Steve Austin Was Vulnerable, Once
This is the last time Steve Austin is vulnerable as an in-ring competitor.
Top babyfaces do not lose in the WWF, at least not habitually. The WWE books 50/50 champions now, but its biggest draws, even before the Hulkamania, were men who won championships and never lost. Bruno, Backlund, Hogan, Morales – these were Top Guys. They won the WWF Championship and kept it until there was a literal changing of the guard.
The trick to booking these eras was to find a means of making them seem just vulnerable enough to be threatened, but not so much that the fans would go home bemoaning their hero’s losses. Take Hulk Hogan, for instance. From WrestleMania II forward, the question facing the Hulkster was often “can he slam this giant man,” even after he slammed Andre the Giant. He could, of course, which was a good reminder that Hulk Hogan had 24” pythons that you maybe wanted to stick around and take photos of after the match.
After WrestleMania 13, the only thing that kept Stone Cold down (broken neck aside) was numbers. The Nation of Domination. The Hart Foundation. D-Generation X. The Corporation. The Ministry of Darkness. The Corporate Ministry – Steve Austin did not have friends, but he had the Stone Cold Stunner, and the more men who stood in his way, the more men got Stunned. He lost the WWF Championship, but making his character stand tall against impossible odds before doing so preserved his mystique. He did not lose, even when he lost.
The same is true in this match, which is possibly the greatest match in WWE history. Before the glass shatters, literally and figuratively, the storyline laid out here is not “what if Steve Austin wins,” because the answer is obvious, but “what if Bret Hart loses.” Steve Austin, despite everything about him, enters this match as something of an underdog, and not because he’s shed his Million Dollar Dream submission hold, or because of his knee brace. It’s because Bret Hart is canonically, until Kurt Angle, the best wrestler in the history of the WWF.
For Steve Austin to win this match, he will have to bludgeon the Hitman. He does so. From jump, he attacks Hart, trades punches on the mat, pulls Bret’s singlet to roll him over for more punches. Everything punch and kick in the opening moments of this match lands like a bomb. Every move is a struggle. When Austin takes the fight into the crowd, an environment you’d expect the Texan to thrive in, Hart turns it around on him and back body drops him down some stairs.
Here, he wakes up a version of Bret Hart that nobody’s ever seen. In Bret’s prior grudge matches – against Michaels at WrestleMania XII, against his brother Owen at WrestleMania X and SummerSlam – the plan was to go out and outwrestle his man. No blood, none of the dirty tricks he’d employed as a member of the WWF Tag Team Championship-winning Hart Foundation of the 80s. At WrestleMania VIII, Hart had every opportunity to cheat to beat Roddy Piper, but he didn’t, he made a promise to his fans to stay true, and until 1997 he kept his promise.
The Bret Hart who emerges in this fight is vicious. He’s poised, but he is out to hurt Steve Austin, and he’s focused on this goal to an extent that surprises everybody – commentary and fans alike. Steve Austin puts up a fight, one so legendary that the shirt bearing a still of his bloody face carries a $300+ price tag on depop, but he does not have an answer for Bret Hart, who is wrestling with bad intentions.
Steve Austin is vulnerable, and this is why the vaunted double turn at the end works so effectively. Hart is quick to take out one of Austin’s legs, so everything Austin does in response is out of desperation. He hits a Stunner mid-match, but he’s in so much pain that by the time he gets up and stumbles on his good leg, Hart is there to kick the bad one.
At this point, Bret Hart grabs a chair. In my favorite little detail of the match, he grabs a padded WrestleMania chair first, then discards it in favor of an unpadded one that looks like it’s been through hell. He goes to break Austin’s leg with a top rope move, but Austin gets up and whacks him with it. The crowd goes wild. You can see where this is going, emotionally, even if Bret’s daughter is crying in the front row. By the end of this match, she may be the only person in the Rosemont Horizon still cheering for the Hitman.
This match is famous for the way Austin bleeds. It’s gross. After the match the camera lingers on a particularly bloody spot in the ring and there’s enough there that, rather than soaking into the canvas, it pools on it. Twice, Vince McMahon makes notice of the blood in terms of how it’s at odds with the WWF’s usual presentation. It is, but listen to that crowd roar for Steve Austin, bleeding as their former hero Bret Hart goes in on him with punches straight to his cut, and you quickly understand why blood was so prevalent during the Attitude Era, and why Steve Austin was such a good bleeder.
When a good guy bleeds, it’s to engender sympathy. When a bad guy bleeds, it’s because he deserves it. You will notice that all of the blood in this match comes from Steve Austin. And Bret Hart, on the verge of turning heel and never looking back, sees that and decides to destroy Austin. Steve Austin isn’t being punished, he’s being made to endure. His endurance is appropriately brutal. Every Irish whip into something metal, Hart’s use of the chair to destroy Austin’s legs en route to the Sharpshooter, even the ring bell shot to get out of an Austin choke. No wrestler could withstand this. Any wrestler would give up.
Stone Cold Steve Austin is not “any wrestler.” He is the man in the WWF, even if he doesn’t get officially crowned until WrestleMania XIV. Like every era-defining wrestler over the course of WWE history, he gets there by doing the impossible. It’s not an obvious show of force, like beating a man who broke your neck or bodyslamming Andre — he just refuses to lose, to the extent that he nearly breaks the Sharpshooter through sheer force of will.
Leaking onto the mat, screaming in the face of Ken Shamrock, he gives the crowd, who have bitten on everything, one last show, then passes out. He loses, but Bret Hart does not get the satisfaction of hearing Steve Austin say that he quits. Nobody makes Steve Austin quit, no matter how far beyond the threshold of pain he is. He is vulnerable, yes, but he still has his pride.
The fans boo Bret, their longtime hero. They “Austin! Austin!” at a man whose run atop the world of professional wrestling begins with a baptism in blood. That chant is earned. It will follow Steve Austin for the rest of his life.