During a recent episode of Something To Wrestle With, Bruce Prichard spoke on the thought process behind bringing Steve Austin to the WWE as The Ringmaster. Here’s what he had to say:
Probably the best thing that ever happened to Steve in his career if you were to ask him. He’d tell you he’d probably like to thank Eric Bischoff for making that decision and firing him at that time because it did get Steve off his ass and made Steve motivated to go somewhere else and do something else. No doubt about it, Austin always had it in him to be a top guy. If you were to ask pretty much anyone who had been in the ring with Steve Austin prior to this and anyone that had watched Steve from afar, there was a twinkle in Steve’s eye and you saw that there was no doubt that Steve had the ability to be not just a top guy but the top guy.
Steve coming in after the stuff he did in ECW and his personality got out, and I think for the underground folks that watched ECW at the time, it was like, ‘Holy shit, you’ve gotta see this’ because Steve was just freestyling on Eric Bischoff and WCW. It was a holy shit kind of deal. But Steve coming in as the Ringmaster, it was a wrestler’s gimmick is how we looked at it and looking for something a little different with Steve. But wanting to bring him in with his own championship right up with the Million Dollar Championship with DiBiase. Give him instant credibility, get him into the mix on top right away because we knew that once Steve got there, he would deliver. You didn’t need to have the normal build because you put him with a guy like DiBiase and it gave him instant credibility.
You can listen HERE.
Credit: Something To Wrestle With. H/T 411Mania.