Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. The Rock (Dec 1997 – Mar 2003)

Background

They started as a mid-card problem for each other. In late 1997 Austin held the WWF Intercontinental Championship and The Rock, running with the Nation of Domination, wanted it. The Rock took the belt off him in a brawl on November 17 and spent the following weeks on television calling himself the best Intercontinental Champion there had ever been.[5]

Austin answered by driving a pickup truck into the arena during one of The Rock's matches on December 1.[5] That was the shape of the whole thing early: one man doing promos, the other doing property damage.

Austin was also hurt. He had taken a piledriver from Owen Hart at SummerSlam 1997 that left him with a serious neck injury, and the neck shaped the next six years of his career.[14] He would have spinal fusion surgery in January 2000 and lose most of that year to it, and he was eventually forced to retire in 2003 after multiple knee injuries and the neck.[14]

The Rock had come the other way. He had debuted as Rocky Maivia, a smiling babyface pushed hard and fast, and audiences turned on him for it, with "Rocky sucks" chants in the buildings and "Die, Rocky, Die" on signs.[20] He lost the Intercontinental Championship to Owen Hart on the April 28, 1997 Raw, hurt his knee, and came back in August as a heel who addressed the rejection directly, joining Faarooq's Nation of Domination and dropping the Maivia name.[20]

That worked. He took the Intercontinental title off Austin by forfeit in December 1997, and by March 30, 1998 he had taken the Nation itself off Faarooq.[20] By November 1998 he had won the WWF Championship in the Survivor Series tournament, as Vince McMahon's handpicked Corporate Champion.[1]

McMahon is the reason the two of them ended up at the top of the same card. His scheming to get the belt off Austin after WrestleMania XIV ran through the rigged Survivor Series tournament that made The Rock champion, which meant that by early 1999 the man standing between Austin and the title was the one McMahon had chosen.[1]

Build-up

Their first pay-per-view singles match was on December 7, 1997 at the Springfield Civic Center, in front of 6,358.[5] Austin drove the truck to ringside again and retained the Intercontinental Championship in 5:28, hitting a Stunner and getting the fall from a second referee after the first one had been stunned as well.[5]

The next night on Raw he gave the title up instead of defending it the way the office wanted, handed it to The Rock, beat him up, and threw the belt off a bridge into the river.[7][9] Fifteen months later they were main-eventing WrestleMania.

The road there ran through McMahon. Austin won the 1998 Royal Rumble, won the title at WrestleMania XIV, and then spent a year being stripped, cheated and rerouted by the Corporation, with the belt landing on The Rock in the manipulated Survivor Series tournament in November 1998.[1] At the 1999 Royal Rumble McMahon won the match himself and claimed the WrestleMania spot, gave it up, and Austin took it back by beating him in a steel cage at St. Valentine's Day Massacre.[1]

Six days before the show, on the March 22 Raw, Austin backed a beer truck up to the ring and hosed down The Rock, Vince and Shane McMahon with it.[8][9]

WrestleMania XV ran on March 28, 1999 at the First Union Center in Philadelphia, 20,276 in the building and 800,000 buys in North America.[1] Austin won the title in 16:52 in a no-disqualification match that ran through four different referees, Mankind among them.[1]

They ran it back four weeks later at Backlash on April 25 in Providence, with Shane McMahon as guest referee and Austin's Smoking Skull belt as the object everyone was fighting over after Shane stole it and gave it to The Rock.[4] Austin retained in 17:07, pinning him after a Stunner and a belt shot.[4] The show did roughly 400,000 buys, which for a secondary pay-per-view in 1999 was a large number.[4][7]

Then they separated. The Rock turned babyface and became the company's top act; Austin had the neck surgery in January 2000 and lost the year.[7][14] When he came back for Backlash 2000 it was to help The Rock beat Triple H for the title, which is one of the only times in six years the two of them were on the same side and drank together afterward.[9]

Austin won the 2001 Royal Rumble on January 21 in New Orleans, entering at number 27 and eliminating Kane last, his third Rumble win.[21] He and The Rock fought inside the match itself, and The Rock went out to a Rikishi low blow before the finish.[21] Five weeks later at No Way Out, The Rock beat Kurt Angle in 16:53 to become a six-time champion, which set the WrestleMania match.[22]

The 2001 build was personal in a way the 1999 one had not been. McMahon ordered Austin's wife Debra to manage The Rock against her wishes, and when Kurt Angle put Debra in an ankle lock, Austin came out and stunned The Rock over it.[2]

The 2003 build was different again. The Rock came back on February 20 after six months away, turned heel on Hulk Hogan, and started working as the Hollywood Rock, a character built out of the film career he now had.[3] He went after Austin for being voted Superstar of the Decade by the fans in January, and when Austin made his own television return on March 3, The Rock challenged him for WrestleMania on the grounds that he had never beaten him there.[3]

The Matches

WrestleMania X-Seven ran on April 1, 2001 at the Reliant Astrodome in Houston, in front of 67,925, a record for the building, and did 1,040,000 buys.[2] It was made no-disqualification just before the bell.[2]

The match went 28:08 and both men bled after being hit with the ring bell.[2] The Rock had it won more than once. McMahon came down and pulled him off Austin to break up a pin, Austin hit The Rock with his own Rock Bottom, and a Stunner later got another near fall.[2]

Then McMahon handed Austin a steel chair, and Austin took it. He used it on The Rock repeatedly, won the title, and shook McMahon's hand in the middle of the ring, in his home state, in front of the largest crowd the two of them ever worked in front of together.[2] John Powell of Canadian Online Explorer gave the main event a perfect ten; Dave Meltzer rated it four and a half stars, and named the show his Best Major Show of 2001.[2][15]

The rematch that mattered came at Survivor Series on November 18, 2001 in Greensboro, in a five-on-five elimination match where the winning side got control of the company.[6] It ran 44:57. Austin had The Rock beaten with a Stunner but there was no referee to count it, and while Austin was reviving Earl Hebner, Kurt Angle came back and hit Austin with the championship belt.[6] The Rock hit a Rock Bottom and pinned him, the first time he had ever pinned Austin, and the Invasion was over.[6][8]

WrestleMania XIX ran on March 30, 2003 at Safeco Field in Seattle, 54,097 in the stadium and 560,000 buys.[3] Their match went 17:55 and sat ninth on the card, one before the main event.[3]

They brawled at ringside for a stretch, and then The Rock went to work on Austin's leg with submissions, including the Sharpshooter.[3] He also spent part of the match mocking him, wearing his vest and doing his mannerisms.[3] Both men hit their finishes without putting the other away.[3]

The Rock won it with three Rock Bottoms in a row, one after another, and pinned him.[3]

Then he knelt down next to him. By Austin's own account and the accounts of the people around it, The Rock told him: "I can't thank you enough for what you did for me. I love you, man." Austin said it back.[8] It was Austin's last match for nineteen years, until he wrestled Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 38 in April 2022.[14]

Aftermath

Austin did not wrestle again on a full-time basis. He had been forced out by accumulated knee injuries and the neck, and he stayed off the road.[14] He stayed on television instead, working as an on-screen authority figure across 2003 and 2004 rather than a wrestler.[23]

The Rock went the other way, into films: he had already done The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Scorpion King in 2002, and he stepped away from full-time wrestling around 2003 and 2004 to keep going with it.[19]

The two of them shared a ring once more without fighting in it. At WrestleMania XXX in April 2014, Austin, The Rock and Hulk Hogan opened the show together and had a beer, the only time the three of them were in the ring on WWE television.[8][9]

Vince McMahon kept the alliance from X-Seven going for a while, then the Invasion arrived and rearranged everything. Austin ended up on the Alliance side against The Rock's Team WWF at Survivor Series, which is how the November 2001 match came to be the one that settled the angle.[6]

Austin's exit from the company in June 2002 was a separate story that ran into this one. He walked out over being booked to lose to Brock Lesnar in a King of the Ring qualifier on free television, arguing that a first-time Austin and Lesnar match was worth building and selling rather than giving away.[13] WWE ran a Confidential episode about it, stopped selling his merchandise, and pushed Lesnar to the title in his absence.[13]

Jim Ross is the one who got him back. Ross kept sending Austin postcards, the two met in Houston, and Austin paid a reported $250,000 fine and returned at No Way Out in February 2003, five weeks before the WrestleMania match.[13]

The years straight after the retirement were not good ones. "I didn't handle it well," Austin has said of losing the job at 38. "I drank, I hunted, and I fished, and just did a lot of stupid stuff," and by his own account he spent a stretch of it "still searching for the bottom of a lot of bottles" before he pulled out of it.[24] The turn came, he says, on an ordinary morning: "one morning, I woke up, and I went in the bathroom, [and said], 'Dude, the things you're doing are not conducive to living a long life.'"[24]

Behind the Scenes

The heel turn at X-Seven was Austin's own idea. He has said his character had gone stale and that he had been pushing to turn for a while before it happened, and that The Rock was fine with it, describing Johnson as "about to ride off into the sunset and go film" what was close to his first movie.[10] Austin has also said since that he regards the turn as a mistake, on the grounds that the audience did not want it and it had to be forced on them.[10]

The two of them have been consistent that the on-screen hatred never went anywhere near real. "Sometimes you just have this next-level chemistry with a guy," Austin said on Talk Is Jericho. "He brought out the best in me and I brought out the best in him."[8] The Rock's account of the night of their first big match was that "we got to the back that night and everyone felt like... there's something special between me and Stone Cold."[8]

Austin has described the relationship since as one with almost no contact and no friction. "He's the guy because of our background, you know, I don't email him, we don't text each other, I don't even have his phone number," he said. "But as soon as we get in a room together, it's that instant camaraderie friendship."[10]

The night before WrestleMania XIX, Austin was in a Seattle hospital. He had been at the gym with Kevin Nash and noticed his legs shaking, and back at the hotel it got worse: "God dang, my heart just started beating out [of] my chest. Like 180 beats a minute."[11] A WWE office employee at the hotel called 911.[11][12]

The diagnosis was severe dehydration and exhaustion rather than a cardiac event, and they put roughly four litres of fluid into him.[12] By his own account the doctor "never really cleared me," and he went and wrestled anyway.[11][12]

He also knew it was the end, and almost nobody else did. "Not everybody knew that was going to be my last match. Only a handful of us did," Austin has said, naming The Rock, Vince McMahon and Jim Ross, and possibly Jerry Lawler.[12] He has said the retirement decision was informed by neurological problems he was having at the time.[11]

What he remembers of the day is not the match. "I remember going to the building that day and it was just a very emotional day," he said, and he has admitted he has rarely watched the match back because of what it was.[12] The 54,097 people in Safeco Field did not know they were at a retirement.

On the 2002 walkout, Austin's framing of the creative situation at the time was that "the mules were pulling the wagon, but the wagon wasn't going anywhere."[13] McMahon's public version of the same event became its own catchphrase: Austin "took his ball and went home."[13]

Legacy

The numbers are the part that is hardest to argue with. The first pay-per-view they wrestled on together, in December 1997, drew 144,000 buys and 6,358 people into the Springfield Civic Center.[5] WrestleMania XV did 800,000 buys in North America, breaking the previous record by a wide margin; Backlash four weeks later did around 400,000 for a B show; WrestleMania X-Seven did 1,040,000.[1][4][2][7]

X-Seven is the one that gets called the peak. Meltzer named it the Best Major Show of 2001 and rated the main event four and a half stars, and John Powell scored it a perfect ten.[2][15] The Astrodome crowd of 67,925 was a record for the venue.[2]

WrestleMania XIX has a different kind of standing. It is routinely treated as the end of the Attitude Era in practice, because both of the men who defined it stopped working full time within months of it: Austin permanently, The Rock for films.[3][19]

Austin's assessment of who he was in the ring with has not moved. He has called The Rock "probably my most favorite opponent" and the man who "brought out the best in me," and The Rock has described Austin as a big brother.[8]

The shows around the trilogy sold too. The 2001 Royal Rumble that set up X-Seven did 625,000 buys and No Way Out five weeks later did 590,000, which is the level the company was operating at while these two were pointed at each other.[21][22]

Austin went into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2009, inducted by Vince McMahon on April 4 at the Toyota Center in Houston, in his home state.[23][25] He came back to the ring once, wrestling Kevin Owens at WrestleMania 38 in April 2022, nineteen years and one month after The Rock beat him in Seattle.[14]

See Also

Sources & Further Listening

1. WrestleMania XV — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_XV
2. WrestleMania X-Seven — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_X-Seven
3. WrestleMania XIX — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WrestleMania_XIX
4. Backlash (1999) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlash_(1999)
5. D-Generation X: In Your House — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Generation_X:_In_Your_House
6. Survivor Series (2001) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Series_(2001)
7. "The Complete History Of The Rock Vs. 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin" — Cultaholic. https://www.cultaholic.com/posts/the-complete-history-of-the-rock-vs-stone-cold-steve-austin
8. "The Rock vs Stone Cold Steve Austin: How These 13 Pivotal WWE Moments Built an All-Time Feud" — Pro Wrestling Stories. https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/the-rock-stone-cold-steve-austin/
9. "Unforgettable Moments From The Rock And Stone Cold Steve Austin's Rivalry" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1085385/unforgettable-moments-from-the-rock-and-stone-cold-steve-austins-rivalry/
10. "'Stone Cold' Steve Austin Reveals How The Rock Felt About the WrestleMania X-Seven Main Event" (Aug 15, 2019) — ComicBook.com. https://comicbook.com/wwe/news/stone-cold-steve-austin-dwayne-johnson-wrestlemania-x-seven-heel-turn-how-rock-felt/
11. "WWE HOFer Steve Austin Recalls Hospital Visit The Night Before His 2003 Retirement" (Insight with Chris Van Vliet) — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/2069466/wwe-wrestlemania-19-stone-cold-steve-austin-hospital-visit-2003-retirement/
12. "Steve Austin Talks WrestleMania 19 Match Vs. The Rock, Who Knew It Was His Last Match, Health Scare" (The Steve Austin Show, Oct 4, 2019) — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2019/10/steve-austin-talks-wrestlemania-19-match-vs-the-rock-660334/
13. "The Night Stone Cold Took His Ball And Went Home: A Complete History Of The 2002 Walkout" — Wrestling News. https://www.wrestlingnews.co/stories/night-stone-cold-took-his-ball-went-home-complete-history-2002-walkout/
14. Steve Austin — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Austin
15. "Dave Meltzer Star Ratings: WrestleMania 17 (X-Seven)" — IWNerd. https://www.iwnerd.com/dave-meltzer-star-ratings-wrestlemania-17-xseven/
16. "FULL MATCH: 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin vs. The Rock | Intercontinental Title Match: DX: In Your House" — YouTube (WWE Vault). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNeOfFESPXk
17. "FULL MATCH: The Rock vs. 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin – WWE Title Match: WrestleMania X-Seven" — YouTube (WWE). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UicJBCAIgto
18. "FULL MATCH: 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin vs. The Rock: WrestleMania XIX" — YouTube (WWE). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWugBmcUBlo
19. Dwayne Johnson — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwayne_Johnson
20. Nation of Domination — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_of_Domination
21. Royal Rumble (2001) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rumble_(2001)
22. No Way Out (2001) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Way_Out_(2001)
23. Stone Cold Steve Austin — Wikipedia (post-retirement on-air roles and 2009 Hall of Fame induction). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Cold_Steve_Austin
24. "WWE HOFer Steve Austin Looked For 'The Bottom Of A Bottle' After Retirement" (DJD Classics with Dale Earnhardt Jr., Nov 22, 2025) — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/2030253/wwe-hofer-steve-austin-retirement-bottom-bottle/
25. WWE Hall of Fame (2009) — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_Hall_of_Fame_(2009)

Further Listening

• The Steve Austin Show — Austin's own episodes on WrestleMania XIX, the health scare, and the 2002 walkout
• Insight with Chris Van Vliet featuring Steve Austin — the hospital night before his last match, in his own words
• Talk Is Jericho with Steve Austin — Austin on the chemistry with The Rock and the X-Seven turn
• Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard — episodes on WrestleMania X-Seven, the Invasion, and Austin's walkout
• WWE's Rivals and Ruthless Aggression documentary series — the company's own retrospectives on the trilogy and the era's end