Ask 411 Wrestling: Why Did We Never See Hulk Hogan vs. Steve Austin?

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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Big Al is asking a dream question:

Why do you think that Stone Cold Steve Austin came back for a match with Kevin Owens when he could have came back for a match 18 years earlier and gone against someone like Hulk Hogan or CM Punk? I heard one that there was a program in the works for Austin and Hogan but neither of them wanted to lose. Was this true?

Fun fact: My legendary predecessor, Mr. Mathew Sforcina, actually answered a version of this question about the Hogan/Austin dream match almost ten years ago.

At the time, Massive Q referenced an interview with Austin by Jim Ross on his Ross Report podcast, in which Stone Cold said that the Hogan match never happened in the early 2000s because, at the time, Austin perceived that the Hulkster was not willing to lose to anybody, and Austin’s mentality was that you don’t do the honors for somebody who won’t reciprocate. He also was concerned about not being able to have a match with Hogan that was up to his standards for in-ring quality, as Hulk probably couldn’t have kept up with his style.

In the years since Sforcina answered this question, the involved parties have continued to be asked about the Hogan/Austin dream match, and the stock answer has been refined somewhat. On his Steve Austin Show podcast, Austin was asked the question again and focused much more on the match quality aspect of the answer than the “Hogan won’t do a job” aspect. Jim Ross gave almost an identical answer when he was asked about the clash of titans on his Grilling JR podcast.

For what it’s worth, Hogan was asked about why a match with Austin never happened on an episode of Peter Rosenberg’s show circa 2012. Hulk speculated that the Rattlesnake might harbor some personal animosity towards him but then said he wasn’t really sure if that was the case or why it would be the case. He then delivered perhaps the greatest and most hilarious Hulk Hogan lie of all time – and I’m not making this up – when he said about his time in WCW, “I always put over anybody they asked me to put over. I think most of my WCW run was doing jobs.”

Of course, Al also asks about the possibility of a CM Punk match. I think that one just comes down to timing. I suspect that Punk and Austin would have gelled just as well as Austin and Owens, but I can’t think of a time that Punk would’ve been available to WWE when Austin developed an interest in making a comeback.

Nate is great:

Was Doug Dellinger really the head of security for WCW back in the day, or was that just a work? If he was, he was terrible at his job. I lost count of how many times fans would jump the barricade on Nitro.

It was 100% legitimate. Dellinger was a police officer from Charlotte who, in the mid-1980s, decided to make some extra money by working security at wrestling shows run by Jim Crockett Promotions when he was off-duty. Over the years, he made connections to the point that he became head of security for WCW, which as we all know grew out of JCP.

I am also laughing a bit at the notion that, for some reason, WCW would as a work have this unremarkable looking middle aged dude on the payroll to just hang out in the crowd pretending to be their head of security.

Davros is trying to make me do the right thing:

Has The Undertaker ever been asked if the story of him taping up his fists in front of HBK at Mania 14 to scare him into dropping the title is true?

If so what did he say about it?

Yes, he discussed it when he was on Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions show. There wasn’t much to it, aside from verifying that the version of events that everybody has heard for years is true. (Don’t believe those dirt sheet reporters, though, they don’t ever know what they’re talking about.)

Gareth is getting things done:

Rewatching the Flair-McMahon Streetfight from Royal Rumble 2002 where Vince taps out to the figure four leglock had me wondering – has any other wrestler had a more ineffective finisher?

To clarify, Flair seemed to win most of his matches by pinfall thus negating the figure four as a finisher (the only other win I could remember off the top of my head was winning his second WWF title in ‘92) and I’ve always felt that a wrestler’s finishing move is the one they should win most of their matches by using – you’re the doyen of wrestling trivia so if anyone can answer this surely it’s you?

I feel like the figure four became really ineffective for Flair from the 1990s onward – particularly in high profile matches – but if you go back to his earlier career and account for low level bouts, it was more effective than the later memes gave it credit for. However, it is still a surprisingly ineffective finisher on the whole.

If I had to pick another move that could give Flair’s figure four a run for its money in terms of its ineffectiveness, I might pick Roddy Piper’s sleeper hold. I distinctly remember as a kid being told that this was Piper’s finish and saying, “Wait, it is?” because heel Piper almost never won anything clean, and the sleeper isn’t exactly a “cheat to win” sort of finish.

Ossie found a bag of mysterious white powder in the subway:

I’m wondering your take on the hate for Brutus Beefcake. I see a lot of “would be working in a gym if not for Hogan”, “glorified jobber”, “changed gimmick 50 times”, “doesn’t deserve to be in the HOF” etc………so? There are dozens of wrestlers who fit into each of those categories. Lanny Poffo probably only got signed anywhere because he was Macho’s brother. DDP was managing a nightclub and became a world champion. Steve Austin went from a Hollywood Blond to a Ringmaster to Stone Cold. And of course the trope about Koko in the HOF. Beefcake wasn’t the world’s greatest worker or talker, but very few are & nobody is actually claiming that he was. But it seems that people try to cancel a level of veneration that doesn’t actually exist. Why do you think Beefcake specifically gets such disrespect?

If I had to wager a guess, I would have to say that it’s because his association with Hogan was so enduring and so transparent.

It’s not just like the Hulkster just got Beefcake one job. It’s that they did practically everything together. They were in Continental together. They were in the AWA together. They were in the WWF together. They were in WCW together. They were in Mr. Nanny together. They were in Thunder in Paradise together. They were in Santa with Muscles together. They were in McCinsey’s Island together. They were in The Ultimate Weapon together. They were on Hogan’s Australia tour together. They were on Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling together.

That’s not to say Brutus Beefcake was a terrible wrestler. He was just as good as many others of the era, particularly per the standards of the WWF, and given his look he probably would have been able to get a job in that promotion in the 1980s whether he was tied with Hogan or not.

However, the fact that he followed Hogan for so closely for so long made him an easy target for ridicule as a hanger on, regardless of what his own level of talent was. Once he started getting mocked as a nepotism hire, it opened the floodgates to all the other criticisms that you’ve listed up above.

JM has declared this the Golden Age of Professional Wrestling

Over the past five or ten years WWE has been trying to get away from the more shall we say problematic elements of its on-air product (racist gimmicks, one-note female characters, homophobia etc.). This was a trend in media and corporate culture as a whole, but now that the government and much of the business community is swinging hard to the right on social issues, what do you think the chances are of WWE following suit?

No.

I think it’s an overstatement to say that “much of the business community is swinging hard right.” We are seeing some corporate reaction to the recent change in presidential administration, including Facebook canceling its independent fact checking program and companies undoing their DEI policies. However, it’s also not as though corporate America is throwing things back to the 1990s and the old “extreme” mentality with boobs, beer, and ultraviolence all over the place. There is still an acknowledgment in much of the entertainment industry that in order to gain as broad an audience as possible, you are going to have to maintain some level of political correctness even though you might not be actively promoting concepts like diversity as much as you once were.

Tyler from Winnipeg is making some . . . comparisons . . . that’s for sure:

Is Liv Morgan in the same tier as Trish Stratus?

No. Stratus was THE female performer in WWE for many years, the division’s top dog and a bona fide Hall of Famer. Morgan is just another woman on the roster.

Jonfw2 is taking us to the peak.

What is the Mt. Rushmore of great matches at horrible shows?

This one was was actually easier than I thought it would be, as these came to top of mind with little effort:

Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin, Wrestlemania XIII: Widely considered to be one of the best and most historically significant matches in the history of the WWF, and it’s on the same show as early babyface Rocky Maivia against the Sultan and the Undertaker versus Sid Vicious. This is the epitome of sifting through shit to find gold.

Chris Jericho vs. Juventud Guerrera, Road Wild 1998: This show featured a Stevie Ray singles match, the pro wrestling debut of Jay Leno, and STEVE MCMICHAEL VS. BRIAN ADAMS in a bout that I cannot imagine a single human being on the face of the earth thinking would be a good idea.

The Hardy Boys vs. MNM, WWE ECW December to Dismember: Matches on this show featured Balls Mahoney, Sylvester Terkay, Kevin the Vampire, Shelley Martinez, Kelly Kelly, and perhaps the least exciting Elimination Chamber in the history of the gimmick. The opener, however, was pretty darn good and justified at least tuning in for the first 30 minutes of the card.

Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon, Summerslam 1995: When the card for this show was being put together, it looked bad. Really bad. Thus, the planned bout between Michaels and Sid Vicious was scrapped and replaced with this, a rematch of one of the greatest matches in company history. It’s not as good as Wrestlemania X, but it gets the job done.

Keith is subject to change:

Egg-zack-Lee how bad was WCW’s Souled Out 2000?

What was the advertised card leading up to the day of the event and what was the final card once the final bell rang?

For those of you who don’t remember, Souled out was WCW’s January pay per view for several years, and the 2000 version of the show is infamous for being rebooked several times because it happened while the company was imploding.

Though I don’t believe this match was ever actually announced, it appeared that originally the direction the company was headed in was Bret Hart defending the WCW Championship against Goldberg in the main event, which was a rematch from Starrcade 1999. This bout was set up by Hart having turned heel on Goldberg on the Nitro after Starrcade as part of the formation of the nWo 2000 faction. However, Goldberg took himself out of commission in the infamous incident in which he punched through a limousine window on live television, severely injuring his arm. (Real glass? Cry my a river.)

This caused the match to be switched to Bret Hart vs. Sid Vicious for the championship. Also on the show, Chris Benoit and Jeff Jarrett were supposed to continue their feud by competing in “Triple Threat Theater,” essentially a best-of-three series of gimmick matches including a catch-as-catch can match, a bunkhouse match, and a Caged Heat match (WCW’s answer to Hell in a Cell).

However, Hart and Jarrett both wound up having to be pulled from the card. Most of you will know that the Hitman was off the show due to the post-concussion syndrome that he suffered as a result of the infamous stiff kick Goldberg gave him at Starrcade. It was to the point where his doctors told him he shouldn’t even fly to the show, let alone wrestle on it. Though this is less remembered, Jarrett also suffered a concussion that kept him from competing, as a result of taking a Superfly Splash from Jimmy Snuka (no, really).

The company wasn’t just dealing with injuries, though. Their creative team was also imploding. This was three months in to Vince Russo being brought in to be the head writer for WCW, alongside Ed Ferrara. There was a problem, though . . . and the problem was that these guys weren’t particularly good at their jobs. WCW brass was seeking to reshuffle the creative team, taking Russo out of the lead spot and putting him on a committee so that he could have a filter, similar to how things operated in the WWF (a fact that Russo apologists often forget).

This meant that Russo was considering taking his ball and going home. Meanwhile, it appeared that Kevin Sullivan – the booker during WCW’s most popular years – was going to be Russo’s replacement. This rankled people like Chris Benoit, who believed he was not treated fairly under Sullivan’s prior regime for obvious reasons. Many of Benoit’s friends also took up for him. There was simultaneously another faction of wrestlers who, though not averse to Sullivan, were upset because they liked Russo and felt he hadn’t been given a fair shake.

According to the January 24, 2000 Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which covered Souled Out and all the drama surrounding it, when Russo heard that Bret Hart was out of commission, he decided that the perfect thing to do would be to hold a Royal Rumble-style match on the pay per view (yes, in the same month as the real Rumble) and use it to crown a new WCW Champion, who would be . . . wait for it . . .

Tank Abbott

Of course, Abbott could barely wrestle, so this idea was not well-received. According to the Observer, there were also talks of trying to get Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, and/or Ric Flair back on the show, with Flair winning the vacant WCW Title being a real possibility at one point. None of that panned out.

Ultimately, Sullivan got the booking job.

In an attempt to appease two of the wrestlers who had protested the changes to the creative team, Bret Hart’s spot on the card against Sid Vicious was given to Chris Benoit, with Benoit and Vicious wrestling for the vacant WCW Championship. Meanwhile, the Triple Threat Theater concept was reworked to become a showcase for Billy Kidman, who rather than doing a best-of-three with one opponent would wrestle three matches against three members of the Revolution, who Kidman’s Filthy Animals stable had been feuding with.

(Revolution and the Animals had been set for a six man tag against each other on the original card, with one of the Revolution team being a new, surprise member. That surprise member still debuted as Kidman’s third opponent in Triple Threat Theater. It was the Wall, brother.)

So, those were the main changes. Hart/Vicious, Benoit/Jarrett, and Revolution/Filthy Animals were all scrapped and replaced by Benoit/Vicious and Kidman/Revolution. Plus, for reasons that appear to have been lost to time, what was supposed to be either a Vampiro versus David Flair or a Vampiro and a mystery partner versus Flair and Crowbar tag match was turned into a Vampiro/Flair/Crowbar match. Even more oddly, even though Wikipedia calls that bout a handicap math, all the contemporary reviews I’ve read in preparation for this column called it a triple threat.

Otherwise, the card went off largely as planned . . . except they added the Harris Twins vs. The Mamalukes at the last minute. You know, because that’s a match everybody was clamoring to see.

Keith also asked how bad the show was. The answer? It’s not particularly bad, really. It has a bad reputation because of all the backstage chaos surrounding it, and it was a box office bomb given how poorly it was promoted. However, in actual in-ring product – despite an infamous botch by Dean Malenko of all people – was more or less good. Heck, the main event is probably in the top three Sid matches ever.

And there you have it. The story of Souled Out 2000, kinda, sorta in time for its 25th anniversary.

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.