WWE Royal Rumble Look Back: Stone Cold Steve Austin’s controversial 1997 win

Let’s journey back in time and take a look at the controversial win by Stone Cold Steve Austin in the 1997 Royal Rumble.

It’s been 20 years since Stone Cold Steve Austin won the first of his three Royal Rumble matches, but before I get into that I do have one burning question about the 1997 edition of the event. How did The Undertaker not know he was fighting his own brother when getting it on with Diesel? My younger readers might not get that joke, but trust me, it’s hilarious.

Fake Diesel and Razor Ramon (yes, he was there too for about 17 seconds) aside, the 1997 Royal Rumble match was pretty entertaining and certainly helped boost the star power of a man who would go on to be one of the biggest names this industry will ever see in Stone Cold Steve Austin. It was also the last Royal Rumble for Bret Hart and the first Royal Rumble for a kid named Rocky Maivia. We also saw a WWE Hall of Famer eliminated in just four seconds, another in 41 seconds and another in just over a minute. And yet, it all worked within one big storyline and served as the catalyst for one of the best matches in WrestleMania history. So let’s get into this a little bit.

As the year 1997 rolled around, the then-WWF was getting slaughtered in the Monday Night Wars. If my count is correct, Monday Nitro had beaten Monday Night RAW in the ratings for 31 straight weeks when the 1997 Royal Rumble took place and would do so for another year. But that Sunday night in San Antonio was actually an event that helped WWE build towards the future while letting go of some its past at the same time.

There’s always one or two guys in every Royal Rumble that are in for a long night and the choice that night was Stone Cold Steve Austin, and he made that pretty clear to the 60,000+ in attendance rather quickly. Entering fifth, Austin cleared the ring and then went one-on-one with Jake “The Snake” Roberts, the man he had defeated the previous summer at King of the Ring before delivering his famous “Austin 3:16” promo, the promo that essentially helped him become a made man in WWE. He made short work of the Hall of Famer, eliminating him after only 1:10 and just waited for his next opponent while sitting on the top rope looking at his wrist tape as if it were a watch. That moment in itself got him over that night but there was much more to come.

Twenty minutes later, Austin cleared the ring one more time and once again waited for his next opponent, who would come in the form of Bret “The Hitman” Hart, whom he had battled at Survivor Series just two months before. It’s a match that a lot of people sometimes forget about, mainly because of what the outcome of this match would bring. Austin and Hart battled for a minute, and following a quick appearance from Jerry “The King” Lawler, this match kicked into overdrive.

Following the elimination of Lawler, the final entrants in the Rumble were Kane …. errr, Diesel, Terry Funk, a rookie by the name of Rocky Maivia, Mankind, Flash Funk, Vader, Henry O. Godwinn and The Undertaker. After the eliminations of Flash and Godwinn, the final eight men in the 1997 Royal Rumble are all or will be WWE Hall of Famers one day — The Rock, Terry Funk, Mick Foley, Vader, The Undertaker, Kane, Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin. That’s one hell of a lineup. And it’s how every single of one these guys were used that made the end of this match so perfect.

For one, without even knowing it, we saw the first encounter between Stone Cold and The Rock, which would turn out to be one of the biggest rivalries in the history of WWE. So that was fun. And as I made a joke about earlier, we also saw The Undertaker battle it out with Kane, even though Kane wasn’t even a thought at the time. Yes, the whole fake Razor Ramon and Diesel thing was a joke that went on way too long but that’s for another day.

In any event, let’s break this ending down.

So Rocky Maivia goes out first, and in another look at the future, he was actually thrown out by Mick Foley. Obviously, those two would go on to have some of the greatest moments of the Attitude Era as both allies and opponents.

Out next were Terry Funk and Mick Foley, and there’s certainly no shortage of history between those two either and they’d actually be the first two entrants in the Royal Rumble the following year. But even after both men were eliminated, their battle continued out on the floor and would become the most important part of the match. As Foley and Funk battled on the outside, Bret Hart threw Stone Cold over the top rope and out of the match. But with both referees on the other side of the ring, they didn’t see it happen, Austin just pretended that it didn’t happen and slid back into the ring. Bret had turned his back to deal with Diesel so he didn’t even see it. Austin proceeded to hit the other side of the ring where Vader and Undertaker, who had actually fought each other earlier that night, were battling it out and tossed both of them over the top rope at right around the same time Hart was eliminating Diesel. Austin then threw Hart over that same rope and that was that. Stone Cold Steve Austin had been eliminated from the Royal Rumble and still found a way to win it. Beautiful.

I say beautiful because it really was. It played perfectly into the character that Austin was trying to get over at that time and this night really did play a huge part in the direction WWE was going. Just a year before, Austin was still The Ringmaster for crying out loud. WWE was still somewhat stuck in the ’80s with some outlandish characters and personas, and I really think this was a night that helped them break away from that. Yes, there were some old faces in this Rumble but they were pretty much quickly dispatched in favor of a new direction. Things were starting to get a little more edgy and it showed when Bret Hart got in Vince McMahon’s face following the Rumble. Austin had solidified himself as a top star in about 45 minutes and for the first time put himself in the title picture. Mankind was coming into his own, the rookie turned out to be okay in this business and this was thankfully the last time we would see fake Razor and Diesel on television.

While Austin wouldn’t go on to WrestleMania to face the champion this time around, he still came out ahead. Following the Rumble match, champion Shawn Michaels, who won his title back following the Rumble match in a match against Sid, vacated the title with the infamous “I lost my smile” promo and Austin, Hart, Vader and The Undertaker competed in a Fatal 4-Way match at an In Your House event (remember those?), which Hart won. But the next night on RAW in a 1-on-1 bout between Sid and Bret, Austin interfered and caused “The Hitman” to lose his title after just one day. Sid and ‘Taker went on to headline WrestleMania 13 for the title, but I think anyone that’s ever watched will tell you that the main event of the evening belonged to Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin, who put on a phenomenal show in a Submission Match that saw the best double turn in the history of wrestling. If Austin wasn’t a star already following his performance at the Royal Rumble, which saw him eliminate 10 men (which at that time tied a record set by Hulk Hogan), that match with Bret at WrestleMania 13 made Stone Cold Steve Austin the hottest thing in wrestling.

Next: Will Samoa Joe make an impact at the Royal Rumble?

Tune in next week as instead of 20, we’ll be going back 10 years to take a look at the 2007 Royal Rumble victory of none other than The Undertaker.