The Attitude Era

[Coffey]

Despite being the most popular era in wrestling, featuring the Monday Night Wars & some of the biggest stars ever in Goldberg, Rock & Austin, am I crazy if I think that the Attitude Era did more harm than good for the industry as a whole? Because when I read about people talking fondly about the era, they're always talking about only the peaks, remembering the highs, never remembering the valleys, or the lows. It's always talking about the nWo, or Austin Vs. McMahon, or Foley Vs. The Rock. Where's all the remembering of Beaver Cleavage, or B.B. the nurse?

 

But to me, it's not even really about the talent, or the matches. It's about the long-term implications that the era had on not only the fans but on modern wrestling as well. There's a reason that WWE keeps going back to stars of the past. There's a reason why fans still give a shit about the ratings. There's a reason why WWE '13 features an "attitude" mode & why people point to a lack of blood or TV-PG as potential problems.

 

So, without me writing too much initially, just to get this topic going, what are you views and opinions on the Attitude Era and the Monday Night Wars. How do you think they impacted wrestling & what do you think are the lingering effects that we're still feeling today?

[Sean Liska]

Look at the financial state of American pro wrestling in 93-95, and look at WWE now. It gave WWE a level of stability and security never before seen by a wrestling company. The wrestlers are making tons of money. If you want to say that it was bad because it caused WCW to go out of business, then that's fair. But 2000 was one of WWE's best ever years from a quality standpoint, coming right at the end of the Attitude run, so it's not like the era made it impossible to do good wrestling.

[Ricky Jackson]

I think the beginning of the Attitude Era was a great time to be a wrestling fan, with an energy and enthusiasm in the air on a weekly basis that nothing has come remotely close to recapturing since. So much of the fun of the 97-98 years was watching wrestling change from the mostly stale cartoon it had become back into what it had once been, with the amped up violence and adult-oriented content. There was also the intrigue of kayfabe being broken and the new, faster paced, high spot ring style, as well as all the new stars emerging like Austin, the Rock, Foley, etc. You had three promotions, each with their own unique features. It was cool and it was really fun, beacuse all of my friends were into wrestling too, which is the last time I could say that. But with each passing year, for me anyway, it became less and less fun and more and more stupid (yeah, an oxymoron, but you know what I mean), and I began to rapidly lose interest, to the point I was all but done as a fan by the end of 2001.

 

Today, it`s hard for me to watch wrestling from the Attitude Era because so much of the interest in it at the time was in the shock and surprise factor of the weekly TV, and removed from that context there doesn`t seem to be much weight to a lot of the content. I much prefer watching stuff from the 70s, 80s and early 90s.

 

I know this doesn`t really answer the impact and effects question. I guess for fans like us who mostly romanticize the pre-Attitude Era days of wrestling, one could say the Attitude Era killed off the territory-style of wrestling we love. For Vince and the gang, the Attitude Era was the greatest thing that ever happened. For a lot of fans it was the era of wrestling that got them hooked in the first place and will always be fondly remembered. I think I`ll leave it to others to give serious debate to how it has impacted modern wrestling.

[JerryvonKramer]

- Monthly PPVs

- Star vs. star matches every week on TV

- 5-6 hours+ of free wrestling on TV every week

- The prominence of GMs

- Divas

- The death of kayfabe

 

Depends on if you think these are all good things or bad things.

 

I think they are mostly bad things, naturally.

[El-P]

The Attitude era was what drove me out of watching WWF for good, plain and simple. It was great fun in 1996 and 1997, up to mid-98, then became complete shit when it really became "The Attitude era" in early 1999. Vince Russo at the helm, shit wrestling, no good match, stupid angles, horrible booking and mindless T&A. Of course it got much better and eventually mostly fun once Russo left and WCW guys flew in in early 2000, but the peak of "Attitude era" was 1999, and it was really terrible. The peak of WWF "artistically" was really the rise of Austin, Austin vs Bret feud, USA vs Canada, early DX and early Austin vs Mr. McMahon (with Foley as Dude Love). Summer of 1996 to Summer of 1998. And it was mostly the main event scene, as most of the undercard wasn't really good, whereas WCW had this unbelievable roster then which allowed great undercards, with the hot nWo on top.

[goc]

Because when I read about people talking fondly about the era, they're always talking about only the peaks, remembering the highs, never remembering the valleys, or the lows. It's always talking about the nWo, or Austin Vs. McMahon, or Foley Vs. The Rock. Where's all the remembering of Beaver Cleavage, or B.B. the nurse?

This is true of pretty much ever fondly remembered promotion/era though. When people talk about how great Memphis was they aren't talking about Ta-Gar Lord of the Volcano or the Christmas Creature. Nobody is waxing nostalgic about Master Gee in Mid-South or Al Madril in World Class. I'm sure people who've seen more 90s All Japan, ECW, and "golden-era" RoH than me could list examples of crappy things that get passed over when people talk about how much better wrestling was back then than it is now.

[El-P]

1999 in WWF barely had any good wrestling at all. It's not exactly like people forgetting about midget matches on Zenjo cards that had three ****+ matches on top or comedy matches on AJ Budokan openers. The Attitude Era was a shitty period for wrestling. The early MNW was great, but when it switched to "Attitude", it was unbearable. At the same time Nash was killing WCW and ECW got really boring. Turned me off US wrestling.

[Loss]

It was enjoyable for a while in the same way way junk food is enjoyable for a while.

[tim]

Aside from liking it when I was like 10 years old I'll say this: about 3 years ago I got the inclination to watch all RAWs from the beginning of 1998 to Wrestlemania, and it was definitely fun viewing. I did skip through a couple especially shitty segments, but it really was very exciting programming. In that time frame at least.

[Moonsault Marvin]

I think one of the worst things to come out of the Attitude Era was the death of the short promo. Prior to the Attitude Era, the most a guy would talk would be two or three minutes in an interview or on one of the talk segments like Brother Love or The Barber Shop. The shows like Superstars or Wrestling Challenge would give wrestlers from top to bottom of the roster a chance to talk in the back against the wall promos in the Event Center. The change to the long promos was okay at first when it was guys as talented as Austin or the Rock, but the lesser guys that took over after them like HHH and Cena couldn't pull it off. The lower wrestlers get little promo time to establish themselves and really only get to talk in the comedy skits. Look at guys like Dolph Ziggler who are good in the ring, but badly need to get more week to week experience talking because they don't have a chance when they are thrown out there in one of those 10 minute or longer opening promos.

[Johnny Sorrow]

It was enjoyable for a while in the same way way junk food is enjoyable for a while.

It was fun as hell to watch stoned to be honest. And there was the whole "I can't fucking believe this" feeling for those of us who had grown up watching WWF from late Backlund on.

[JerryvonKramer]

The thing with breaking rules and taboos is that you can only do it once and then they are broken.

 

The genie is out of the bottle now, so wrestling itself is in a sense broken.

 

Re: long promos they used to do pretty long ones in NWA. I agree though, the old short blue screen promo was a major part of the 80s era boom's success.

[El-P]

I think one of the worst things to come out of the Attitude Era was the death of the short promo.

Agreed. another thing, that Jesse Ventura talked about in his shoot interview, is how he hates the modern setting of two guys facing each other in the ring (or one at the top of the ramp) arguing back and forth. I totally agree, it's so systematic and boring, and there's no teasing for a physical confrontation because they are always together in the same place aruguing back and forth and making bad jokes like a bunch of geeks on a wrestling messageboard. I'm amazed at how well the South Park wrestling episode nailed it. These aren't wrestling promos, it's "acting", or it's supposed to be at least. Sure, there was a bunch of goofy vignettes with "acting" in the 80's, but the current WWE is basically based on "acting", and the best exemple I can think of are the ridiculous Shawn Michaels matches again Flair "Sorry, I love you" and the HHH vs Taker match from last year, which as the apex of the concept of a wrestling match as a WWE movie. And I find it unbearable.

When you go back and compare that to the Jerry Lawler vs Bret Hart match at Summerslam, which was also based on an angle and a long Lawler promo involving the Hart family at ringside, these are two totally different beasts. One is contrived overscripted acted self-epic conscious match, the other one is classic wrestling promo + screwjob (Doink) + heated brawl + post-match angle. One was god awful and laughable to me, the other remains one of the greatest moment of 90's WWF.

[JerryvonKramer]

This actually relates to another thing, not often discussed. Back in the day, you could go weeks without seeing Hogan on TV. Not every member of the roster was present on every show. So if a guy cuts a promo on someone else, chances are that he's not there that day. Two men in a feud could feasibly go months without encountering each other until the big PPV blow off.

 

Every short blue-screen promo or every time that person appeared on camera at all, someone would make a point of mentioning the fact that he was locked in a feud with someone else. You could tease things for a significant period of time. And you could build to a match.

 

All of that is lost pretty much instantly as soon as you get the scenario you describe. It worked for a grand total of one angle (Austin vs. McMahon). By the time -uh, you get-uh, to the-uh, fifteen-uh minute promos from fucking HHH week after week the concept of the long opening promo that sets up the main arc for the 2 or 3 hours of tv you're about to watch is already ruined.

 

But the fact that structure exists proves a mentality: they aren't booking to the end of a PPV blow-off, they are booking to the end of that week's RAW. This sort of thing seeps its way into mainstream TV writing as well. Did anyone watch Heroes? By season 3 or 4 it's already clear the writers are just writing to the end of that weeks episode, not to the finale. It's terribly frustrating.

[NintendoLogic]

It has occurred to me that the current WWE product is the spiritual successor of Bischoff's Nitro more than it is of that era's Raw. I'll go into more detail once I've fleshed it out a bit more.

[Victator]

It's always talking about the nWo, or Austin Vs. McMahon, or Foley Vs. The Rock. Where's all the remembering of Beaver Cleavage, or B.B. the nurse?

Those never occupied much airtime. Beaver Cleavage did not ever last a full three weeks. The debut match with Christian was actually a good TV match with both guys working hard.

[Coffey]

- Monthly PPVs

- Star vs. star matches every week on TV

- 5-6 hours+ of free wrestling on TV every week

- The prominence of GMs

- Divas

- The death of kayfabe

 

Depends on if you think these are all good things or bad things.

I think that the majority of these are problematic but not all of them. Divas are fine, whether they're wrestling or eye candy. Female valets have always pretty much been a staple of American wrestling. I don't care about that. Overexposure is definitely a real thing though, as are the star vs. star matches as I think they tie-in to one another. When you have that much programming to fill, and you don't really run jobber matches, you burn through all of your potential PPV matches very quickly. Hell even if you didn't give away things on free TV, there's so much PPV a year you would still run through it all fairly quickly.

 

The death of kayfabe is harder to gauge for me, honestly. With the internet being so big now, I think that was inevitable. Granted wrestlers didn't have to agree to do shoot interviews or have Twitter accounts but I don't think the industry could have really done anything to stop it completely.

 

The authority figure is one of my biggest complaints about the shows. Yes, before the Mr. McMahon character, we still had authority figureheads, like President Jack Tunney but we didn't have the entire focus of the company based around him, like they did with Mr. McMahon, Eric Bischoff or even A.J. Lee. Now it has become such a booking crutch that I don't think WWE would know how to write TV without being able to use it. "How can we set up a match without a GM announcing it!?" It's like everyone went fucking retarded.

 

As S.L.L. said in the Current WWE thread, & Loss & others have said in the past, I think the biggest problem is that nothing means shit. Wins/Losses don't matter. Titles don't matter. Feuds don't matter. The shows themselves don't matter. I can't even tell the difference between the last eight Wrestlemania shows. I literally had to look them up to see what the card for them even was & after reading them, I STILL don't remember them. Just complete waste of time. I sure as shit still remember like Wrestlemania 3-8...but I can't remember the non-main event card from last year? Really? That says more about WWE than it does about me. Randy Orton won a 3-way, beating John Cena & Triple H in the same match to win a top title. Who knew!? I sure as fuck don't remember that...and I watched it live. Hell, I just looked it up a couple of hours ago & if I had to take a quiz, I would still have to guess which 'Mania it was on.

 

Those never occupied much airtime. Beaver Cleavage did not ever last a full three weeks. The debut match with Christian was actually a good TV match with both guys working hard.

But those we're just examples. You do understand the point, let's not try to act like you don't. You want me to name more examples? It's not about each one specifically, or individually, it's about all of them collectively. For every Steve Austin beer bath, there's a GTV or "Choppy choppy your pee-pee." Hell, I would argue that the bad far outweighs the good. Pretty Mean Sisters featuring Meat? Naked Mideon? Hell, half the shit people have forgotten about completely because they've blocked it out. They'll remember Trish barking like a dog because it gets brought up a lot. The J.O.B. Squad? Gillberg? The Oddities featuring Golga & his Eric Cartman South Park doll. What about Los Boricuas feuding with D.O.A.? Or Shane McMahon being the toughest kid on the block bringing in the Mean Street Posse? Kane telling people to "suck it" with a voice box. Who can forget Puke!? Or The Truth Commission? The Godfather's Ho: former Hardcore Champion.

[Victator]

I don't think half of those were really bad. Job Squad, Gilberg and the Oddities were entertaining undercard acts. Whose segments rarely went long, usually get in and get out.

 

GTV on its own was not a bad idea, just sucks it never had a payoff. Shane and the Posse were fine at the time. Shane was at least playing a chickenshit and had morphed into a Tommy Dreamer tribute band.

 

Kane and Pac were a good team and the segments were good more often than they were bad.

[Death From Above]

Biggest mistake Vince ever made was winning, buying all the brands... then putting them all on TV as if he still was competing for ratings hotshots with all that TV every week.

 

Whole point in having multiple "brands" within WWE should be creating a little sub-region you can go hide guys who need gimmick re-tooling, are burned out with the audience from being seen every single week on TV, or just plain suck and need time to learn. Something out of the national spotlight like a AAA team that airs on regional TV in Florida (and on web tv for the overestimated numbers that might watch that), or whatever. Something more RoH-sized, I suppose, where you can keep guys employed, put your green workers, whatever.

 

I still think it's completely insane they don't have this in place.

[Al]

I'm probably in a minority in thinking their biggest problem is not their booking, but simply that they lost a LOT of top level talent. Austin and Rock retired, Undertaker is virtually tired, Triple H is semi-retired (actually, that makes it better), Batista is gone, Eddie Guerrero died, etc. Wrestling simply hasn't produced the top level talent to replace them. Now, a lot of that does fall on WWE's shoulders. But there's no one else right now really producing top talent in wrestling, and you just can't replace someone of Steve Austin's caliber.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Biggest mistake Vince ever made was winning, buying all the brands... then putting them all on TV as if he still was competing for ratings hotshots with all that TV every week.

 

Whole point in having multiple "brands" within WWE should be creating a little sub-region you can go hide guys who need gimmick re-tooling, are burned out with the audience from being seen every single week on TV, or just plain suck and need time to learn. Something out of the national spotlight like a AAA team that airs on regional TV in Florida (and on web tv for the overestimated numbers that might watch that), or whatever. Something more RoH-sized, I suppose, where you can keep guys employed, put your green workers, whatever.

 

I still think it's completely insane they don't have this in place.

They do, it's NXT.

[anarchistxx]

I still think the Attitude Era is the finest moment of weekly wrestling programming. It felt exciting, live, must-see television, managing to be unpredictable and compelling, something you talked about excitedly at school the next day. I watched the episode of Raw with the famous ten man tag from early 2000 and it was fantastic - the promos were great, the matches were good enough, everything was extremely fast moving, there was no dead space on air. The entire roster was over, there was a lot of variety, everyone had a unique look and style. Look at the tag team lineup;

 

- Hardy Boyz

- Dudley Boys

- Edge and Christian

- APA

- New Age Outlaws

- Too Cool

- Funaki/Michinoku

- T + A

 

All over, all different, all easily identifiable, all appealing to different segments of the audience. Compare that with the cardboard cut outs you get today. So yeah, I love WWF from 1997-2001 in terms of being compelling television. I'm not sure how well it would all hold up if I decided to watch it back to back, although I've enjoyed reminiscing with friends watching small segments. Part of it is nostalgia, sure, but not all of it.

 

Depends what you want from your wrestling, I suppose. There is plenty of silliness and the odd dreadful angle or appalling match (and plenty of bland wrestling in 1999 especially before guys like Benoit and Jericho jumped). As the type of person who'd much rather watch a garbage TLC match from 2000 than an acclaimed territory match from the 80s, as someone who likes hot angles and good promos and compelling characters and matches with a lot of heat, I really like it.

 

As for its effects in the long run it's harder to say. On the one hand, without it WWF/E might not even be in business anymore, and certainly wouldn't exist in the form that we know it. Whether that's a good or a bad thing depends entirely on perception. In terms of actual content perhaps it has had a negative effect.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think WWF was much better booked week-to-week between say 86 and 89 than it was in the Attitude Era. The Hogan booking arc from the Andre feud to the Warrior feud is, in my view, purely from a booking / tv-storyline perspective stronger than the Austin run and then the Corporate-Ministry blah blah stuff that followed it.

 

Something that is forgotten about 80s WWF, is how much NON-WRESTLING stuff was on TV. TNT and PrimeTime were essentially non-wrestling, angle-heavy shows. They advanced a lot of stories not through matches but vignettes and promos and through Heenan/ Monsoon / McMahon / Ventura. Incidental jobber matches were just part of that overall character development. The art of the slow burn. Look at how they developed the Mr. Perfect character over a period of months compared to how they developed someone like ... I dunno Val Venis? It's long-term booking vs. short-term week-to-week booking.

 

I must admit though, like everyone else, I was hooked on RAW from 1998-2001.

[El-P]

I dunno Val Venis?

The Val Venis vs Dustin Runnels/Goldust feud is the perfect exemple of how nonsensical everything was back then, with a complete ignorance on how to define a heel and a face that people are supposed to care for. Russo said it best in his "Guest Booker" interview : "Heel or face ? I don't care, as long as I get ratings." The Val Venis character as a whole was really embarrassing.

[fakeplastictrees]

WWE and TNA still operate as if a 'war' is on-going despite it ending well over a decade ago. The Attitude Era produced a myraid of people within the business with a type of Pro Wrestling PTSD. For years Vince Russo continued to book TNA at a break-neck pace as if a large number of wrestling fans were flipping between Impact and whatever program Russo and company wanted to use as an excuse that week for the low numbers. The WWE's Mr. Mcmahon character became the Villian With A Thousand Faces within the WWE parable. Both WWE and TNA have also continued to throw out big money matches on their free shows, while ECW had no less then a million reunion shows. These are signs of a product stuck in the past and unwilling to change (on a large scale) for the future due to fear, paranoia,aversive anxiety-related experiences, and Hypervigilance brought about due to "The Monday Night War". I do not believe that anyone can keep a straight face and tell me that the Vince or his croonies have NOT come out, in some way, pyschologically scared from that time.

 

Wrestling was at a fever high in the late 90's so giving away Hogan/Goldberg and Rock/Austin away for free on Monday Nights could be justified. The same cannot be said today as the war has ended and it is not peace time. The boom is over. The majority of fans have left and are never coming back. It took YEARS for TNA to finally realize this and SLOW DOWN THEIR SHOW and not give EVERYTHING away on free TV (though they still give away 95%). I think they only way wrestling as a whole will move away from that era and heal their PSTD is by not associating with anyone from that era ever again. Bookers, writers, producers, directors, everyone must go. Also there will need to be another major wrestling company that is all about creating their own identity because right now everyone is looking up (toward WWE) for inspiration and the last boom period occured when everyone was looking at each other and themselves for inspiration. Wrestling is going to continue to 'hurt' for a period of time because a lot of promoters are looking at the most sucessful wrestling promotion of all time for inspriation (and overall product guidance), and inturn are modeling themselves after the myraids in the WWE office that still suffer from PWPTSD caused from their involvement with The Attitude Era.