WWE legend and one of the biggest stars that the business has ever had, Stone Cold Steve Austin is known for being frank with his views about most things and recently he shared his thoughts on the direction that the WWE had taken in The Steve Austin Show. Austin does not believe that the present storylines in the WWE and the way that the show is relevised is up to the mark and went so far as to say that the company could do well to rebrand the business as an athletic product rather than an entertainment one.
He said, "There [are] just no interwoven storylines, which carries through the course of a Monday Night RAW where something, a seed is planted at the beginning of a Monday Night RAW and threaded through the entire show. It's just match after match, segment, or in-ring segment, skit, whatever you want to call it, backstage promo." Austin also felt that Vince McMahon probably no longer trusts the present day stars to carry out a storyline with perfection and recalled a match with Bret Hart in which the two wrestlers executed McMahon's directions perfectly. "He gave us a directive, he gave us the finish, and he trusted us to go out there and execute everything. No agent, nobody helped Bret and I with that match."
Lastly, he stuck the boot in to the 'Reality Era' of the present day and said that it lacked reality altogether. "They call it the reality era, but it's anything but reality. And on the other note, going into unknown territory or uncharted waters, back in the day, man, whether you're a fan or not of some of the storylines or angles we were shooting, they were edgy as hell and we weren't afraid to push into those uncharted waters or territories. And if you're afraid to do that, if you're afraid to try to grow, if you're afraid to take a chance as a company, whether you're publicly traded or not, then you're failing to live up to your potential as a company! I mean, because that's what the entertainment business is. If wrestling falls under the entertainment umbrella, people need to push the envelope!"
Quotes from wrestlinginc.com
