by Byron Vester

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Hey people, wassup? As you may or may not know, I am your Friday news guy and resident Steve Austin mark, Byron Vester. So, when I heard about his turning himself in yesterday, I figured I’d go ahead and knock out the DVD review of his latest video to both remember how great he was before this disastrous 2002 and to make myself feel better. So, if the review rules or sucks, just hit me up on e-mail(link at bottom) and let me know since this is pretty much a new thing for me.

Now, for what you’ve all been waiting for…


SmartMarks DVD Review- WWE: Stone Cold Steve Austin- What?

Approximate running time: 2 hours and 20 minutes


MAIN FEATURE:


Chapter 1: The Rattlesnake

- We start off with a little narration from Steve himself along with his Alliance theme. He’s shown talking to Jim Ross about never setting long term goals and how he was always a short-term kinda guy who looks from day-to-day, week-to-week, and PPV-to-PPV.


Chapter 2: WrestleMania X-7

- Steve speaks about the dream of every wrestler to main event Wrestlemania and how much the WM 17 match with Rocky meant to him while they show clips of the match. He puts over how big of a star Rock is and mentions how muh people were amped to see a match between the two biggest names in the business at the biggest show of the year. Heyman and even Ross were gold on commentary during this match.


Chapter 3: Going With Vince

- Steve speaks on the heel turn at Mania and how it took a while for the turn to register with the fans, even with Vince siding with him against The Rock. They show the formation of the Two Man Power Trip and Austin puts over how hard Vince works citing the cage bump from St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and the chairshots from ’98 during the Foley feud.


Chapter 4: Triple H

- Austin reflects on Hunter’s quad tear, how tough an SOB he was to continue the match, and his own crippling injury from SummerSlam 97 when Owen broke his neck. Says there’s certain things certain guys do that separates them from everybody else and mentions that he knew Trips was going to come back because he could see it in his eyes.


Chapter 5: No Way Out 2001

- Then we backtrack to Febuary and the 2 out of 3 Falls match from No Way Out with clips from each fall. Why did Triple H need an ego-stroking segment on this disc anyway? Steve says he wasn’t feeling 100% coming into the match and that the build for the match was WM-quality. Can’t say I disagree with him there. They even show a clip of Austin beating HHH like a red-headed stepchild with a chair during the match. Oh YEAH, BABY! That’s the good stuff.


Chapter 6: Whooping-Ass

- Fast forward to post-Mania and the Smackdown beatdown of Jim Ross in Oklahoma with Vince prodding him along. We even get to see the Micheal Cole beatdown too, which always brings a smile to my face. He’s shown again kicking Tazz and Tajiri’s asses and then the angle with Spike Dudley where he calls Molly a bimbo(SACRILIDGE!). A bunch of clips from the Power Trip angle where he and Trips beat the fuck out of Undertaker, Kane, and the Hardys.


Chapter 7: Vs. Chris Benoit

- We skip the Hunter Killer tag match and go straight to the classic Benoit match from Smackdown(which REALLY should have been an extra on this disc). Austin’s face when he had the Sharpshooter on Benoit was great, I just have to say that. Steve mentions how important it was to make Benoit look great in his hometown and how he felt all 10 of the german suplexes from the match. Goddamnit, I still feel this match should have been an extra or at LEAST the RAW match from the week before.


Chapter 8: Early Years

- Backtrack all the way back to his WCW days as Arn Anderson talks about when he first saw Ausitn in Dallas. Ric Flair chimes in about Austin’s hunger for the business as we see Steve kicking Buff Bagwell’s sorry ass. Arn says that WCW never knew how to market Steve and that the bookers didn’t know what to do with him at all, what a shock. Harvey fuckin’ Whipleman even drops by for a few quotes. Steve says how Ricky Steamboat was his favorite guy to work with(Fuck yeah!). Arn talks about the Horsemen/Blonds Clash match and says it was one of the best tag matches he’d ever been in. Flair puts over the Blonds as a newer version of Flair and Double A in that they always made everyone else look good. I liked this segment because it touched on his WCW past and RICKY F’N STEAMBOAT got a mention! I still wish they had put their Clash classic on here instead of the Bash match, though.


Chapter 9: Mad TV

- Back to last year and his Mad TV spot(which was actually pretty damn funny), and we even get to see the skit where Will Sasso plays him while Austin plays a hyperactive exercise fruit pimping a sit-up machine. Something that tickles me pink: In Sasso’s segment where he’s talking to the camera, he’s wearing a Jericho- “Ayatollah of Rock-N-Rollah” shirt. Don’t ask me why I find it funny, I just do.



Chapter 10: Crazy Times

- Austin comments on his musical “talent” and how his brother used to kick his ass for singing. They even show ALL of the singing segments from Angle/Austin alliance as they annoy Vince like all hell(look at Debra during the first segment and you can see her cover her ears). They even show a couple outtakes with Vince cracking the fuck up. Dammit, Kurt’s singing is STILL a riot(“Jimmy crack corn and I DON’T CAAAARRRE… I got Olympic Gold!”). We even get the classic “Hero/Jackass” segment, which of course still kicks ass.

- Steve puts over Kurt as a big part of their segments and they show that goofy segment with the cowboy hats(man, Kurt looks like an idiot with that kiddie hat…). Kurt says that all the segments were ad-libbed, which doesn’t surprise me at all.

- Now we segue into the beginnings of the Invasion angle and Vince pleading with Austin to go back to his old ways and to give him a Stunner. Too funny. They show a clip of Austin killing all of the Alliance and when he ka-bongs Vince with the guitar.


Chapter 11: What?


- We get into EVERYONE’S favorite catchphrase as Austin tells the story of how he came up with it while calling some midcarder and how shocked he was that it got over so fast and so big. Angle bitches about how it gets on his nerves and how he can’t even talk now, heh… Apparently, Austin’s favorite “What?” moment was when the WWE went back to MSG and the fans “What?”ed poor Lillian to death while doing the anthem.



Chapter 12: SummerSlam 2001

- Go to SummerSlam and that awesome Angle match(pretty much the best of their series) and man, did Angle bleed like a stuck pig or what? They show all of the ref bumps and then Nick Patrick’s run-in where he DQed Austin in a brilliant piece of booking.


Chapter13: Post 9/11 Show


- The 9/13 Smackdown show is brought up as Steve says how important it was to take the fans’ minds off of what had happened 2 days earlier. They even show Steve screwing around with his brothers and singing in the ring. Pretty funny actually.


Chapter 14: If there’s one thing…


- More from “Sing-A-Long with Stone Cold” and he screws with the fans some more and we meet the beer guy and get a lesson on how to drink a beer the Stone Cold way. Apparently, Austin always crunches the cans at home and Debra hates that, interesting… Austin is now screwing around with the camera guy and they interview the guy. Austin walks in and says that he’s serious when he says he’s gonna kick the guy’s ass. Too funny. We even get a shot of Earl Hebner downing some brews, now that’s silly.



Chapter 15: Giving 120%

- Steve raps up the feature by talking about how the business is supposed to work with “you get in the business and you love it.” And how if it isn’t 120% right then your doing something wrong. He says that you can’t be a top guy in the business while doing everything wrong and how even though he’s not the best built, best looking, or best wrestler out there that if you add up all the things he does well, hopefully it inspires some guys to get into the business or just to simply watch the shows. Watching that last bit shows how much Austin really did love the business to me and it’s pretty sad to see all that happened since this was made.




BONUS MATERIALS:


Extra Matches

- Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Triple H, 2/3 Falls Match, No Way Out 2001: A very good extra since No Way Out was the only WWF PPV from 2001 to never get DVD treatment. 40 minutes of blood and brutality, this was pretty much the match that said to the world that Stone Cold was back.


- “Stunning” Steve Austin vs. Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, US Title Match, Bash at the Beach 1994: It’s great to see the WWF FINALLY utilizing the old WCW tap library, but I was REALLY wishing that they would use their Clash match(which was Ricky’s final match, too) because that one was a lot better, but hey, why argue?


I still say that putting Benoit/Austin from Smackdown or even the RAW match would have been a logical choice here too because it encompasses his entire heel turn and pretty much MADE Benoit’s face run. But, all in all, they did a good job here and if you’ve never seen the HHH match from No Way Out in full, then I highly suggest picking this disc up.



Exclusive Materials:

- King of the Ring 1996: The coronation ceremony from the show where Austin first spoke his infamous catchphrase “Austin 3:16” and went all shooty on Jake Roberts’ ass with a choice Jack Daniels diss. Classic, I tell ya.

- Origins of 3:16 – Austin tells of how he thought of the catchphrases “Austin 3:16” and “That’s the Bottom Line…” and even thanks Jake for being the inspiration for them.

- Arn Anderson: Arn tells a story from their Dangerous Alliance days about when they went to Japan and stunk up the ring. I liked it, but it was way too short. They should have let Arn speak on it some more, ya know?

- The Camera Guy: Yeah, it’s the full interview from the feature where the camera guy brings up all the times Austin’s fucked with him. Steve even makes a surprise appearance and threatens the poor bastard before going, “That’s the biggest line of bullshit I’ve ever said.”, and cracking up. I love it. Showed the comedic side of Steve-O(yes, I did steal that from Foley/Dude Love, so sue me).

- Wildlife: Basically, Austin talks to JR about his pets and shit. Okay, but kinda long-ish and boring.

- Back at the Ranch: Steve and JR walk around the ranch and talk about how big it is and whatnot, even says that he considers being called a redneck a compliment(take THAT, Jim Rome, you silly bootch!). Austin also talks about country music, Debra, the DTA concept(Don’t Trust Anybody), and a few other miscellaneous things. Not bad, actually kinda goofy in parts.



BOTTOM LINE

This is the second best WWF/E DVD ever, IMO. The feature itself is very good, the extras are damn good as well, and you can’t lose with the matches selected. But still, I wish they had beefed up this disc some more like the Hogan one that’s coming out soon because just from 2001 alone, there were enough RAW/Smackdown matches they they could have thrown on here along with some WCW stuff like his first TV Title win or WarGames 92. Regardless, it’s worth buying for long time Austin fans(such as myself) or just wrestling fans, in general. Highly recommended.


Well, I think that went well for my first DVD review, and hopefully you thought so, too. Let me know if you liked it or even if you hated it. If everything’s all kosher, I may do the NWO: Back In Black disc or maybe even Mick Foley: Hard Knocks and Cheap Pops.

See ya Friday, beeyoootches!


Byron Vester
The SmartMarks.com
E-mail me at: [email protected]

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