Stone Cold Steve Austin is Still WWE Royal Rumble’s Greatest Star

Even after all these years, no other Royal Rumble winner can hold a candle to Stone Cold Steve Austin.

There has yet to be a Rumble winner of a greater magnitude than ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. In terms of drawing power, popularity, and influence on the wrestling business, the only other Rumble winner that might hold a candle to him would be Hulk Hogan. But Hogan was already a huge star before the Rumble was even created, whereas Austin became the shining example of what the Rumble winner should be.

To this day, Austin remains the only person to win three Royal Rumbles, and each one had its own impact on his career. The first one proved he can be a big star. The second one allowed him to reach the top of the mountain. Then, the third win showed that he still had it, in spite of all he had been through between his second and third.

In 1997, Austin was still a hated heel whose rise to superstardom was still a ways off. He was a good worker but still hadn’t reached the top. He needed a feud with a top guy with whom he could have a career-defining match. WWE chose the right person for the job in Bret Hart, against whom Austin had one of his greatest feuds.

Austin’s 1997 Royal Rumble win was done to further that feud. He had already been eliminated from the Rumble match, but snuck back in to eliminate Hart. Since the referees hadn’t seen his earlier elimination, he was declared the winner. The controversy led to Austin’s first PPV main event, a test to see if he could draw. The test was a success, as the crowd was more interested in Austin than anyone else in that match.

In response, WWE booked a classic move for WrestleMania: a rare double-turn, where Austin would become the good guy and Hart would become a heel. It was a risky move, but Austin had momentum behind him from his Rumble win.

Furthermore, the audience, in general, was shifting further away from prototypical good guys and more towards antiheroes, of which Austin was one. Austin was becoming a beloved antihero who was in step with the cultural shift at the time, which led to one of his most famous matches ever.

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Austin and Hart had a spectacular, show-stealing match at WrestleMania XIII, which led to a famous image. Austin, his head covered in blood, was locked in the Sharpshooter but refused to give up. He kept holding on until he passed out, and the audience began supporting him in the process. His antihero tactics, coupled with his unyielding will to win, won him over with the audience, who had a more realistic and relatable hero to believe in. As a result, Austin became the new top guy in WWE.

But getting to the top was easier than staying there. Austin had proved that he could draw, but he still wasn’t champion. Sure, he had a true 5-star classic against Bret Hart, but could he sustain that popularity?

A year later, he proved that yes, he could.

With WWE’s main event in something of a vacuum following Bret Hart’s departure, WWE needed someone to fill the void. They had the perfect babyface/antihero in Steve Austin, but a real nemesis was needed. Shawn Michaels was chosen initially to fill that void, but he suffered a debilitating back injury at the Rumble PPV, which would eventually sideline him for four years. Austin was in dire need of a monumental villain against whom he could wage war, and that person was chosen: Mr. McMahon himself.

Capitalizing on the genuine anger many fans had over the Montreal Screwjob, Mr. McMahon became the perfect enemy for Austin. The corrupt, egomaniacal boss who’d abuse his power and money to get whatever he wanted was the ideal villain for the anti-establishment, beer-drinking redneck Austin had become.

The 1998 Rumble served as the additional launching pad for Austin’s main event career. By winning this match a second time (this time as a babyface), Austin was guaranteed a WWE Championship opportunity at WrestleMania XIV. The feud was amplified even further by involving Mike Tyson and Vince trying to screw Austin over at any given opportunity.

Yet no matter how many times they tried, the powers-that-be could not deter Steve Austin. The momentum he had from both his 1997 and 1998 Rumble wins was too much for them to overcome. Austin won at WrestleMania XIV and ushered in the Austin Era, the most profitable period in WWE history.

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Austin would hold that top spot in WWE until the end of 1999, before returning at Backlash 2000. The storyline for his departure was an angle involving Austin being run down by a car. The truth, however, was that Austin was in desperate need of neck surgery, and the rehabilitation took months.

When Austin returned, the landscape of WWE had changed. Triple H had become the top heel in WWE, and the Rock had effectively replaced him as top babyface in the company. Austin and the Rock were polar opposites in some ways, the most obvious of which was their promo style.

Austin was a no-nonsense smack-talker that preferred to let his actions do the talking. Rock, meanwhile, had mastered cutting promos like no one else in history, and could make up insults on the spot. Sure, his promos were funny, but even the most comedic line could also be a scathing insult.

Austin needed to prove he still had what it took to overcome the odds and carry the WWE. He did this by winning the 2001 Royal Rumble, which was in itself a big challenge. Not only did Austin have to deal with being ambushed and bloodied by Triple H, but he also had to deal with a stacked list of opponents, including the Rock, his perpetual rival, and Kane, who had dominated the entire Rumble match prior to Austin’s arrival.

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Yet no matter what was thrown at him, no matter how much the odds were stacked against him, no matter how much the audience cheered for the Rock and Kane, they cheered for Austin more.

And when he won, the place went absolutely nuts.

Austin had managed to remain consistently popular despite being more or less the same character for roughly three full years. Yet no matter what he did, he still got enormous reactions from the audience. He was a bona fide megastar, an immortal character that would survive the test of time.

No other superstar has managed to draw such an enormous reaction from their Rumble victories. There have been a few that came close, but none that surpassed Austin. The victories of Chris Benoit and Rey Mysterio tugged at your heart strings as beautiful stories of true underdogs overcoming unbelievable odds. Hulk Hogan and Shawn Michaels both won twice, due in part to their immense popularity. The Rock was one of the biggest stars in 2000. John Cena eclipsed Austin in terms of decoration and championship accomplishments in WWE.

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Yet despite all of that, Austin’s Rumble wins were far more impactful than any of these men. The Royal Rumble served as a critical moment in Austin’s career on three separate occasions. Each time it won, it led to something bigger and more rewarding for WWE, its fans, and for Austin himself. No other WWE superstar past or present can make that claim.