Stone Cold Steve Austin On ‘What?’ Chants: A Lot Of People Wish I Wouldn’t Have Done That

Stone Cold Steve Austin recalls how his ‘What?’ catchphrase came to be and how people wish he wouldn’t have done it.

During his career, Stone Cold had a range of catchphrases that became common for ‘The Texas Rattlesnake’ to use on other WWE superstars, with crowds happily chanting along for most of them. One catchphrase that stuck past Austin’s time in the company, was crowds chanting ‘What?’ as wrestlers have cut promos in the ring. While this has led to some spicy comebacks from wrestlers in the past, a lot of fans and wrestlers do not enjoy the continued usage of the chant.

While speaking on Insight With Chris Van Vliet in a new interview, Stone Cold Steve Austin spoke about the ‘What?’ catchphrase, noting how it was a choice he made as a heel.

“Yeah, a lot of people wish I wouldn’t have done that. But it just turned into something to do, because when I turned heel, not everybody wanted me to turn heel, but I was just set on turning heel, because I’ve always liked working heel so much. [That was your call?] Yeah, and I wish Vince would have shot me down, or I wish I felt it in the ring at night. I should have just said, ‘Hey, man, we’re changing this. Watch the stunner.’ And I should have just stunned his ass and never went down that road. But as a means to an end, I was leaving Christian a voicemail and kept saying, What? What? I just turned it into this thing to berate somebody, to belittle somebody as a heel. So I use that as a mechanism to do that as a means to an end, to try to get heat. And that whole attempt was over-trying just to compensate and gain ground on getting heat. I remember Hunter and myself as a Two Man Power Trip just whacking people with chairs. I mean, you know, trying so hard through violence to get heat, which is not always the best way to get heat, and by laying stuff in. It was an interesting period, the heel thing. If I could go back in time, I would not have done it, because I didn’t need to. I think Jim Ross said it best, nobody ever wanted to hate John Wayne. I wasn’t John Wayne, but I was the anti-hero. I got over by being the way I was. So to turn bad, to try to do worse things, I don’t know, just it didn’t work. It wasn’t successful. We got a chance to push the character in different directions, in different dimensions, but I don’t think we were really ringing up the box office doing that.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Austin recalled a conversation he had with a priest regarding his iconic ‘Austin 3:16’ promo. You can read more about that here.

Thank you to Chris Van Vliet for the quote(s)