As the WCW acquisition came, so too did the very rushed and hollow Invasion angle pitting an Alliance of WCW and ECW invaders against the gatekeepers of WWE. 

Austin had been getting into his heel character in the months leading up to it, but in the face of the invasion McMahon had been calling upon the man that had been fawning for his affection to embrace the Austin of old — the old “Stone Cold.” Austin relented eventually, slapping all of the Alliance members with stunners and leading Team WWE into the Invasion pay-per-view. 

Then, and only then, did he choose to stick it to McMahon and turn heel again, joining the team representing the company that had unceremoniously fired him while injured in 1995, believing him to be unmarketable. 

Now, the benefit of hindsight is a bonus, but it would surely have been better for the opposite to happen; Austin should have aligned with McMahon only when the future of the company that had given him space to grow into who he was had come under threat. Austin eventually wound up pinned by the Rock at Survivor Series 2001, spelling an end to the Invasion angle, and McMahon tried to strip him of the title. 

Ric Flair returned as a storyline co-owner of WWE, aligning with Austin to help him keep the title and turning Austin face once more against McMahon. And then Austin lost the title to Chris Jericho on his way to unifying it with the WCW World Heavyweight Championship that was held by the Rock at the time. 

It just feels as though the path of least resistance in all of the aforementioned would have been to maintain Austin as the top babyface in the company. In fact, everything of significance that did occur during his time as heel likely would have made a lot more sense if he had stayed a face.