Ask 411 Wrestling: How Many Austin 3:16 T-Shirts Were Sold?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 . . . the last surviving weekly column on 411 Wrestling.

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Barney is allowed to carry a gun, but he has to keep the bullet in his pocket:

Reading a recent column, and you mentioned the ‘work for hire” clause in most employment contracts – saying that your boss would own anything you come up with on the job.

Austin 3:16 has probably got to be one of the best selling t-shirts of all time. It’s still regularly in the top ten. Obviously, that just came from Austin cutting a promo and went stratospheric.

How much money do you think WWE made from the sales? Would Austin always get a cut of it? If he decided to, say, sign with AEW and WWE cut all ties, would they then keep all of the money from that merch? Or would they just stop selling it?

In 2013, Steve Austin was a guest on Colt Cabana’s “Art of Wrestling” podcast, and at that time he said that the number of Austin 3:16 t-shirts that had been sold was in the eight figures. In other words, we are talking about tens of millions of shirts.

If I remember correctly, the going rate for a WWF shirt in the late 1990s was $25.00, so if you moved a minimum of 10,000,000 units, that’s a gross of $250,000,000. (Yes, they’re probably selling them for less money in some foreign markets, but they probably also sold quite a few more than the minimum eight-figure number of ten mil, so it all evens out.)

Yes, Austin almost certainly gets a cut. Wrestlers getting a percentage of their merchandise – particularly top guys – has been a pretty standard practice for many years now.

Whether Austin would still get his cut if he ended his affiliation with WWE would depend on exactly the nature of the contractual relationship that he has with them. Did he agree for a cut in perpetuity, or was it only so long as he had some sort of licensing deal with them? Either is possible, technically. As to the amount of any cut, for whatever this is worth, Kurt Angle claimed on an episode of his own podcast that Austin once told him that, in just one year, he made $12 million off the 3:16 shirt.

And it does appear that WWE could continue making the shirts without Austin. If you got to the US Patent and Trademark Office database and run a search, all the Austin 3:16 trademarks are owned by WWE themselves as opposed to being in some sort of co-ownership.

Without realizing it, Tyler from Winnipeg has a great follow-up to our last question:

Did you have an Austin 3:16 t-shirt?

I did not. I did have a t-shirt that commemorated Steve Austin’s appearance on MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch, which featured a large image of the claymation Austin ripping a skeleton out of a hapless opponent’s body.

It was a gift from a family member who knew I liked wrestling but didn’t understand much more about my interest. I never really wore the shirt outside of the house because I found it a bit cringey.

Acadeca wonders about the best laid plans:

Will this scenario ever occur: Fans become tired of Babyface Cody Rhodes (similar to AEW), and start booing him. However, Cody never turns heel. Though Cena turned heel, he will still get cheered as this is what fans haven been asking since day 1, and wanting to hit 17. Going into WrestleMania, it could be similar to John Cena vs RVD One Night Stand, but with the roles reversed? It would be funny for the old die-hards to chant: “Let’s go Cena!” and for the kids to chant: “Cena sucks!”

I think the odds of that are pretty low, because the vibe I’m getting from the crowd is that they haven’t tired of Cody yet in a way that would cause them to turn on him. He’s managed to still be their guy.

If something like this were going to happen, I don’t envision it being before Wrestlemania. I envision it being similar to the Hulk Hogan/Rock dynamic at Wrestlemania XVIII in which fans more or less treated Rocky like the babyface in the buildup to the match but nostalgia ruled on the evening of the event and the crowd flipped.

Chad wants to flip the script:

A common complaint among pro wrestling fans is that the format of the television shows are still stuck in the late 1990s. However, do you think there is anything they can really do to change things for the better?

I had a similar question to this in the not too distant past, and, yes, I definitely think that there are different ways to format a wrestling show.

One of the easiest tweaks to make would be the “what is old is new again” approach. We don’t need to focus on general managers seemingly making the show up as it goes along. We can present this like a legitimate athletic competition with only sporadic pop-ins from commissioners and the like, similar to what we saw in pro wrestling prior to 1997.

The other thing that I’ve thought about and written about in the pages of this column before is a format of a wrestling show that takes the setup of angles outside of the arena in which the matches are happening. Film segments that are similar to what you might see in a reality series or the 2/47 and All Access programs that have aired around the time of major boxing and MMA matches. Would you sacrifice live wrestling for that? Yeah, you probably would. Does it matter that much? Probably not. Ratings-wise, taped wrestling hasn’t historically done that much worse than live wrestling.

Jaimoe is trying to grow his mustache into his sideburns:

How would WWE programming be different if Triple H never needed to stop wrestling? Would he have been the final boss before the current Final Boss?

I think that’s absolutely correct, and furthermore I think that it would be the best thing for business. There could be money in one or two Triple H matches per year, similar to the role that the Undertaker was in during the last several years of his in-ring career.

Frankly, I don’t totally count it out as a possibility down the road, either. Wrestlers have a long history of getting into the ring despite medical conditions that should probably prevent them from doing so, particularly when there is some sort of desperation in the business.

Build up a major heel, give him the heart punch as a finisher, and, boom, you’ve got the potential for some high drama in HHH’s last bout.

BA knows sometimes bygones should not be bygones:

Who are the top 10 wrestlers you’d want in a shoot fight against the AWA Boombox guy? I refuse to use his name.

I’ll translate for BA here. He’s referring to noted piece of shit Buck Zumhofe, who was convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting his young daughter for over a decade.

That said, the names are (assuming all men are in their physical primes):

10. New Jack (After telling him Zumhofe is Vic Grimes’ cousin)
9. Akira Maeda (Experience shooting and not afraid to fight dirty)
8. Stan Hansen (We saw what he did to Vader)
7. Bad News Brown (Olympic level judoka)
6. The Barbarian (The second toughest Tongan on this list)
5. & 4. Both Steiner Brothers (There won’t be any questions when you get Steiner-ized)
3. Kurt Angle (Capable of physically dismantling a man piece by piece)
2. Brock Lesnar (Many of the same skills as Angle but with extra raw power)
1. Haku (Was there any doubt?)

Nate has low tolerance for your bullshit:

I realize “X-Pac Heat” is fans wanting you to go away. However, what was it known as before Sean Waltman was in the industry?

I’d heard it referred to as “go away heat” indicating that the fans were booing a wrestler because they just want him to go away or, beginning in the 90s when TV ratings were more important to wrestling, “change the channel heat.”

Jonfw2 is shuffling a deck of cards:

With the matches that have been confirmed or heavily rumored, what would be your SATURDAY main event? It seems unlikely to me that they’d have each men’s title match as the nightly headliners.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a “Saturday main event.”

Wrestlemania is one event, and for the most part fans aren’t tuning in to just one night or buying a ticket to just one night.

By definition, the main event is the primary attraction that draws fans to watch a wrestling show. With the two nights of Wrestlemania being consumed as one package, there is typically only going to be one main event, i.e. only one match that is the primary draw.

At present, it seems that Cody Rhodes vs. John Cena is the main attraction for the weekend, so that’s your main event for the whole of Wrestlemania.

Ignacio was once profiled on an episode of WWE Confidential:

For years, Lex Luger has been a wrestler who deserves a Hall of Fame nomination, but several people pointed that it wouldn’t be happening since he was involved in Miss Elizabeth’s death. A few weeks ago, during an interview with CVV, he took the responsability. Days later, WWE announced Luger as the new Hall of Fame inductee. There is any chance the “confession” was a condition given by WWE for his induction? I mean, taking respontability to avoid bad publicity.

No, I don’t think that’s the case, because Luger has been taking responsibility for his role in Elizabeth’s death for years – as he should.

Matt B. is ready to explode:

Who are some of the least pushed wrestlers that managed to get pyro entrances? Have you ever heard of any estimates of what a pyro entrance costs?

I’ve never been able to find good numbers on WWE pyro costs. They do have to release their financials as a publicly traded company, but those figures are not broken down in enough detail to come up with the firework budget.

As to the first part of the question, the wrestler whose pyro always left me scratching my head was Aldo Montoya. He was never anything more than a glorified job guy, but the WWF still invested money in giving him a custom pyro rig for his entrance, which made it look like there were a couple of fiery pinwheels over his shoulders when he hit the ring.

Dan is scaling the cliff face:

Who would be on your all time TNA Mount Rushmore where it came to talent who didn’t come from WWE?

AJ Styles
Samoa Joe
Christopher Daniels
Bobby Roode

The first three were no-brainers, but I actually had to go back and forth quite a bit to determine who would go into the fourth slot. In addition to Roode, I considered Eric Young and the Motor City Machine Guns as a unit. However, I ultimately went with Roode because he is the guy who seemingly went on to have the most success outside of TNA (though technically the story of MCMG is still being written.)

Another Ryan thinks I’m Miss Manners or something:

I remember an interview Tiffany Stratton did where she acknowledged her finisher, the Prettiest Moonsault Ever, was based on Christopher Daniels’ Best Moonsault Ever, but she never specifically said if she got his permission to use It or even asked. So, what’s the unwritten rule there? And are certain moves, powerbomb, DDT, piledriver, super kick, so common that anyone can use them?

Generally speaking, it seems that a request for permission to use a move really only comes into play when two wrestlers are affiliated with the same promotion at the same time. After all, AJ Styles didn’t ask Michelle McCool for permission when he stole her Faithbreaker and started calling it the Styles Clash.

Adam sent this email from a Turkish prison:

How would you rank the various iterations of the Midnight Express?

5. Bob Holly and Bart Gunn (Not bad wrestlers or a bad team, per se, but they weren’t given anything to do and thus didn’t live up to the name.)

4. Dennis Condrey and Randy Rose (This would be the “Original Midnight Express” iteration managed by Paul Heyman. They weren’t around long enough to be ranked much higher.)

3. Dennis Condrey, Norvell Austin, and Randy Rose (Admittedly, this is a bit out of my wheelhouse, but the consensus seems to be we probably wouldn’t remember this if the name wasn’t used for better teams later.)

2. Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condrey (Excellent but a notch below the top.)

1. Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane (Honestly, you could switch #1 and #2 and I wouldn’t be offended in the slightest. I may be biased because this is the version from my youth.)

Redmondthe2nd smiles at inappropriate times:

I always thought Paul London had it all and was one of wrestling’s big what-ifs. He had a decent push in the cruiserweight division and in the team with Kendrick, but I really thought he could have been a top guy, if not for the office’s perception of him. Your thoughts? Or what say you to a young Paul London being on the scene today? Would he have a higher ceiling?

I think London went about as far as he was going to go in the WWE of that era. Vince McMahon was still in charge, and Vince McMahon was still hung up on the size of his wrestlers. Just look at the difficulty he had allowing Rey Misterio to be becoming as a credible world champion, and Rey is perhaps one of the greatest performers of all time, with ten times the connection to audiences that London ever had.

I do think that he would have a higher ceiling if he came in today, particularly in a promotion like AEW in which things like physique and having a goofy gimmick aren’t really impediments to being booked in the main event.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.