I decided to throw an update in here because, well, the essay was written back in 2000, over a year ago. And I wanted to throw in my two cents on how I currently feel about "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. So sit back and here it goes.

 

It's now December of 2001 and over a year since I decided to can the "Against Austin" site. There were various reasons I canned it, like my growing smark/smart-dom, which made me look at wrestling in a whole different light, and the fact that the site looked very markish, in a bad way. And I summed up my feelings for Steve as a "love-hate" thing, which still applies today.

I mentioned that I might mark out when he returned oh so long ago from his surgery- I did. Now, it wasn't major marking but I was happy to see him back.

In this past year or so, Steve has run the gamut from face to heel to singing hug-machine to being downright evil. He's been one of the most despised to the most popular. And he's reclaimed his position as one of the top performers in what is left of professional wrestling. With that, he's adapted his style from monotonus catch-phrase spewer to one pretty funny fella who actually uses original dialogue in his promos. I admire the fact he realized you can't get by on only repeated phrases to get the crowd behind you; there has to be something said to really rile them up, too.

After this little lovefest, does it mean he's one of my favorites? Nope, but I don't hate him either. I can't hate him with the same fervor that I did a few years ago. Right now, he's a tweener for me; I think he's pretty cool at times but for some reason, he doesn't possess enough of the "it" factor to make me really, really dig him and earn my undying fandom. But I do have a major respect thing going for him, based on his career and the obstacles he's overcome in it. He may not be a saint by any means (none of the boys are- and that includes Undie), but whether some like it or not, he's a pretty important person in late 20th century wrestling. And the whole shift in the late 90's to the WWF being a hellish popular entity can be attributed to him.

Now onto another aspect I originally disliked about him- the fans he attracted back in the day. That fact doesn't really bother me now because wrestling's going into its bust period, understandable because it's always been cyclical. But it can be argued that Vince and his egomaniac ways helped it there due to poor booking choices. And the fans in the audience, who used to be 99% pro-Austin now have gravitated towards other boys out there, like Rock, Jericho, HHH, and Taker.