Everything here is wrong. 3:16 was big straight away and Austin’s new finisher the Stone Cold Stunner was briefly renamed The 3:16. The main problem was that Austin had 16 stitches in his mouth from KOTR after his match with Marc Mero and IIRC wasn’t cleared to work proper matches for a couple of weeks.

When he returned he had a return match with Mero and then in August started calling out Bret Hart. He wrestled at SummerSlam but on the preshow beating Yokozuna.

I believe part of Austin’s lowered profile at this time was tweaking his gimmick - changing his finisher from the Million Dollar Dream to the Stunner, finalising it’s name (as above) and deciding on his character - Stone Cold started as an emotionless type like Richard Kuklinski who was Austin’s inspiration. His first promos were about driving round town and laughing at homeless people delivered in a very cold manner, whereas the 3:16 promo was angry redneck. Bear in mind he was still using the Ringmaster music at this time and the Smoking Skull logo was still to come.

His promos on Hart (put an S in front of Hitman) got him super over ready for the match at Survivor Series. Bear in mind that during the August to November hype for that match he had all the promos with Brian Pillman culminating in Austin “breaking” Pillman’s ankle and the Pillman’s got a gun angle.

Austin was red hot but Vince didn’t put him in the title picture because Shawn was champ and working against the monsters of Vader, Mankind and Sid.

You say he wasn’t really over until WrestleMania 13 but there were a lot of 3:16 shirts and signs in that crowd already.