Travicity
12-23-2010, 03:16 PM
During the long running history of the WWF vs WCW war, and especially during the Monday Night Wars, a lot of people would cook up dream matches that sounded awesome, but we never seriously thought we'd see. There wasn't as much crossover in those days, so it was fun to sit around and talk about what would happen if Hogan wrestled Flair, the Undertaker wrestled Big Van Vader, Bret Hart wrestled Sting, and so on. But as both companies started throwing around huge contracts in the 90s, people started jumping ship a lot more than they used to, so a lot of those dream matches ended up happening after all. Once the war was over and WWE became the only place to work, most of the remaining dream matches happened when WWE started absorbing whatever WCW and ECW wrestlers hadn't already come to work for them.
There are very few dream matches left now, nearly 10 years after the end of the Monday Night Wars, and even fewer that ever had a chance of happening. But there are a few left that could have happened and never did for various reasons, and in the case of Stone Cold Steve Austin, injuries and politics prevented him from working several dream matches that I think, had the stars been aligned, could have done big business for WWE. With Austin's in-ring career coming to an end at a unique time when there were former WCW main eventers coming into the company, an array of future main eventers being brought up from developmental, and former stars coming out of retirement, it's sometimes staggering to think about what might have happened had Austin been able to wrestle for another year, or if the WWF had won the war a year earlier.
Under that premise, here are five Stone Cold Steve Austin dream matches that would have been awesome, but just weren't to be.
Hulk Hogan
Let's start with the obvious one by pitting the two biggest stars in wrestling history against each other. On the one side, you have Hulk Hogan: the man who became synonymous with the WWF and wrestling in general, transcended the business to become a household name, then later went to WCW and became (with all due respect to Bill Goldberg) their biggest star during the Monday Night Wars. On the other side, you have Steve Austin, who went from being buried and then fired from WCW after Hogan's arrival to becoming the biggest star in the WWF in the 90s and reportedly making far more money for Vince McMahon than Hogan ever did, albeit over a shorter period of time. The war ends, Vince McMahon buys WCW, and in early 2002, Hogan returns to the WWF. There was no doubt that Hogan was going to be headlining Wrestlemania 18, but Vince McMahon had a tough choice to make: would it be against Austin or the Rock? He chose the Rock in the end, and there went the one time Hogan vs Austin ever could have happened. Austin never forgave Hogan for what happened to him at WCW, and now that he was one of the very few people who was ever truly Hogan's equal in terms of star power and influence, he wasn't about to give Hogan a match that Hogan desperately wanted, and he sure as hell wasn't going to put Hogan over. Hogan didn't help his cause by going into business for himself and throwing the idea of a Hogan vs Austin Wrestlemania match out in public without talking to Austin first. That just served to piss Austin off even more and pretty much guarantee that it would never happen.
Bill Goldberg
To a lot of people, this was THE dream match of the Monday Night Wars, and one we never thought we'd see for obvious reasons. Turns out it never would, but there was about a two year window when it could have. Goldberg was available from the moment WCW went out of business if the WWF had chosen to buy out his contract, but they didn't and Goldberg, whose presence would have instantly given the WCW side a shot of credibility it desperately needed during the InVasion angle that followed the WCW buyout in 2001, didn't show up in WWE until a couple of years later. When he finally did sign with WWE, he made his first appearance on TV literally the day after Austin wrestled his last match at Wrestlemania 19. If Austin could have physically held up another year, or if Goldberg had come to WWE a year earlier, I have to think that we almost certainly would have seen the match happen. But we didn't.
Brock Lesnar
This one almost did happen. While they were strapping the rocket to Brock Lesnar in 2002 and launching him to the moon and a shot at the Rock's WWE Title at Summerslam 2002, Lesnar routinely squashed both Hardys by himself, won the King Of The Ring tournament, scored a clean win over Hulk Hogan, and was also penned in to beat Steve Austin on an episode of Raw. Unfortunately, Austin didn't want the match, not because he was against putting Lesnar over, but because he felt it had the potential to be a big money match that should be saved for a major PPV. Austin decided to go home and walked out on WWE for the second time in a matter of months and was buried by WWE as a result. Austin's career was basically over after that, and though he did briefly return to the ring at the beginning of 2003, his neck was so shot by that point that he pretty much just destroyed Eric Bischoff in a PPV match, put over the Rock at Wrestlemania 19, and called it a career. The closest we ever came to seeing these two in the ring with each other after that was when Austin refereed Lesnar's final match at Wrestlemania 20 and wished Lesnar luck in his football career by giving him a Stunner for the road.
Shawn Michaels
Okay, technically this match happened several times, most notably when Austin beat Shawn Michaels for the WWF Title at Wrestlemania 14 and sent him into semi-retirement. Shawn's back was in bad shape for that match, and the injuries forced him to completely miss out on being a part of the Attitude Era, a time when Austin was undeniably the king of the company. I've often wondered how the Attitude Era would have been different had Shawn been able to wrestle then, but it's all speculation because he was on the outside looking in aside from a handful of appearances as a Commissioner type figure. Though he did come out of retirement for one match on a show he promoted locally in Texas, he wouldn't return to the ring for WWE until Summerslam 2002, which just happened to be about two months after Austin took his ball and went home following the Lesnar debacle. Shawn's career would flourish, going on to win his fourth World Title, main event three more Wrestlemania, and participate in legendary feature matches in several others, but due to Austin's retirement, Shawn never got the chance to avenge the loss that sent him into exile in the first place.
Scott Steiner
Austin vs Goldberg may have been the top dream match of the Monday Night Wars from a star power standpoint, but I think Austin and Scott Steiner would have made for a much more entertaining match for several reasons. For starters, unlike Goldberg, Scott could talk and work and go longer than 10 minutes without putting the crowd to sleep. But beyond that, I think the nature of their characters would have made for a really interesting clash because, for as unpredictable, dangerous, and coldblooded as Steve Austin was, Scott Steiner was even more out of control in terms of his lack of respect for authority, foul language and verbal tirades, willingness to turn on anyone at the drop of a hat, and also just for the fact that he was a huge, massively muscular sociopath who carried around a lead pipe he had no problem using to cripple people. Steiner was suffering from a foot injury at the time WCW closed and he wouldn't have been able to get in the ring as part of the InVasion, and the truth is that by mid-2001, both guys had racked up enough injuries that the match wouldn't have been what it could have a few years earlier. Still, I think the promos alone would have been enough to make the feud interesting, as well as the brawls that happened outside the ring because some of Austin's most memorable moments occured in brawls backstage and in public places, and having these two constantly sneak attack the other would have been fun to watch. Plus, with Austin historically winning most of those extracurricular brawls, Steiner would have made the perfect foil as the one guy who was tougher than Austin and left him laying no matter what the situation, and I think that if built properly, this could have been a top match at Wrestlemania. Unfortunately, Austin was basically done in the ring by the time Steiner finally came to work for WWE in late 2002, and even though they did have some confrontations later on in 2003, a match between the two would never happen.
* * *
I know a lot of people don't like fantasy booking or just call it wishful thinking, but I feel like sometimes it's fun to think about what might have been had things worked out a little differently. In the case of these dream matches, I don't think anyone would have expected them to be classics from a workrate standpoint (which is my nice way of saying that most of these matches would have sucked), but all of them certainly would have drawn big money just on name value alone. Unfortunately, unless you matched them up in WWE video games, none of them were ever to be, which is a shame, but such is life.
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There are very few dream matches left now, nearly 10 years after the end of the Monday Night Wars, and even fewer that ever had a chance of happening. But there are a few left that could have happened and never did for various reasons, and in the case of Stone Cold Steve Austin, injuries and politics prevented him from working several dream matches that I think, had the stars been aligned, could have done big business for WWE. With Austin's in-ring career coming to an end at a unique time when there were former WCW main eventers coming into the company, an array of future main eventers being brought up from developmental, and former stars coming out of retirement, it's sometimes staggering to think about what might have happened had Austin been able to wrestle for another year, or if the WWF had won the war a year earlier.
Under that premise, here are five Stone Cold Steve Austin dream matches that would have been awesome, but just weren't to be.
Hulk Hogan
Let's start with the obvious one by pitting the two biggest stars in wrestling history against each other. On the one side, you have Hulk Hogan: the man who became synonymous with the WWF and wrestling in general, transcended the business to become a household name, then later went to WCW and became (with all due respect to Bill Goldberg) their biggest star during the Monday Night Wars. On the other side, you have Steve Austin, who went from being buried and then fired from WCW after Hogan's arrival to becoming the biggest star in the WWF in the 90s and reportedly making far more money for Vince McMahon than Hogan ever did, albeit over a shorter period of time. The war ends, Vince McMahon buys WCW, and in early 2002, Hogan returns to the WWF. There was no doubt that Hogan was going to be headlining Wrestlemania 18, but Vince McMahon had a tough choice to make: would it be against Austin or the Rock? He chose the Rock in the end, and there went the one time Hogan vs Austin ever could have happened. Austin never forgave Hogan for what happened to him at WCW, and now that he was one of the very few people who was ever truly Hogan's equal in terms of star power and influence, he wasn't about to give Hogan a match that Hogan desperately wanted, and he sure as hell wasn't going to put Hogan over. Hogan didn't help his cause by going into business for himself and throwing the idea of a Hogan vs Austin Wrestlemania match out in public without talking to Austin first. That just served to piss Austin off even more and pretty much guarantee that it would never happen.
Bill Goldberg
To a lot of people, this was THE dream match of the Monday Night Wars, and one we never thought we'd see for obvious reasons. Turns out it never would, but there was about a two year window when it could have. Goldberg was available from the moment WCW went out of business if the WWF had chosen to buy out his contract, but they didn't and Goldberg, whose presence would have instantly given the WCW side a shot of credibility it desperately needed during the InVasion angle that followed the WCW buyout in 2001, didn't show up in WWE until a couple of years later. When he finally did sign with WWE, he made his first appearance on TV literally the day after Austin wrestled his last match at Wrestlemania 19. If Austin could have physically held up another year, or if Goldberg had come to WWE a year earlier, I have to think that we almost certainly would have seen the match happen. But we didn't.
Brock Lesnar
This one almost did happen. While they were strapping the rocket to Brock Lesnar in 2002 and launching him to the moon and a shot at the Rock's WWE Title at Summerslam 2002, Lesnar routinely squashed both Hardys by himself, won the King Of The Ring tournament, scored a clean win over Hulk Hogan, and was also penned in to beat Steve Austin on an episode of Raw. Unfortunately, Austin didn't want the match, not because he was against putting Lesnar over, but because he felt it had the potential to be a big money match that should be saved for a major PPV. Austin decided to go home and walked out on WWE for the second time in a matter of months and was buried by WWE as a result. Austin's career was basically over after that, and though he did briefly return to the ring at the beginning of 2003, his neck was so shot by that point that he pretty much just destroyed Eric Bischoff in a PPV match, put over the Rock at Wrestlemania 19, and called it a career. The closest we ever came to seeing these two in the ring with each other after that was when Austin refereed Lesnar's final match at Wrestlemania 20 and wished Lesnar luck in his football career by giving him a Stunner for the road.
Shawn Michaels
Okay, technically this match happened several times, most notably when Austin beat Shawn Michaels for the WWF Title at Wrestlemania 14 and sent him into semi-retirement. Shawn's back was in bad shape for that match, and the injuries forced him to completely miss out on being a part of the Attitude Era, a time when Austin was undeniably the king of the company. I've often wondered how the Attitude Era would have been different had Shawn been able to wrestle then, but it's all speculation because he was on the outside looking in aside from a handful of appearances as a Commissioner type figure. Though he did come out of retirement for one match on a show he promoted locally in Texas, he wouldn't return to the ring for WWE until Summerslam 2002, which just happened to be about two months after Austin took his ball and went home following the Lesnar debacle. Shawn's career would flourish, going on to win his fourth World Title, main event three more Wrestlemania, and participate in legendary feature matches in several others, but due to Austin's retirement, Shawn never got the chance to avenge the loss that sent him into exile in the first place.
Scott Steiner
Austin vs Goldberg may have been the top dream match of the Monday Night Wars from a star power standpoint, but I think Austin and Scott Steiner would have made for a much more entertaining match for several reasons. For starters, unlike Goldberg, Scott could talk and work and go longer than 10 minutes without putting the crowd to sleep. But beyond that, I think the nature of their characters would have made for a really interesting clash because, for as unpredictable, dangerous, and coldblooded as Steve Austin was, Scott Steiner was even more out of control in terms of his lack of respect for authority, foul language and verbal tirades, willingness to turn on anyone at the drop of a hat, and also just for the fact that he was a huge, massively muscular sociopath who carried around a lead pipe he had no problem using to cripple people. Steiner was suffering from a foot injury at the time WCW closed and he wouldn't have been able to get in the ring as part of the InVasion, and the truth is that by mid-2001, both guys had racked up enough injuries that the match wouldn't have been what it could have a few years earlier. Still, I think the promos alone would have been enough to make the feud interesting, as well as the brawls that happened outside the ring because some of Austin's most memorable moments occured in brawls backstage and in public places, and having these two constantly sneak attack the other would have been fun to watch. Plus, with Austin historically winning most of those extracurricular brawls, Steiner would have made the perfect foil as the one guy who was tougher than Austin and left him laying no matter what the situation, and I think that if built properly, this could have been a top match at Wrestlemania. Unfortunately, Austin was basically done in the ring by the time Steiner finally came to work for WWE in late 2002, and even though they did have some confrontations later on in 2003, a match between the two would never happen.
* * *
I know a lot of people don't like fantasy booking or just call it wishful thinking, but I feel like sometimes it's fun to think about what might have been had things worked out a little differently. In the case of these dream matches, I don't think anyone would have expected them to be classics from a workrate standpoint (which is my nice way of saying that most of these matches would have sucked), but all of them certainly would have drawn big money just on name value alone. Unfortunately, unless you matched them up in WWE video games, none of them were ever to be, which is a shame, but such is life.
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