When people think about the moment they became fans of Stone Cold Steve Austin, about the magic moment that locked them in for the ride that would come with his rise to the top of professional wrestling they typically point o Wrestlemania 13.
It was Wrestlemania 13 that saw Austin enter the ring with Bret “The Hitman” Hart in a submission match.
Anyone who knows even a little about Hart knows that when it comes to submissions, there are precious few who are (or were) his equal. So of course it was a given that he was going to walk away the victor.
And he did, but Austin still came out the unofficial winner of that match. It was that match that gave us one of the very first iconic images of Stone Cold Steve Austin.
While Hart did manage to lock the Sharpshooter, bloodied Austin refused to tap out. Actually, that’s not really an adequate enough description. An Austin who’d been busted wide open, face relaying excruciating pain to the audience, a seemingly endless supply of blood running down his face and pooling on the canvas below.
The match ended only when Austin’s character succumbed to the pain of the Sharpshooter and passed out. That visual of a bloodied, pained Austin refusing to give in has been a standard for the character ever since.
While it is one of my favorite moments for the character, that’s not the one that sealed his toughness for me. My moment of “ok, this guy is legit” would come months later at SummerSlam 1997 when, once again, Austin would find himself in excruciating pain, only this time it would be for real.
At SummerSlam 1997, Austin faced another Hart: Bret’s brother Owen. This match was for the Intercontinental Title and, like pretty much every single Owen Hart match, it was a solid one.
However, rewatching it you get the sense for the first half of the match that it wasn’t really anything that was destined to go down in the history books. It was solid, not stellar.
Then it happens. Hart lifts Austin up off the mat, turns him upside down, places his head between his knees and drops a tombstone pile driver. I remember the first time I saw this match live on pay-per-view feeling a sense of sick rush through me. Owen botched the spot and Austin landed directly on his head and hard. A move that is sold as deadly by commentators actually turned deadly that night in 1997.
When Austin hits the mat, everyone knows something is wrong. How can they not? Austin goes limp, the commentary team starts audibly asking about his health with little to no drama and Hart looks to the referee then to the crowd then to ringside officials then back to Austin. By the time Austin starts to move, every one is just happy he’s not paralyzed.
However, his movements are sluggish, directionless. You get the impression he’s just trying to make himself move to let himself know he still can move. Eventually, he musters enough strength to quickly end the match (in a very sloppy pin, he emerges the victor) and is carried form the ring with the help of a team of referees.
In case it’s not clear, yes, Stone Cold Steve Austin had legitimately had his neck broken and still managed to finish a professional wrestling match.
I was 18-years-old when I saw that match and I immediately knew that the whole tough-as-nails-SOB character Austin was portraying was actually a part of who he was. His matches, his feuds and his backstage antics may be scripted, but the tough part clearly was not. I had just watched a guy break his neck and still Austin finished match. Some of the guys I was watching with decried the ending.
They felt it made the cardinal wrestling sin of looking too fake. “You could tell Owen just let him get the pin,” one guy said. I quickly pointed out that the scripted ending wasn’t the important part of the story.
No, the important part of the story was that Stone Cold Steve Austin had proven himself once again to be the toughest SOB in the WWF, and maybe even in real life as well.
