Vince McMahon held a meeting at Titan Towers where he proposed killing the Stone Cold Steve Austin character and reverting him to something closer to the Ringmaster gimmick before Austin reached his peak, former WWE creative director David Sahadi revealed on Busted Open Radio.
Sahadi said the meeting took place as fans were beginning to embrace Austin’s anti-authority persona. McMahon wanted to turn him back into a character “wearing powder blue shorts” with “stubbly hair,” essentially undoing everything that was connecting with the audience.
“Stone Cold is starting to come on the ascension, and the fans are cheering him,” Sahadi said. “Vince said, ‘Give the fans the finger, they’ll hate you.’ And no, they gave the finger back. It’s like their way of saying, ‘We love this guy.’ And who wouldn’t love Stone Cold? This blue collar guy that drinks beer and can tell his boss to flip off.”
Sahadi said when McMahon proposed the change, the room went silent. “I said nothing because I was in shock,” Sahadi said. “Nobody spoke. It was just silence. And people are thinking, ‘This is a really bad idea.'”
Sahadi credited Kevin Dunn with being the one to speak up and push back. “To Kevin Dunn’s credit, because I do take a shot at him toward the end of the book, to Kevin Dunn’s credit, he said, ‘Vince, the crowd is loving this. Let’s just let the crowd take us where they want us to go. Let’s not try to force something on them,'” Sahadi said.
Sahadi said Austin had not yet delivered the iconic “Austin 3:16” line at the time of the meeting but it was right around that period. He noted that he heard the line was given to Austin by Michael Hayes, though he was not present for it and could not confirm that firsthand.
“That Stone Cold character nearly was killed before it reached its apex,” Sahadi said. “Where would the Attitude Era have been without Stone Cold Steve Austin?”
Sahadi’s new book, Backstage Pass: Tales from Beyond the Squared Circle, is available now on Amazon.
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