The Mad Scientist of Sports Entertainment Paul Heyman has posted his latest blog on The UK Sun, writing about a famous night in Philadelphia Pennsylvania when a promising professional wrestler named Steve Austin found that "Stone Cold" spark that separated him from everyone else who dreamed of being the biggest star in the wrestling business. Heyman, who worked as Austin's on-air manager in the now-defunct WCW organization owned by Ted Turner in 1991 and 1992, put aside his "Paul E. Dangerously" character when he became the creative force behind the original Extreme Championship Wrestling promotion.
Steve Austin with Paul E in WCW in November 1991 (Image UK Sun)
Heyman took that role from being a local Philadelphia cult favorite named "Eastern" Championship Wrestling to the Extreme global phenomenon that changed the entire wrestling or sports entertainment business.
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You can read the entire entry here and Heyman said that Austin "just needed that one chance, that one time, that one moment to be himself. No scripts from other people's screwed up vision of what he should be. No limitations. No preconceived notions of who he was, or what he was capable of. When he was given that very same chance to be himself just nine months later in WWE, when he was allowed to break free of the limited Ringmaster character and was given the freedom to explore the limitless potential of Stone Cold, Austin did it again."
Heyman described Austin's determination to be the number one performer in the entire wrestling business by relating a story about how when Austin was participating in his first night of ECW interview tapings, the man who would later coin the phrase "Austin 3:16 means I just whupped your ass" wanted to wait until everyone else had done their interviews before he would get in front of the camera and do his.
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"It's that desire, that competitive spirit, that insatiable craving to be number one, that propelled him above guys like Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, The Undertaker, and everyone else in the business to become recognized as the one star that Vince McMahon would bet his entire future on when WCW was mopping the floor with WWE," Heyman wrote about Austin, "On this September night in Philadelphia, Austin could not be distracted. He watched everyone's interview with an intensity that most people only reach during the height of a match. Austin wasn't just determined to do the best interview of the night, he was driven."
Austin, always near the top of WCW but never the top star, would go on in World Wrestling Entertainment to achieve the height the wrestling business as the unhinged "Stone Cold" character he found that night in Philadelphia.
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