By Lenny Lowballs ( Lenny_Lowballs@hotmail.com ) 
9th June 1999

This is the third installment in the "Most Over-rated Wrestling Personalities" Series. The victim: Steve Austin. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin is the most popular wrestler in the business today. Hell, Steve Austin is the most popular wrestler in the history of sports entertainment. He is also the most overrated.

Each week on RAW when the fans hear the shattering of glass they go absolutely apeshit.

For what? For "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. For a bald man who drinks beer and uses profanity. Fuck.

Holy shit, I had a shaved head for a few years, I enjoy beer, and I am prone to the occasional curse. Let’s give me a couple of lame catchphrases to use and abuse and splash my image all over the place. I want my own Lenny 3:16 t-shirt. I want to run around bastardizing biblical phrases like I’m the next fucking messiah.

The amazing thing about the Austin phenomenon is that the fucking fans don’t realize that he sucks. Has he broken any new ground in the past year and a half? Give me a "Hell No". He is as annoying as a broken fucking record stuck playing "Mandy" by Barry Mannilo. Except we don’t have the option of using an off switch (or a shotgun) to make him shut the hell up.

Perhaps I’m being a little harsh. After all, he did drive a zamboni machine, a beer truck, and a monster truck -- drunk. What a role model: a foul-mouthed alcoholic. It’s nice to see that we live in a society where it is acceptable for kids in grammar school to carry lunch boxes with Steve Austin’s mug splattered on them to school and threaten to open a can of whoop ass on their teachers. I’m tempted to write a letter to Mothers Against Drunk Driving to send a bunch of rabid M.A.D.D. women after him.

His matches are now painful to watch. I remember before the fans all hopped on the fucking Stone Cold bandwagon, the man actually displayed talent. He used to use more that four moves during his matches. He busted his ass. Now that he’s the company’s top wrestler, he looks completely disinterested in his matches. Some may argue that he still has the same intensity during his matches as he ever did. These jackasses are wrong, and should probably lay off the crack pipe for a while. When was the last time you saw him do more than brawl for most of his match, use the Lou Thez Press, punch his opponent for a while, then finish him off with the Stone Cold Stunner? Sorry, I have also seen Austin closeline his opponents. He’s a real technician.

I mean, you have to be in trouble when you have to rely on your 54 year-old boss to carry you through a match and then put you over.

Maybe his shitty ring presence has something to do with having his neck broken by a real wrestler, the late, great Owen Hart (rest in peace, Owen). The highlight of Austin’s career came when Owen paralyzed his sorry ass. Instead of being a good company man and jobbing to the lousy cripple, Owen should have stomped the shit out of him and learned him some manners, Canadian-style.

Even his post-match celebrations, which were admittedly funny for a while, are beginning to wear thin after we have seen the same thing week in and week out for over a year. Wow, he can pour six cans of beer over his chest and ever-expanding belly. How cute, he likes to share with Earl Hebner. The best thing old Earl ever did was help fuck Bret Hart over. Scratch that, the best thing Earl Hebner ever did was have a fucking brain aneurysm.

It’s a good thing that Bischoff fired Austin over the phone while he was injured (now that is funny), so he could come to the WWF. Vince McMahon is a genius. He turned a redneck shithead from Pisswater, Texas, who would normally be cashing his welfare checks to pay for cheap liquor, into the biggest draw in the history of wrestling. It really is a heartwarming "from rags to riches" tale. It’s just a damn shame that Austin quit working when he reached the top.