Twenty years ago, the World Wrestling Federation held their annual King Of The Ring tournament, to crown a new King Of The Ring and elevate a fresh new piece of talent to the WWF stratosphere. The guy they had in mind… ended up not being on the card at all due to some backstage shenanigans, so they slotted in some other dude.
And that guy won the tournament and cut a promo that would live on in infamy… except, not really.
Nowadays, WWF King Of The Ring 1996 was the event where Austin 3:16 was born. In fact, it’s probably the only thing that this show is known for, considering the rest of the show was not very good. But Austin 3:16 was a barnburner from the word go. Stone Cold Steve Austin did not get the rocket strapped onto him as WWE lore would have you believe. The crowd did not immediately show up with 3:16 signs everywhere. Austin didn’t even get a match at Summerslam that year; he was relegated to the pre-show in a nothing match against the massive Yokozuna during the former WWF Champion’s waning years. It seems like another prospective superstar was going to fall by the wayside due to WWF neglect until one man came in and handpicked Austin as the guy he’d elevate to the next level.
Needless to say, there’s a lot to be said about Bret Hart’s final year in WWF, but his feud with Stone Cold was the highlight of the deal. It gave Austin a platform to further his character and people took notice. Months after that promo was cut, he finally got a T-shirt; a simple Austin 3:16 up front and a smoking skull on the back. Nice, simple, effective piece of work that went on to outsell every other shirt the WWF had in stock. If that didn’t raise Stone Cold’s stock going forward, then I don’t know what did.
As much as WWE would like to convince you otherwise these days, Austin 3:16 was not the trendsetting picking up of the business that they want you to believe it was. It’s not even one of Austin’s better promos if we’re being all that honest here. It made for a hell of a T-shirt, though… that wouldn’t come along until months later, but when it did… oh boy, WWF finally had something to rival nWo shirts everywhere. And I can tell that as a kid in high school, there were a lot more 3:16 shirts than there ever was nWo shirts ’round my neck of the woods. I even knew what a Stone Cold Stunner was before I dove into wrestling fandom in ’98… even if the kid who brought it up kept calling it a “Stone Stunner” for some reason.
Anyway, those are my words.
Happy birthday, Austin 3:16.
You’re getting older.
Oh, and for those curious, I did a PPV Musings on the show in question last year if you want to read it by clicking here. Not the greatest work, though. Maybe some day, we’ll do a redo or something.
dtm666 