by Rick Scaia
OnlineOnslaught.com

Well, after only about 8 months of exile, Steve Austin was set to return to WWE with a bang.  His separation from Debra complete, and his head apparently in a much better place, Austin prepped for his return for a couple months after first re-opening talks with Vince and WWE, and finally showed up at the No Way Out PPV in February.

At the show, he worked a match against Eric Bischoff, a match that was the brainchild of Vince McMahon, and punishment for Bischoff for not turning RAW around to Vince's liking.  Austin, of course, wiped the mat with Bischoff, and fun was had by all that night.

Prior to his televised comeback, he also did a post-RAW Dark Run-In, where he was met by Bischoff's top aid, Chief Morley, as well as Chris Jericho.  When he imbibed non-alcoholic beer as part of the celebration, he apparently got heat with his probation officer back in San Antonio, TX.  Needless to say, Austin cut out the beer bashes for a bit into his return until he could hammer out the terms of said probation and go back to guzzling Miller Lites with abandon in the ring.

After dispatching Bischoff, Austin entered a feud with the Rock.  It was during this period of increased physicality that Austin realized his fragile neck would not withstand a full active wrestling schedule.  After a loss to the Rock at WM19, Austin morphed into a non-wrestling role, but still managed to contribute substantially to RAW's successes week-in and week-out with his mic work.

Also in February: Curt Hennig, who wrestled as "Mr. Perfect" for the WWF in the first half of the 90s, died in his hotel room in Florida.  He'd been there to take part in a Jimmy Hart promoted indie show.  Hennig, who was easily one of my favorite wrestlers of the early 90s, was eventually determined to have died due to a cocaine overdose.  He was 44 years old.  You can check out OO's Curt Hennig Tribute for additional memories and details...

IN OTHER NEWS

• Triple H was sidelined for much of the month with a deep thigh bruise (the same thing that had sidelined him two months previous, but in the opposite leg). Even OO began to shut its mouth when the HHHaters busted out the "Cripple H" nickname after this, his fourth injury in about eight months (four of which were spent on the sidelines). HHH, working at less than 100%, did work his spot in the No Way Out main event against Scott Steiner.
• HHH's injury meant that inter-promotional matches against Brock Lesnar (to boost major house show events in Minneapolis and New York City) were scrapped; Kurt Angle replaced HHH to give those fans a sneak peak at WM19...
• Intent on getting developmental prospects to respect the history of the business and the origins of many of the bankable archetypes of pro wrestling angles, feuds, matches, and characters, Tom Pritchard challenged the entire WWE developmental roster to complete one paragraph summaries on 101 of the most influential performers in wrestling history. When the developmental system failed to turn up a single satisfactory completed assignment, Pritchard and Kevin Kelly issed the same challenge to the "Byte This" audience. For OO, reader John Keating stepped up to the plate, and completed this column on the "Byte This 101." 
• As word of Nathan Jones' genuine criminal past circulated, another rumored skeleton in his closet surfaced: that Jones had a mammary gland removed after it started producing milk as a by-product of Jones' steroid use. Jones, when eventually confronted with this rumor, categorically denied it, saying it was an exaggerating of a more mundane medical procedure he had done (one similar to the Rock's 1999 surgery to remove fatty breast tissue; however, that procedure IS often linked to steroid use). Fan dying to chant "Milk-y Nip-ples (clap clap clapclapclap)" at Jones are massively disappointed.
• Goldust is "electrocuted" by HHH's still unnamed band of sycophants, and WWE sells it like Goldust may be dead, or at least severely injured. The electrocution provides the impetus for Goldust to return a few weeks later with his stuttering, twitching oddball gimmick that served him pretty well for the remainder of the year. It also served as the basis of Booker T's push as the top contender to HHH.
• HHH cut a really big, but clunky promo establishing his new faction as "Evolution." The name managed to get through and stick, although HHH uttered such verbal gems as comparing Randy Orton to a coal amongst diamonds (or something) and dubbing Batista a "Genetic Stopper" (whatever the hell that is). Not his best work.
• During an appearance on FoxSports' "Best Damned Sports Show Period" (to plug his book), Roddy Piper mentioned that he had been approached to be the guest referee for a Hogan/Vince match at WM19, but turned it down. At the time, nobody really paid any mind to Piper's claim, and assumed it was a dead issue. We were wrong.
• One-legged wrestler "Tenacious Z" (Zach Gowen) debuted for NWA-TNA in February. He'd work only 2 weeks for TNA before WWE swooped in and signed him to a deal...
• TV's "Joe Millionaire," Evan Marriott, revealed that he had trained as a pro wrestler in UPW (the territory that supplied WWE with John Cena, Victoria, and others), and in an interview with Howard Stern said that he and WWE had talked about a very brief run in which Marriott would have worked with Ric Flair. Marriott, still riding high on the massive success of the finale of the "Joe Millionaire" show, declined the opportunity. And as his reward, this right here is the most press the guy has gotten in 9 months.
• Paul "Triple H" Levesque proposed to Stephanie McMahon on Valentine's Day, and she accepted. The two would eventually set an October wedding date...
• A PPV match between Chris Jericho and Test was cancelled when Test (and Stacy Keibler) missed the final RAW before the PPV due to being snowed in in Baltimore. Apparently, management thought that the couple should have foreseen the weather trouble and left town a day earlier, and replaced Test in the PPV feud with Jeff Hardy (effectively ending his flirtation with a heel turn)...
• After arriving at the final configuration for Safeco Field and WM19, WWE released several thousand more tickets for the event, and they sold out in rapid order...
• D'Lo Brown and WWE parted ways. Oft-underutilized by the Fed (sometimes theorized to be due to lingering bad karma from the Droz Incident), the extremely talented D'Lo was released in the midst of a renewed push as Teddy Long's enforcer. Instead, WWE again played the "Rodney Mack" card, and took the guy out of the role as John Cena's buddy, and installed him as D'Lo's replacement in Long's stable. That fast, Teddy switched from being "Down with the Brown" to "Backing the Mack." Mack's early gimmick was the "Five Minute White Boy Challenge" which met with almost no reaction, no matter how many times they tried it...
• Tommy Dreamer began about a month-long stint as a contributor to RAW's creative team; along with Michael Hayes, Dreamer's job was to bring a more wrestling-centric perspective to a product essentially being written by a life-long comedy writer....
• Ron Simmons began to reconsider a late 2002 retirement, and rumors began to circulate that the APA might be reunited when Bradshaw was ready to return from a back injury...
• Edge was diagnosed with a serious neck condition requiring surgery in mid-February, and had to be written out of his role in a PPV six-man tag match (a mysterious attacker eliminated backstage prior to the match, and he was never seen again on WWE TV after that). Edge would go on to have the same fusion surgery as Steve Austin, Chris Benoit, Lita, and others courtesy of Dr. Youngblood about two weeks later, and is now on the back-end of an entire year on the sidelines... another week later, and he'd have had the option of joining Kurt Angle in testing out Dr. Jho's alternative, less-invasive procedure that would have returned him to action in 2 months.
• As a direct result of Edge's injury, Rhyno was pulled from RAW brand plans, and inserted late in the month as a replacement for Edge on SD!. Though he'd end the year as a heel, Rhyno started out out in Edge's slot as Chris Benoit's tag partner...
• Sunday Night Heat was pre-empted on MTV, and aired for one week only on TNN, foreshadowing a later permanent change in WWE's arrangement with Viacom....
• Sylvain Grenier debuted as Vince McMahon's evil French-Canadian ref in the main event of the No Way Out PPV. Grenier, a little known developmental wrestler because his training was being handled by the Rock's dad instead of by OVW, helped the Rock to defeat Hulk Hogan....
• Paul Heyman was bounced from his duties as the head of SD!'s creative team after a tangle with the production team and management. He was replaced by Bruce Pritchard and Dave Lagana, who did a commendable job of keeping SD! on the right track even as the internet began wetting itself in terror that Heyman's departure would spell the end of SD!. For his part, Heyman was kept on the payroll as a "consultant," though he didn't contribute much at all to the product in his absence....
• WWE announced that it would shut down "The World" restaurant/nightclub effective in April. The one-time "WWF New York" was hemorrhaging money as a result of poor management...
• In the quarterly conference call with investors, Linda McMahon announced WWE's plan to go to brand-specific PPVs starting in June. This new plan overrode a previously announced play to go to 20 PPVs per year (4 joint productions, with each brand running its own PPV event in the other 8 months). The plan also spells the end of the 10 year "King of the Ring" June PPV tradition....
• During the same conference call, Linda confirmed that WWE was preparing to take over the videotape libraries of two defunct wrestling organizations (presumed, correctly, by most online fans to be the ECW and AWA tape libraries). The Fed would put both to use in upcoming DVD releases...
• William Regal was briefly KO'ed in a PPV match against Kane and RVD; he was kept out of action as a precaution, at first...
• ABC rejected a script pitch that would have featured Mick Foley as father in a TGIF-caliber sitcom...
• Warrior (he of one time Ultimate-ness) began more widely publicized forays into the political realm, including a keynote speech at a young conservative's convention.... 
• TNA's frenetic guest-star-centric booking resulted in Vader's one-night return to domestic TV. Vader was said to look half-way decent, although he was used in a gimmicky sort of tag match with Dusty Rhodes. Vader continues to work regularly in Japan, as well...
   

NOTABLE quOOtables

RATINGS TRENDS
(Note: RAW's cable ratings are converted to broadcast numbers 
for our monthly comparisons)

PAY-PER-VIEW RESULTS

TITLE CHANGES

Charlie Haas/Shelton Benjamin beat Los Guerreros to win the WWE Tag Team Titles on 2/04... NWA Tag Team Titles held up following controversial match on 2/05... Kid Kash beat Sonny Siaki to win the TNA X Title on 2/12... Matt Hardy beat Billy Kidman to win the WWE Cruiserweight Title on 2/23...

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