Kevin Nash says Steve Austin got over who he was rather than what he did in the ring, and that the same thing is happening to Danhausen now.
The subject came up on Kliq This after Fightful Select reported that at least three NFL teams have inquired about partnerships with Danhausen, potentially including live stadium appearances. The report, citing a WWE source, said the response to his New York Knicks merchandise has been unlike anything the company has seen from a wrestler, and that Fanatics is expected to run an NFL crossover with him. The Knicks won their first NBA title in 53 years after Danhausen uncursed them.
Co-host Sean Oliver noted the deal would be going to a wrestler for no work rate and nothing off the top of a cage. Nash took it somewhere else.
“Don’t you think that Austin’s persona was more just a kick-ass beer-drinking guy that don’t take s*** from his boss, over the fact of whether or not he had great matches?” Nash said.
He called Austin the perfect man for the spot and said the 316 sign doing the rounds at other sports was the same phenomenon.
Then he made a point about what gets forgotten.
“People don’t realize how great a worker Steve was back when he was just Stunning Steve,” Nash said. “Doing the hip toss, arm drag, arm bar, get it again, drop toe. Southern style wrestling.”
Nash said Austin paid for it with his body, and he agreed, pointing to where that work was happening.
“He’d drop a knee from the top of a cage, and Shane Douglas would move and make the tag to Steamboat; in these B towns we were running in places like Tifton, Georgia, in front of 400 people,” he said. “The Hollywood Blonds versus Steamboat, and the semi-main event was Vinnie Vegas versus Van Hammer, for your enjoyment.”
Nash worked as Vinnie Vegas in WCW in that period, before becoming Diesel in the WWF.
The comparison has a gap, which is the part Nash is reaching for rather than stating. Austin spent most of a decade working those buildings as Stunning Steve and then as half of the Hollywood Blonds with Brian Pillman, held the WCW United States and Television Championships, and was cut anyway. The character that made him did not arrive until the King of the Ring promo in 1996, by which point the in-ring work was already banked, and his neck was already going.
Danhausen’s route has been the opposite. He built the character first on the independents and then in Ring of Honor and AEW, and crossover attention arrived without a decade of B towns underneath it. Nash argues that both end up in the same place, because the wider audience buys the person rather than the match.
The Knicks merchandise is the evidence. A wrestling character selling through Fanatics on the back of an NBA championship, with NFL teams now asking about stadium appearances, isn’t something a work-rate argument explains.
Nash is also describing a card he was on. Vinnie Vegas against Van Hammer in the semi-main event, under the Hollywood Blonds against Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas, is a WCW house show bill from 1993, and the two men on it who became the biggest draws had the strongest characters rather than the strongest matches.
Danhausen has been with AEW since 2022 and has been used sparingly on television, with much of his profile built through social media, merchandise, and outside appearances rather than through matches. Nash’s point about Austin is that the people who remember the Stunning Steve run are a small proportion of the people who bought the shirts.
