biggest Regret" — Pro Wrestling Stories. https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/vince-russo-interview-attitude-era-family-regrets/
24. "When WWE Went Public: The Most Important Day In Wrestling Nobody Talks About" — TheSportster. https://www.thesportster.com/wwe-went-public-nobody-talks-about/
25. "25 Biggest Moments In WWE's Wall Street History" — Yahoo Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/25-biggest-moments-wwes-wall-030437645.html
26. List of Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wrestling_Observer_Newsletter_awards
27. "1999 Royal Rumble" — WrestleCrap. http://wrestlecrap.com/inductions/1999-royal-rumble/
28. Over the Edge (1999) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_the_Edge_(1999)
29. "The loss of Owen Hart and the family, friends and fans who loved him" — CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/archives/the-loss-of-owen-hart-and-the-family-friends-and-fans-who-loved-him-1.5146777

Further Listening

• The Steve Austin Show (podcast) — Austin's own retrospectives on working with Vince McMahon and the toll of the neck injury
• Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard — the "happy accident" origin of the Mr. McMahon character
• The Monday Night War (WWE documentary series) — the ratings-war business context behind the Austin-McMahon program
• Biography: WWE Legends – Stone Cold Steve Austin (A&E) — a career retrospective covering the McMahon rivalry