Steve Austin Reflects On WWE Punishing Triple H Leading To The Birth Of Austin 3:16

Chris Jericho invited Steve Austin to appear on his Talk Is Jericho podcast, which was filled with a lot of great content. One of the topics touched on was Triple H being punished for the infamous MSG Curtain Call and how it led to the birth of Austin 3:16 at the 1996 King of the Ring event.

Here is what Austin said on the topic:

“There’s so many things that I just fluked up on because I was never going to be the chosen guy, guys that Vince had brought in and said, you’re going to be a World Champion. Ain’t nobody ever told me that.

I went to Vince’s house three times before I finally signed with New York because I needed the money. When I won King of the Ring, it’s because those guys hugged at The Garden.

Those guys went south. Shawn [Michaels] was the World Champion. Triple H was going to win King of the Ring. Vince couldn’t punish his World Champion, who already had a bad attitude. So he punished Hunter.

I was walking across the parking lot to TV in Boston, Worcester and Lowell, Massachusetts, and Vince says behind me, ‘Hey Steve, you got a second? I just want to let you know in two weeks, you’re gonna win King of the Ring.’ I said, alright, cool. So it was just these fluke things that would happen.

Vince is the greatest promoter that ever lived. You know how smart that guy is and all of a sudden, he sees dollar signs, and he smells money like he did with you and Shawn, when Vince says, ‘I smell money.’ People are like, ‘What’s that mean?’ We’re talking box office money. He sees money too.

When all of a sudden, he books something and it turns into something 10 times better than he even thought, he ain’t gonna say sh*t. He can take all the credit he wants.

I kind of outed him on one time. I think it was The Garden, it might have been the night I Stunned him. Vince, he’s talking about whoever the president of the company was.

I said, ‘Everybody knows you’re the one writing all the checks around here. You’re the guy that’s really doing all this.’ He was already on that swing anyway to being Mr. McMahon.

He’s real interesting Chris because as long as you’ve been in the company, you know that when you go there, you have this reverence, and you always have this respect for Vince, but the more you work with him and at the higher level that you are on the card, the closer you become with the guy because you’re really in this together, and it’s a collaborative effort.

They’re giving you time, money and investing TV time in you, and they’re paying you, but this is your job.

So it’s a joint effort for someone to strap a rocket ship to your back, and you have to be able to be smart enough to navigate all the sh*t that you’ve got to go through, to make right decisions, to be able to get monster over.”