How much money Steve Austin allegedly made in WWE from his Austin 3:16 t-shirt

During a Q&A on his podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle commented on how much money Steve Austin allegedly made from his Austin 3:16 t-shirt…

“In one year, he made $12 million on merchandise and that was the 3:16 shirt. That’s when it came out. $12 million. He told me. I was like, ‘Holy crap.’ He only made two and a half million wrestling. Vince McMahon said, ‘I pay you (Angle) to wrestle.’ Vince, I’m not gonna lie to you, he paid me well. I made more than Austin did with wrestling. I didn’t make nearly as much as Austin did with merchandise, but Vince took care of me on the back end with wrestling. Merchandise, I made, I’ll give you just roundabout figures, between 700 and 900 grand a year. It wasn’t a lot. It’s a lot of money, don’t get me wrong, but not for being a big star like that. For some reason Vince just told me, ‘Hey, can’t do anything with you in merchandise, so just wrestle.’ I would come up with merchandise ideas and Vince would utilize them, but you know, I didn’t sell like Stone Cold, and I was a heel most of my career too.” (quote courtesy of WrestlingNews.co)

In May of 2023, Austin appeared on the SI Media podcast and commented on his merchandise sales…

“I don’t know how much. It was definitely seven figures, probably eight figures now. In WWE, you get your royalty checks every quarter. I remember when I first came up with that shirt. I started getting hot and I created that promo, they came out with the shirt and those shirts were everywhere. I had a conversation with Vince and I said, ‘I see a lot of t-shirts out there, my royalty check doesn’t reflect that.’ He goes, ‘Steve, what do you think we should do?’ ‘I think we need to change the percentages.’ He came up with a number, ‘What do you think about that?’ I said, ‘I like it.’ It was a fair deal. It became known as the Austin deal. Things kept going, and I’ll never forget, it was time to come out with the royalty checks for that quarter and Vince wanted to hand-deliver this one to me. He handed it to me and goes, ‘Steve, I’m just giving this to you because I’ve never given out a check like this before, to anyone.’ I looked at the amount, and it was an amount. He wanted to hand-deliver that based on the amount of t-shirts that got sold with the percentage, that was a special moment. I really prided myself on being able to sell merchandise because when WCW didn’t see me as ever being a star, I figured, hey man, I never was the chosen one, but through working my ass off and trying to find an identity, I finally did, and I became a marketable entity.” (quote courtesy of Fightful.com)