{"id":319792,"date":"2026-04-16T23:16:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T17:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/?p=319792"},"modified":"2026-04-16T23:16:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T17:46:31","slug":"what-if-steve-austin-hadnt-turned-heel-at-wwe-wrestlemania-x-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/2026\/04\/16\/what-if-steve-austin-hadnt-turned-heel-at-wwe-wrestlemania-x-7\/","title":{"rendered":"What If Steve Austin Hadn’t Turned Heel At WWE WrestleMania X-7?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n<\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n WWE<\/span>\n <\/div>\n
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25 years ago, hell froze over as “Stone Cold” Steve Austin sold out to turn into WWE Champion against The Rock at WrestleMania, aligning with Vince McMahon and forsaking his role as the corporate’s top babyface just as The Rock went off to start his Hollywood profession in “The Scorpion King.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin had until that time made a profession out of being the one to face against McMahon; he was the blue-collar working man’s champion who literally and figuratively flipped the bird to those that believed they may own him, and was revered as wrestling’s biggest star consequently. So to completely undermine all of that with a purpose to beat a person he had beaten several times before \u2014 it didn’t necessarily go down with fans the best way it was intended.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin himself looks back on the move as a mistake, wishing he could have just called an audible and turned on McMahon after winning the title. And given the recent memory of John Cena’s failed heel turn, it’s perhaps a testament to leaving things as they work best, a cautionary tale on what to not do with the corporate’s top babyface.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What left is just a regret over what might have been if the course had been stayed, and 25 years later, on the heels of yet one more ill-fated uber babyface-to-heel turn, Wrestling Inc. peers into what might have been at WrestleMania X-Seven. What if Steve Austin didn’t turn heel that night?\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Continuation of the Austin-McMahon saga<\/h2>\n
\n\"Steve
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So, the story leading up until WrestleMania saw McMahon assign Austin’s wife, Debra, as The Rock’s manager. After which the bout was made a no disqualification match, which allowed McMahon to run roughshod.\u00a0It was here that McMahon stopped the Rock from winning the match and helped Austin keep the champion down for the count after several chair shots. After the match, Austin shook hands with McMahon to seal the alignment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin then went on to have Triple H align with him to put in writing Rock off and form the Two-Man Power Trip, becoming a temperamental prima donna with a powerful need for McMahon’s approval. None of that needed to occur, and Austin could have easily just beaten Rock clean for the title and stuck it to McMahon over again, with Triple H then sliding into the villainous role opposite him; he could still write the Rock off TV, but achieve this while cementing his role as challenger fairly than an ally to Austin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sure, it will remove a couple of comedic segments from the canon. But perhaps that is no great loss when the thought of a McMahon-backed Triple H chasing Austin stands out more. The Two-Man Power Trip wound up falling to the wayside anyway after Triple H sustained legitimate torn quadriceps in a tag title match with Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho, with Austin forced to chop ties together with his injured teammate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking beyond Triple H, there was also an expansive roster of worthy challengers that might have been uplifted by chasing Austin. And on the very least, it also would not have led to a different ill-fated booking decision further undermining the Austin character.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Leading Team WWE against the Alliance<\/h2>\n
\n\"Steve
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Because the WCW acquisition got here, so too did the very rushed and hole Invasion angle pitting an Alliance of WCW and ECW invaders against the gatekeepers of WWE.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin had been entering into his heel character within the months leading as much as it, but within the face of the invasion McMahon had been calling upon the person that had been fawning for his affection to embrace the Austin of old \u2014 the old “Stone Cold.” Austin relented eventually, slapping all the Alliance members with stunners and leading Team WWE into the Invasion pay-per-view.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, and only then, did he decide to stick it to McMahon and switch heel again, joining the team representing the corporate that had unceremoniously fired him while injured in 1995, believing him to be unmarketable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, the good thing about hindsight is a bonus, nevertheless it would surely have been higher for the other to occur; Austin must have aligned with McMahon only when the longer term of the corporate that had given him space to grow into who he was had come under threat. Austin eventually wound up pinned by the Rock at Survivor Series 2001, spelling an end to the Invasion angle, and McMahon tried to strip him of the title.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ric Flair returned as a storyline co-owner of WWE, aligning with Austin to assist him keep the title and turning Austin face over again against McMahon. After which Austin lost the title to Chris Jericho on his option to unifying it with the WCW World Heavyweight Championship that was held by the Rock on the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It just feels as if the trail of least resistance in all the aforementioned would have been to keep up Austin as the highest babyface in the corporate. The truth is, every part of significance that did occur during his time as heel likely would have made lots more sense if he had stayed a face.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/article><\/div>\n

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WWE 25 years ago, hell froze over as “Stone Cold” Steve Austin sold out to turn into WWE Champion against The Rock at WrestleMania, aligning with Vince McMahon and forsaking his role as the corporate’s top babyface just as The Rock went off to start his Hollywood profession in “The Scorpion King.”\u00a0 Austin had until […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":319793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21056],"tags":[8366,45891,25186,2390,10947,9418,6221],"class_list":["post-319792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wwe-and-more","tag-austin","tag-hadnt","tag-heel","tag-steve","tag-turned","tag-wrestlemania","tag-wwe"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319792"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319795,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319792\/revisions\/319795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}