Steve Austin toasted beers with Vince McMahon to close-out WrestleMania X-7, turning heel in the process. Austin’s heel turn was and still is quite controversial. Jim Ross spent some time on “Grillin JR” talking about how difficult it was to get Austin over as a heel at the time.
“We realized early on that we were swimming upstream. It was going to be very daunting to get Steve to the position that he wanted to be as the top heel,” said JR. He would continue to say that fans just didn’t hate Austin enough for it to work.
“Heel qualities include having enough heat on them that you will pay your money to drive to the arena to watch them get their ass whipped,” Ross continued.
“Nobody’s going to pay their money to come to RAW, a house show, live event whatever you want to call it, to see Austin get his ass whipped. They’re not mad at him. As much as they were uncomfortable with my little angle, the Lita situation, they still weren’t angry enough at Steve to turn on him. So, what else could we do?”
JR continued to say that he was against the heel turn. Austin was insistent, however, and Vince felt the company owed it to him to try.
“He was hell bent on it and as we’ve discussed, I was just as hell bent going the other way,” JR continued. “I’ve told you what Vince said, ‘JR he wants to do it real bad, he thinks it’ll work, and we owe it to him.’ After I heard that explanation my push back was less.”
JR’s comments can be heard in the player below:
