With those immortal words, spoken by the legendary pro wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin after winning the King of the Ring tournament on 23 June 1996, a momentous wrestling career was about to unfold before our eyes that would see everyone’s favourite beer-swigging, finger-gesturing anti-hero become not just an industry icon but a mainstream icon as well. Here’s to yah, Steve!
The Date: 31 May 1998
The Venue: Wisconsin Center Arena; Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The Commentary: Jim “J.R.” Ross and Jerry “The King” Lawler
The Referee: Vince McMahon (guest)
The Stakes: Initially a main event match for the WWF Championship with Pat Patterson as the guest ring announcer and Gerald Brisco as the guest timekeeper wherein Austin loses the belt if he touches McMahon, later altered to a no disqualification, falls count anywhere match
The Build-Up:
Any wrestling fan worth their salt will be fully aware of the ratings war between the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW), which became must-watch television thanks to one of the greatest feuds of the WWF’s “Attitude Era”: the rivalry between abrasive anti-hero “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and WWF Chairman Vince McMahon. After the infamous “Montreal Screwjob”, Bret “The Hitman” Hart left the WWF and McMahon’s evil “Mr. McMahon” character clashed with Austin, who had captured the WWF Championship at WrestleMania XIV and refused to conform to McMahon’s vision for the company. After wrapping up his first feud with the Undertaker, the sadistic Mankind debuted a new, carefree persona, Dude Love, with whom Austin briefly held the WWF Tag Team Championships before Dude randomly attacked both Austin and McMahon on weekly TV. This led to McMahon forcing the two to face each other for the WWF Championship at Unforgiven: In Your House, but Dude Love came up short thanks to Austin getting himself disqualified. McMahon punished Dude Love by forcing him to fight his long-time friend and mentor, Terry Funk (who was operating under the “Chainsaw Charlie” gimmick), wherein Dude Love dismantled his friend and forged an alliance with the WWF Chairman in order to curry favour with the boss and capture the elusive championship. McMahon further stacked the deck by not only installing his stooges, Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco, at ringside but also by naming himself the special guest referee in a bid to get the belt off his hated rival.
The Match:
I became a wrestling fan at the end of the nineties, pretty much in the year 1999. Around then, my friends and I were playing the games on Nintendo 64 and PlayStation, and I would occasionally catch the odd episode or segment whenever I was at the house of my one friend with a Sky subscription. All this is to say that I came in at around the time of the Cactus Jack/Triple H feud and that, as much as my friend being a big Mick Foley fan, was enough to make Foley one of my favourite wrestlers at the time. As the years passed and I got my hands on more WWF content, I marvelled at his early matches in Japan and his bizarre promos as Mankind and his later Hell in a Cell antics, but it was his character work that really won me over and, to this day, I can’t help but watch the “Three Faces of Foley” segment from 1997 without chuckling. However, Dude Love is probably my least favourite of Foley’s three personas, simply because I enjoy his more extreme and surreal antics, but it’s definitely one of the most complex and peculiar since this is the façade he adopted to try and get in McMahon’s good graces, and which McMahon happily manipulated simply to try and get the WWF Championship off Steve Austin. Much of this is expressed at the start of this match, where Pat Patterson spent a couple of minutes bigging up both McMahon and Dude Love as they entered the ring and Foley (blue blazer and all) happily shook hands with the boss and his stooges, although their jovial mood was immediately soured right before the match started as the Undertaker came down to ringside to level the playing field.
Austin and Dude Love kicked things off with a bit of a tie-up and Austin immediately showed the boss exactly what he thought of him by flipping him off after McMahon physically separated the two. Dude Love won the second tie-up and scored a two count off a clunky-looking shoulder block, which raised Austin’s ire as he accused the WWF Chairman of counting too fast on the pinfall. Austin and Dude Love tangled again and again the Dudester got the upper hand with a knee to the gut and a series of side headlock takedowns that earned him a couple of one counts, before Austin knocked him down with a back elbow and gave him a taste of his own medicine with a ground headlock of own. Austin brought Dude Love to his knees off an awkward Irish whip exchange and knocked Foley’s false teeth out; Austin then crushed them under his heel, but this distraction was enough for Foley to start beating on the champion in the corner. Austin exploded back into action with his patented Lou Thesz Press and then sent Dude Love tumbling over the top rope and to the outside with a clothesline, however Foley quickly regained the upper hand by tossing Austin into the steel steps at ringside. After rolling back into the ring, Austin fell victim to a Russian leg sweep, kicked out at two, and then found himself being choked and even chewed on in the ring corner! Despite Dude Love’s tenacity, Austin continued to kick out and even countered an Irish whip into a neckbreaker, which finally allowed him to build some momentum with a series of clotheslines. Austin even tied Foley up in the ring ropes after countering his signature nerve hold, the Mandible Claw (or should I say the “Love Handle”?) When the two resumed brawling around the announce tables, J.R. just about blew a gasket when Patterson announced that McMahon had changed the rules from a simple one-on-one contest to a no disqualification bout so that Dude Love could choke Austin with a piece of cable.
However, as much as Mick Foley thrived in a no disqualification environment, this stipulation also greatly favoured Austin; he launched Dude Love into the timekeeper’s table and hammered on his forehead with closed fists, bashed his head off the steel barricade, and then clotheslined him into the braying crowd. Back in the ring, Austin choked Dude Love on the bottom ropes but missed his trademark running rope knee attack, which allowed Foley to kick him to the outside with a baseball slide and then deliver a neckbreaker on the entrance ramp. Sensing the tide turning in favour of his flunky, McMahon frantically had Patterson announce that the match was falls count anywhere and dove in to count the pin, only for Austin to twice kick out at two. Austin answered back with another clothesline, kicking off a brawl around the cars dotted around the entrance ramp; Austin was launched into a windshield and had his head bashed off a car hood, but returned the favour with a flapjack into another car for a couple of close two counts. Austin then forced Dude Love onto a car roof and ended up taking a nasty tumble to the floor before Foley performed a sunset flip (which had to hurt him more as his tailbone bounced right on the concrete) for another near fall. Dude Love’s attempts to assault Austin with a metal pipe were thwarted by another flurry of punches from the champion, though Foley was able to counter a piledriver attempt into a back body drop. With Austin down and bloody from the challenger’s assault, Dude Love clambered onto a car and went for a diving elbow but ate nothing but concrete when the champion rolled out of harm’s way (though Foley was still able to get his shoulder up off the pin fall).
Austin battered Dude Love back into the ring, where Patterson tripped Austin off an Irish whip, allowing Dude Love to get back in control and further split open Austin’s head wound by driving him head-first into the exposed steel ring bolt. Defenceless, Austin was easy prey for Dude’s stomps and patented running knee strike in the corner; Austin tried valiantly to rally against Foley’s assault but ate two more shots into the exposed bolt. However, when the champion still kicked out, McMahon ordered Patterson to hand the challenger a steel chair and Dude Love wasted no time putting it to good use, driving it into Austin’s gut, cracking him across the spine, and then planting him head-first into the chair with his signature Double-Arm DDT. Incredibly, inexplicably, Austin still kicked out; he then booted the steel chair back into Foley’s face, grabbed it for himself, accidentally smacked himself in the face with it, and then damn near caved Foley’s skull in with a massive shot to the head! However, McMahon refused to make the count, enraging the Texas Rattlesnake, who barely kept himself from lashing out at his hated enemy. He did get a measure of revenge, however, when he dodged Dude Love’s sneak attack, resulting in McMahon getting brained by a chair shot, but this backfired on him as there was no one to make the count when Austin nailed Dude Love with a Stone Cold Stunner! Referee Mike Chioda tried to step in but he got taken out by Patterson; when the stooges tried to interject their own officiating to count a pin fall off the Mandible Claw, the Undertaker finally stepped in and sent Patterson and Briscoe crashing through the announce tables with a couple of chokeslams! Dude Love tried to reapply the Mandible Claw but ate another Stunner; Austin then made the cover and grabbed McMahon’s lifeless hand to count the pin fall, thereby awarding himself the match. The crowd were very happy with this ending, and on their feet for most of the match, but it was a bit overbooked and plodding at times; I don’t know if Foley was wrestling hurt (but it’s a safe bet he probably was) or if it was just his purposely subdued in-ring style as Dude Love but he seemed a bit ungainly and a step or two behind here. The brawling out by the cars was quite fun, but it does bug me when a falls count anywhere match ends in the ring like normal and I think Austin was booked a little too strongly here as he kicked out of so much stuff, like hitting the ring bolts and being walloped by a steel chair, when the story of him overcoming the odds was strong enough, I think.
The Aftermath:
This would be Dude Love’s last shot at the WWF Championship; the very next night on Raw is War, Austin pivoted into a feud with Kane, who defeated his brother, the Undertaker, to become the number one contender and McMahon’s newest weapon in his war against the champion. Austin’s rivalry with Kane quickly escalated, with the Big Red Machine showcasing supernatural powers and even vowing to set himself on fire if he lost his first-blood championship match at the King of the Ring. Since this presented quite the quandary as the WWF overdelivered on the stipulation for this match, Kane would defeat Austin for the WWF Championship only to stupidly drop the belt back to Austin the very next night! Dude Love was disgraced by his loss here and reverted back to his Mankind persona, now sporting a dishevelled corporate appearance that would become his most iconic look. He rekindled his feud with the Undertaker, which resulted in their infamous Hell in a Cell match at that same King of the Ring. This match would cement Foley as a hardcore icon, facilitating not only him becoming a beloved babyface but also another shot at the main event, where he was far more successful in realising his championship dreams in bouts against the Rock. Although the Over the Edge branding returned the following year, Over the Edge 1998 would be the last time the WWF used the In Your House moniker for over twenty years, though the Over the Edge pay-per-view itself would be discontinued after the tragic events of the 1999 event.
My Rating:
Pretty Good
What did you think to the bout between Steve Austin and Dude Love at Over the Edge: In Your House? Which of Foley’s personas is your favourite? What did you think to the brawling and the innovative ending? How are you celebrating 3:16 Day this year, what are some of your favourite matches and moments from Austin’s illustrious career? What dream match would you have liked to see him involved in? Whatever your thoughts, share them below or drop a comment on my social media to let me know what you think about “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and check out my other wrestling content across the site!
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