WWE has often engrossed its fans with some brilliant storytelling over the years. Many of the storylines have become iconic and fans talk about them to this day.

The Attitude Era was also quite famous for many such angles that held the attention of fans. One of the intriguing and infamous storylines from that era was the mystery of who ran over Stone Cold Steve Austin at Survivor Series 1999.

Talking about long-term booking, the angle took nearly 11 months to reveal who was the mystery attacker.

When it was finally disclosed that Dwayne Johnson’s cousin Rikishi was behind the attack, it was an anti-climatic end. Fans met it with an underwhelming response overall. However, WWE legend Bruce Prichard said Vince McMahon loved the idea because no one could see it coming.

Vince McMahon loved the idea of Rikishi being the mystery attacker

Vince McMahon’s tenure in WWE was defined by tremendous success and many over-the-top angles at times. The Stone Cold mystery attacker’s story was at one such angle.

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Initially, the idea was to write off Stone Cold Steve Austin as he was due to have neck surgery. At Survivor Series 1999, a parking lot chase between Steve Austin and Triple H occurred. All of a sudden, a car came out of nowhere and ran down Austin.

Thus began the classic case of ‘whodunnit‘ around the angle. Weeks and months passed, but we were none closer to finding out who attacked Austin.

Fans speculated and threw around all kinds of names and theories as to who was behind this heinous act. Eventually, on October 9th, 2000, Mick Foley, the WWE commissioner, said he had the perpetrator.

In the ring at that time were Dwayne Johnson, one of the suspects, and his cousin Rikishi. In one of the most anti-climatic scenes in WWE, Rikishi claimed he was the man behind the wheel at the Survivor Series and claimed he did it for The Rock.

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One of the hottest angles of the Attitude Era had just fizzled out with this revelation. In 2018, WWE legend Bruce Prichard, who was with the company during this infamous angle, talked about it in detail on his Something to Wrestle podcast.

He said this was a result of WWE not thinking earlier about how to end this storyline. Prichard also said everybody had ideas about who the mystery attacker would be and when someone suggested Rikishi’s name, Vince McMahon went ahead with it.

Prichard recalled, “I don’t even remember who came up with Rikishi. Vince McMahon loved it and thought that no one was going to guess that.”

Prichard mentioned that it was obvious that no one was going to guess it was Rikishi since it didn’t make sense for him to be the attacker. To make things odd a few weeks later WWE would reveal that Triple H was the mastermind behind this all.

This angle had the potential to be a classic storyline for WWE, but it went out with a whimper. This was during the time when the company was churning out compelling storylines almost every other week. However, this whole Austin-Rikishi debacle meant it wasn’t WWE’s finest hour.

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