Happy Birthday to the Austin 3:16 Promo, the Promo that Created Modern Wrestling
In Milwaukee, 25-years ago today, soon-to-be pro-wrestling icon Stone Cold Steve Austin defeated fading wrestling icon Jake “The Snake” Roberts in the final match of WWE’s King of the Ring tournament. It was a rubbish match, frankly, and it culminated in a tournament so unforgettable that I legitimately can’t remember any of the other matches even though I’ve watched what was about to happen next at least 100 times.
For the spoils of his victory, Stone Cold stepped to the velvet throne at the rear of the wrestler’s entrance aisle to deliver his coronation speech. What followed was not only the greatest promo in wrestling history, but a legitimate piece of pop art; an iconic cultural moment, and, in all seriousness, a foundation on which was built a multi-billion-dollar media industry.
It’s not just that this promo — an in-character interview meant to advance storylines, and after the wrestling itself the most important part of pro-wrestling’s theater — is near universally considered the best in the art form’s history, it’s also that it’s so easy to draw a straight line between Steve Austin’s promo and the very existence of modern pro-wrestling. It’s so easy I feel silly even drawing it out, but I’ll do it anyway: Without this promo there is no Austin 3:16; without Austin 3:16, there is no Attitude Era; without the Attitude Era, there is, probably, no more WWE; and without the WWE, there is no Duane Johnson or John Cena; no more WrestleMania; no more revolutionary WWE Network; no billion-dollar deals with Fox Sports, Peacock or ESPN; and on and on.
It’s clear just from watching the above video that this promo is a terrific piece of wrestling performance, one that’s made even more incredible when you find out that Steve Austin improvised the whole thing more-or-less on the spot after he had found out he was winning only a few hours earlier. But it might not be clear why exactly it’s so damn important if you’re not a diehard wrestling fan
So as I am wont to do, let’s go over the whole thing in excruciating detail!
(Also I’m switching to WWF, which was the name of the organization in 1996, from now on so I don’t go crazy.)
“The first thing I want to be done, is to get that piece of crap out of my ring!”
This first thing I want to draw attention to is Austin’s delivery, which is the most perfect marriage of voice and character in all of wrestling history (with the possible exception of the Macho Man Randy Savage). Austin’s Texas drawl is just the right bit of menace. It has all the edge of a Southern accent without the usually resultant loss of sophistication; he doesn’t sound like a “redneck” or a “hillbilly.” Austin’s vocal choice for his Stone Cold character — which was just a slight amplification and exaggeration of the performer’s normal speaking voice — went a long way to building the feeling of authenticity that would allow him to anchor the greatest boom period in wrestling history. The second thing I want to point out is how perfect Austin’s word choice is: The first thing I want to be done. He’s giving an order. Which makes perfect sense — he’s just been named king of the ring! He’s entitled to make decrees now, and he gets right to work. These seemingly minor decisions (a lesser performer may have just barked “get that piece of crap outta the ring!”) are what distinguished Austin from his peers.
“Don’t just get him outta the ring, get him out of the WWF! Because I proved, son, without a shadow of a doubt, you ain’t got what it takes anymore!”
Again, it’s the seemingly minor — the perfectly inserted addition of “son” in the second sentence — that makes all the difference here. This is Steve Austin, who six months prior wasn’t even in the WWF and thus was unknown to casual audiences, talking down to Jake “The Snake” Roberts, nine years Austin’s elder and a genuine, mainstream icon of WWF’s 1980s Golden Age. It was a statement of purpose that landed all the more effectively because it wasn’t some ostentatious brag about how much better Austin thought himself to be — that would have been common. It was a casual dismissal. Almost like an afterthought. It was, to use wrestling parlance, a “burial” of a beloved character in three little letters. It was also, crucially, 100 percent true; Jake Roberts didn’t have what it took anymore. In fact, he would be out of the WWF about 6 months later and battling the demons that would define his legacy for 15 years until he finally got help. This in-kayfabe (the word for wrestling’s presentation of fiction as reality) nod to dark truth, to what at the time was probably nothing but backstage rumor and worry, was shocking at the time, but would go on to be the norm in wrestling just a few years later. It all started with Stone Cold.
“You sit there and you thump your bible, and you say your prayers, and it didn’t get you anywhere. Talk about your psalms, talk about John 3:16…Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass!”
And here they are, the two sentences that saved WWE. A little backstory is necessary here for the non-initiated. In 1996, the WWF sucked. Though it had spent the previous decade becoming synonymous with wrestling to mainstream audiences (80’s WWF was to wrestling what Nintendo was to video games), the 90's had thus far been a different story. The well-publicized steroid scandal of the early 90’s; a general shift in consumer interest; and the swift rise of a new promotion, WCW; led to the WWF of 1996 being in the midst of what is widely considered its creative and economic nadir. WCW, which was run by media mogul Ted Turner, had swept up the best of the still marketable stars of WWF’s yesteryear, and were about to control the wrestling zeitgeist. The WWF has tried to rebrand under a family-friendly “New Generation” moniker, emphasizing its new wrestling talent and generally wholesome plots, but the strategy had mostly resulted in cartoonish characters and stale storylines. It was a losing path, and had the WWF kept on it, there is a decent chances they would have folded like so many of the wrestling promotions that had crumbled in the past.
Austin’s 1996 King of the Ring promo was the first real sign that things were about to change. (Notice the way the crowd pops after hearing the word “ass” — this was not a time when fans were used to hearing their heroes cuss.) Not only was Austin, by mocking a man’s faith, addressing much more mature subject matter than normal, he was beginning to blur the lines between reality and storyline during a time when kayfabe was very much respected. Jake Roberts the person really was a born-again Christian. He had credited his awakening with rescuing him from alcoholism, and the WWF had used Robert’s real-life faith and struggles with booze to create the wrestling personae of a bible-thumping figure of redemption.
And then Steve Austin crapped all over it.
The story goes that Austin was instructed to deliver a heel (bad guy) promo addressing Jake Robert’s religion by announcer Doc Hendrix (the other man in that picture/video up there) and this is where Austin took it. How long in advance Austin had to come up with his phrasing is unclear, but it seems at the absolute most time he had was the duration of the show, a show which included him wrestling two matches and taking a trip to the hospital for a legitimate injury he sustained. Whatever the backstory may be, the result is crystal clear: Austin coined the most famous wrestling tagline in history, and wrestling would soon become more popular than ever.
The line was shocking and more than a little offensive, but it also had an edge that had been desperately lacking on WWF programming for almost half-a-decade. And it was, not for nothing, cool as hell. Within literal days, the promotion was selling the iconic black-and-white “Austin 3:16" t-shirt, and for years after this event — decades even — you couldn’t watch a WWF show without seeing the catchphrase in some form speckled about the crowd. It was reported that in 1998 alone, the WWF sold 12 million Austin 3:16 shirts. At a time when business was as its worst, Austin made himself a bankable megastar in an instant.
“All he’s gotta do is go buy him a cheap bottle of Thunderbird and try to dig back some of that courage he had in his prime.”
If Austin insulting a man’s faith was shocking at the time, this line remains shocking even today. Again, Jake Roberts really was an alcoholic, and while younger fans knew this as part of his WWF-created persona, Austin’s intimation here is clearly different.
Within a couple years of this promo, the WWF would shift away from its derided New Generation branding and into its iconic Attitude Era. (Indeed, many people would include this promo as the era’s moment.) The branding would signal the WWF’s shift away from family-friendly TV to adult-oriented, overly sexualized and overly violent programming. Austin was the era’s centerpiece. And after he tore down the upspoken barrier that blocked performers from airing each other’s real-life dirty laundry in public, the WWF decided to follow in his steps. In short order, the WWF regularly featured storylines that would include topics such as occultism, gang violence, incest, necrophilia and suicide, not to mention rampant, juvenile sexualization of its female performers and a never-ending parade of racial stereotypes. It was shocking and disgusting, but it was also the most successful run in the history of professional wrestling. Less than 6 years after Austin’s promo kicked off a new attitude, the WWF had put its competition out of business and was once again the only promotion that mattered.
“As the king Of the ring, I’m serving notice to every one of the WWF superstars — I don’t give a damn what they are — they’re all on the list, and that’s Stone Cold’s list, and I’m fixing to start running through all of ’em. And as far as this championship match is considered, son, I don’t give a damn if it’s Davey Boy Smith or Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin’s time is come, and when I get that shot you’re looking at the next WWF Champion. And that’s the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so!”
The last section of the promo veers a little closer to standard fare wrestling speech, albeit it with Stone Cold’s pitch-perfect delivery that puts almost every other wrestler ever to shame. There’s still some fun little curios to discover and discuss however.
I love how he says “I don’t give a damn what they are” instead of “who” they are. While this is probably just a misspeak, it’s still a funny nod to the fact that, at the time, WWF wrestlers were defined by what they were more then who they were. This was an era in which wrestlers had occupation gimmicks — there was a garbage man, a race car driver, a rock star, a hockey enforcer, a dentist, several hog farmers, a tax collector, a plumber, a monk and on and on. Austin probably just slipped up, but it worked anyway.
Also the last line — “and that’s the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so!” — became a catchphrase phenomenon in its own right, as it punctuated his promos for years to come, usually with the fans singing along. The crowd-interaction that Steve Austin popularized and perfected is another component that came to define the Attitude Era and lead to its staggering success.
While it’s certainly possible, likely even, that some other performer would have carried wrestling through its fallow period and transformed it into the global entity it is today, it’s equally possible that that person would have worked for a company other then the WWE, thus changing the course of wrestling’s history. (I have a hard time believing, for example, that Duane Johnson and his boundless charisma wouldn’t have become famous in some fashion or another with or without King of the Ring 1996.)
25 years ago today, Steve Austin delivered an off-the-cuff 70-second speech in Milwaukee, and a cultural phenomenon and billion-dollar entertainment industry was born. No matter what your opinion of pro wrestling as an art-form is — and certainly you are entitled to think of it as trash, if that's what you’d like — that’s pretty cool, and worthy of our attention.
