“Stone Cold” Steve Austin. If you’re a fan of professional wrestling, you know the story of his career. From being a reliable workhorse in WCW to becoming an anti-authority ass-kicker in the WWF, he transcended his industry to become a true pop culture icon. So when you consider how popular the man was at his peak, the idea of that character being transferred to a smaller, more intimate stage is intriguing, to say the least. And that’s what we have here, Steve Austin heading down to Louisville to give a boost to the biggest show in the WWF’s developmental territory history up to this point. Did it lead to a special moment? Let’s find out…
Raising Hell in OVW
At OVW Christmas Chaos, Jim Ross interviews “Stone Cold” Steve Austin who is interrupted by Rico Constantino
Date: 01/31/2001
Location: Davis Arena, Louisville, KY
Context: In all honesty, there isn’t too much context needed here. Christmas Chaos was OVW’s biggest event up until this point and was stuffed full of appearances from top WWF superstars. As you may have figured by the name, the show was supposed to take place in December 2000. Unfortunately, a severe blizzard forced a cancellation. And so, it was scheduled for a month later. Despite this major setback, 5,000 wrestling fans were drawn to a sold-out Louisville for the extravaganza. For comparison, WCW was averaging a little over 2’700 fans for house shows and around 7’000 for PPVs in the same period.
At this time, Steve Austin was just days removed from his third Royal Rumble match victory and was officially headed to the main event of WrestleMania X-7, a truly legendary event. To say that Steve was white hot at the time was an understatement. WWF allowing him to appear at Christmas Chaos was a big get for the developmental territory and was likely a major reason for the huge crowd. Finally, we come to Rico Constantino. Yes, THAT Rico. He was a world away from being a flamboyant stylist here though and was, in fact, one of the top stars and developmental prospects for OVW at the time.
Review: I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the poor, slightly bizarre production values for this clip. The video has an odd yellowish tint to it (which knocks all of the colors off), the image is fuzzy with low definition and the audio regularly gets bad enough where even the closed caption writers give up trying to figure out some words. To be clear, this is almost certainly how the event was originally recorded (OVW was always infamously on a shoestring budget) and not a case of a bad digital transfer from WWE.
The video begins with an introduction from OVW co-owner Jim Cornette. So while the date given (01/31/2001) is correct for the Christmas Chaos event itself, this full segment was taken from OVW TV a week or two later. I’m not why WWE didn’t take this directly from the event DVD/VHS like Leviathan vs Kane some weeks ago, but perhaps the TV broadcast was a marginally better copy.
Our segment begins with Jim Ross in the ring, blatantly pandering to the crowd. After BSing about listening to country music and enjoying some cold beers with his favorite Texas Rattlesnake, JR puts over OVW as a vital part of the WWF and that future superstars were being made right here. Considering the talent it was about to produce within the next two years, he couldn’t have been more right. Jim then begins a slightly long-winded introduction for Austin, outright declaring Steve as the next WWF champion at WrestleMania X-7. Spoilers, sir! The 2001 Royal Rumble winner finally makes his entrance to a huge ovation.
Once back on the mic, JR reiterates that he’s certain Austin will become WWF Champion, even going so far as to say he doesn’t care who he’s facing on April 1st. I think his bias may be showing. Steve takes the stick and talks about the doubts he had while being on the shelf for nearly a year but then says that he came back to get revenge on Triple H (retroactively I guess) and that he’s going to raise hell at WrestleMania X-7.
Ever the provocateur, the Oklahoma commentator asks for Stone Cold’s opinion on Mr, McMahon. In response, Austin asks for a couple of beers and has an impromptu beer fest before calling McMahon a piece of trash. Talk about playing to the crowd. Still not done stirring the pot, Jim mentions Rico Constantino (calling him a Kurt Angle wannabe in the process) and says that he doesn’t like his attitude while effectively calls him to the ring. I guess a quick swig of beer gave Ross some Dutch courage.
Rico makes his way to the ring with “Starmaker” Kenny Bolin and immediately gets in the face of The Rattlesnake. The audio gets patchy as all hell here but Rico arrogantly introduces himself and demand that Austin looks him in the face. Stone Cold asks the crowd if they think Rico is a jackass. You can guess the response. Constantino says that he will come for Austin in the WWF one day (ha!) when he’s dominated OVW because he’s a true role model here in Kentucky. The fans disagree wholeheartedly. He says that he’s going to kick Stone Cold’s hiney.
Austin asks if that’s a threat. Rico says yes. Steve says that he’s in a good mood, so he’s going to let that slide and be on his way, letting Rico enjoy his “little moment of glory”. When Austin tries to leave though, Rico says, “don’t you turn your back on me, sir!”. Of course, Stone Cold responds by returning and staring Constantino down. After the prerequisite moment of tension, Austin hits the Stunner to a thunderous reaction. Steve jaw-jacks a little and pours some beer on the fallen Rico to wrap things up.
Final thoughts: I’m not exactly sure what to say. Austin and Jim Ross ate up a lot of time plugging the WWF product and padding things out with both pandering and a couple crowd pleasers. I don’t fault them for that but I can’t ignore it either. I’m sure the rub was great for Rico at the time but it doesn’t amount to much here. On the actual card, this was placed after the OVW Championship match but before the main event. It was there to give the crowd some dumb fun. In that context, it works great. As a standalone segment, it’s an insubstantial bit of fluff. Once I add in the poor recording quality, I can’t recommend this to anyone but Attitude Era diehards.
Recommendation: Safe to skip (unless you covet rare Attitude Era footage)
Another week, another gem critiqued. What did you think of this interview and confrontation? Do you think I was too harsh? Let me know in the comment section below. See you next week!