In 1997, WWF released a compilation VHS tape focused on their fastest rising star at the time, Stone Cold Steve Austin. And the first thing you notice about the thing is the cover.
Now granted, there’s the re-release that came out in a white cover and had the Stone Cold skull graphic that you’d see on the back of those Austin 3:16 shirts. And there was a European release that had a stock photo of Austin that’s like… eh, whatever.
But no, I’m talking about the original VHS cover from which the banner above is constructed from. Slick black case with nothing but that iconic shot of Stone Cold from Wrestlemania 13 in grayscale and only the crimson mask shown in color. It was a stark contrast to the usually loud and colorful WWF home video releases that looked absolutely dreadful. And then you had this come along and it looked totally different… and that also translated into the main program itself.
Hosted by Stone Cold Steve Austin himself and done completely in character, ‘Cause Stone Cold Says So covers everything from Austin’s run at the 1996 King Of The Ring tournament that he would win and give birth to Austin 3:16, include a variety of humorous clips – including some rare footage from his ECW days during a time when WWF rarely (if ever) acknowledged the existence of other wrestling promotions, much less show footage from said foreign bodies – covering his two matches with Bret Hart at Survivor Series 96 and the aforementioned Wrestlemania, showing his performance at the 1997 Royal Rumble, covering Austin’s first challenge for the WWF title against Undertaker at the Cold Day In Hell In Your House PPV event, and wrapping things up with his match against Shawn Michaels at the 97 King Of The Ring. And there’s bits of narration from Austin himself that show off that wit. His commentary over his Royal Rumble clip show is a particular highlight of the tape.
People tend to remember the beer-swiggin’, ass-kicking, What?-spewing Texas Rattlesnake that he is today, but Stone Cold circa late-96 to early-1997 is probably my favorite version of the character. Not yet the crowd pleaser that he’d evolve into, this Austin was much colder and more stinging in his promos, showing off an edge to the character that was eventually softened once he fully embraced his more fan favorite alignment. Honestly, some of my favorite Stone Cold bits are featured in this era and thankfully featured on this tape, such as Stone Cold bickering with two cops – going so far as to direct them to the nearest Dunkin Donuts, his Livewire appearance, his beating of Brian Pillman that coined the phrase “Pillmanizing,” and yes, we even got Stone Cold killing the clown at the Slammy Awards.
When this saw a re-release in 1998 (presumably for those who missed out on the original tape, which was a limited time mail order deal), they changed the cover to the white Stone Cold skull thing, but apparently, the content remained the same… though not having seen that version myself, I can’t really comment. They did release a couple other VHS tapes over the years, but those were just clips with some narration from Michael Cole or Jim Ross… and maybe a couple talking heads here and there. Nothing you can’t find on a DVD release down the road.
This tape is hard to come across these days and although it has seen a number of re-releases on DVD over the years, that version is heavily censored compared to the original release, which scored a rare TV-M rating. You could probably find an upload of this on the Internet Archives if you look hard enough and I would suggest for anyone who is a fan of Stone Cold to give this tape a watch. Sure, a lot of this footage can be found elsewhere and in higher quality, but you will never find a more perfect representation of early Stone Cold than this tape. The whole production comes across as top notch and is one of the rare wins for the WWF during a time when they really needed it.
Oh, and stay for the end credits, which are all wonderful. I particularly like the credit for Hair Stylist. If you know, you know. And if not, go watch this tape.
And that’s the bottom line.
