The Complete History of the WWE Championship - Part 10

Stone Cold Steve Austin (April 1, 2001 - September 23, 2001)

Stone Cold: Sold his soul for the WWE Championship

WWE purchased their long time rivals, WCW on March 26, 2001. In the storylines, it was revealed that Shane McMahon had purchased the company under the nose of his father, Vince McMahon.

WCW would later "invade" WWE. The Invasion, as it would become known would play a major role in Stone Cold Steve Austin's WWE Championship reign.

That began on April 1, 2001. It was the culmination of a six-month long story after Stone Cold returned from potentially career ending spinal surgery.

Austin, in the storyline had grown insecure and did not believe he could win the WWE Championship fairly. Therefore he made a pact with the devil and formed an alliance with his long-time enemy, Vince McMahon. Together, they screwed The Rock and to further entrench Austin as the top man, he allied with his other sworn enemy, Triple H to form the Two Man Power Trip.

The Austin heel turn, though highly entertaining did not translate well to the box office. After setting records at WrestleMania X-7 with The Rock, with over one million pay per view buys, Austin and his next opponent, The Undertaker pulled a paltry (in comparison) 375,000 orders at Backlash and 405,000 at Judgment Day.

Backlash, the previous year had drawn 675,000 orders and Judgment Day drew 420,000.

After Vince had tried and failed to convince any network to screen a McMahon booked version of WCW, which was to be Shane's pet project, incidentally, The Chairman attempted to reverse sagging ratings by booking a WCW invasion of his company.

That saw Austin turn face again on the July 16, Raw in a stunning moment. However, it didn't last. Stone Cold would turn heel once more at the Invasion pay per view on July 22, when he aligned with the invaders who were bolstered by the forces of ECW, to form the Alliance.

As WWE did not purchase the contracts of many of WCW's main event crew such as Goldberg, Sting, Kevin Nash etc... they had little option but to appoint a bonafide headliner in Austin as the head of the invaders. If not him, then who?

DDP and Booker T, the only headliners from WCW who did come on board, were quickly treated as out of depth losers and had zero credibility with WWE's fanbase. DDP would retire the following year, whereas Booker spent several years in the mid-card before earning his way back to the main event, five years later.

Intrigue about the Invasion saw a spike in pay per view orders and Invasion pulled a massive 760,000 orders (still a non-WrestleMania pay per view record) and SummerSlam built around Stone Cold's WWE Championship defence versus Kurt Angle and The Rock's WCW World title bout with Booker T, drew in 520,000 orders.

Alas, it was to be Angle, who would terminate, Austin's longest World title run the following September, albeit after immensely tragic circumstances.