When talking about the guys that really shaped the industry in its history, it's easy to highlight the big names. Buddy Rodgers and Bruno Sammartino laid the groundwork to turn the WWWF, a viable, important regional promotion, into the juggnaut WWF, the national promotion that changed the way the game was played forever. Without Hulk Hogan, it's arguable that wrestling would never have become as big as it did. Without a guy like Ric Flair, the regions might have completely died in the interim period between the WWF's emergence and the formation of WCW by Turner Networks.
Since then, who has been the guy? It can be argued that with the death and rebirth of mainstream professional wrestling, the individual has been phased out and groups of people (nWo) or ideas and booking styles ("Attitude"/Crash TV) took center stage. To use a football analogy, it's like arguing that a team can insert any player into a certain system and still get the same results.
To think like that, however, would be to sell short some of the magnificent personalities in the era, to sell them very short in my opinion. Much like previous eras, the current span in wrestling history has been shaped by personalities, by actual wrestlers. You could make a case for a handful of them, but to me, it comes down to a debate between two men.
"Stone Cold" Steve Austin.
The Rock.
Oddly enough, that's the final matchup in the A1 Cup Tournament, a kayfabe-styled, poll-based tourney pitting 256 former and current World Champions, US/IC level Champions and Hall of Famers against each other in single-elimination, March Madness-style. There could have been better matchups than this, but I think for a board where most of the fans skew younger and have the glory days of 1997 through 2001 in their minds mixed with the right proportions of freshness and nostalgia, it was expected and, in my mind, deserving.
Once you get down to the final two, that's where the debate begins. Who was more influential? Who was more important? Who made a bigger impact? Austin came first, and actually, his rise began way back in the early part of the decade in WCW, where he was teamed up with future rival Brian Pillman. This third incarnation of the Hollywood Blondes team showed flashes of the star power that both men had in them before they split up. Post breakup, Austin held the US Championship, but got injured and was fired by Eric Bischoff. Bischoff claimed that he didn't think Austin was all that marketable. I bet he kicked himself several times since then.
After a stint in ECW, Austin debuted in the WWF with the failed Ringmaster gimmick before hitting gold as the Texas Rattlesnake. Let's see, the gimmick foisted on a talented wrestler by a generally uncreative "creative" department failed, whereas playing himself got him INSANELY OVER with the crowd? Where have we seen that before... hmmm.
Aaanyway, Austin's influence on wrestling was the popularization of the "cool heel" styled face and the shift in demographic focus from children to young adults. After adopting the Stone Cold persona, Austin acted like a classic heel would. He disrespected authority, cursed, flouted religion and generally played by his own rules. He was the kind of guy that parents didn't want their children to have any part of, but he connected so much with rebellious teenagers and, in his feud with Vince McMahon, young guys whose biggest non-sexual fantasy in life was to kick the boss' ass that it was natural he was over as a crowd-favorite so much. Austin set the new face archetype so emphatically that even today, guys like Triple H and John Cena are still doing things that would have made 1988 Hulk Hogan cringe to get cheers from the crowd.
Austin's biggest drawbacks were his relatively short active time in the peak of his career. It wasn't exactly his fault; the piledriver is a dangerous move to execute safely. Neither Austin nor Owen Hart can really be blamed for the botch, but it's a sad reality. Another thing that wasn't exactly Austin's fault but should at least be mentioned is the proliferation of "wrestler vs. authority" storylines after the success of his feud with McMahon. Again, that is more lazy writing and the tendency for companies to repeat storylines that worked like it was a dead horse to beat.
Let's look at The Rock now. Like Austin, he had a huge fanbase, drew a ton of money for the WWF and was saddled with a shitty gimmick at the start of his career, only getting over after he was... YOU GUESSED IT, allowed to be himself. Unlike Austin, Rock's mainstream pro career was contained within the confines of the WWF from beginning to end. Whereas Austin revolutionized a character archetype, Rocky revolutionzed the way promos were cut and interviews were conducted.
Pre-Rock, it really wasn't in vogue for faces to be snarky, sarcastic, wry or to debase other wrestlers. That was heel territory. However, once Rocky came to the forefront, he was too witty, too funny and too charismatic to be booed by most fans. Sure, he was far easier to turn heel because he could effectively make a crowd hate him through things he'd say, but everyone respected him for his animal charisma. He made it okay for faces to be sarcastic. Hell, it's the reason why Chris Jericho has to be all serious business and cynical to get a heel reaction, because if he were doing what he'd been doing all along in his career, he'd get cheers, no matter whom he was facing. And hell, arguably the biggest star in wrestling today, John Cena, almost blatantly does a Rocky impersonation sometimes, when he's not all serious.
Also like Austin, Rock's career was shortened. Again, unlike Austin, his career was shortened by choice rather than by circumstance. Then again, if you had the choice between working 200 days a year and taking bumps like a madman at a good but not spectacular (by celebrity standards, that is), or working a relaxed schedule and letting stuntment take all the lumps at a much higher salary per film... well, what would you choose? Exactly.
So after thinking about the cases for both guys, who's the better choice? Today, I say it's Austin by a hair. Ask me tomorrow, and the answer might be different. Both guys were so instrumental in getting the WWE ahead in the Monday Night Wars, changing the landscape of wrestling in general and defining roles for future stars in the business. At the end of the debate, you can only say one thing with any certainty.
Wrestling would a lot more fun right now if both guys were still around, healthy, active and putting on great spectacles for all of us wrestling fans.
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