I think what smarks meant by decline was Steiner didn't do too much physical in-ring work like he did in his tag team days from 1988-1997, and they had high hopes for Steiner to become a singles star by 1991 or 1992 at the earliest when first time was when he had his infamous one-on-one test match at Clash Of The Champions versus Ric Flair in '91, and a heel turn at the end of '92 that would've seen him turn against Marcus Bagwell and Ricky Steamboat before it was aborted when The Steiners left WCW over money and Scott burning his bridges with WCW after a fight with Bill Watts.

Some say his torn biceps in 1991 and/or his infamous COTC match with Flair contributed to Scott deciding that he needed to look bigger, be bigger and stay durable. That also meant Scott was turning into an angry locker room cancer as early as 1991-92, especially when Bill Watts wanted Scott as a singles heel while Rick was going to be discarded as a comedy midcard face.

But still, Steiner was doing Frankensteiners and suplexes plus the Steiner Screwdriver that he mostly used while wrestling in Japan. Bruce Pritchard even hinted at a 1993 Royal Rumble victory for Scott, but with Bret Hart, Lex Luger, Shawn Michaels, Kevin Nash, The Undertaker, Scott Hall and even Yokozuna as Vince's main go-to-guys, Scott Steiner was regarded as too low for Vince to even push Steiner as a big-time singles star as one of the top key heels. The Steiners were WWF Tag Team Champions for a while until they lost the belts in silly comical fashion vs The Quebecers. Again, Scott didn't want to break up the tag team, and so The Steiners left the WWF because The Steiners were miserable for most of their WWF run and Scott once again burning his bridges with a promotion after cornering Vince McMahon, officially labelling Steiner as a discipline problem, a label that unfortunately became a tattoo for his bad reputation.