Don’t get me wrong, the Attitude Era was a defining era in pro wrestling history, it was the cause of the classic Monday Night Wars but do fans excessively talk about it too much? Does the Attitude Era get more credit than what it was worth? Fans dub it as ‘‘greatest era in wrestling history”. There is no question it gave us the best out of the likes of The Rock and Stone Cold whom made their mark in wrestling history. However, there wasn’t many ”classic” wrestling matches captivated. Most of the matches were just plain violence, not implying that I dislike that fact but in terms of 5 star wrestling matches, their weren’t that many. With the violence, came consequence’s. Those consequence’s were severe for some, you want an example? Look at Edge for that example.
A lot of these matches were as I said, pure violence. Sure I love watching violence (Entertainment purposes) on my TV, but as a passionate pro wrestling fan, I care about wrestlers health and their well being. I hate watching wrestlers for a couple of years and all of a sudden they are no longer in physical condition to compete. Edge was a wrestler who would of had at least 10 more years left in him if he hadn’t of taken so many disturbing bumps and knocks. Think of it like this and ask yourself this question, would you of minded seen half the violent matches Edge was in so he would be in better condition and able to compete for a few more years, at least? I sure as hell would of picked half less violent matches, he’s human at the end of the day. Honestly, I loved the violent matches, but the outcomes were lethal for some and disappointing when wrestlers are forced to hang up their boots because of it.
The thing that boils me most about people excessively going on about the Attitude Eea are the stupid internet marks saying ”Fuck PG era, we want Attitude Era back”. I find these people to be irritating to read what they have to say. These are the marks who just want to see violence, violence and some more violence. I question whether they really care about the sport or not. Do they care that those violent Attitude Era matches shortened wrestlers careers and in some cases their lives. The very first thing you want as a wrestling fan or in general as a sports fan is too know wrestlers or athletes are healthy and can compete as long as they possibly can. These internet marks don’t give a fuck about wrestlers health and stuff.
The women. Women wrestling wasn’t even that great in the Attitude Era. Women were used for horny teenagers and horny men to get boners, possibly wank and jizz over them in their fantasy’s. We had Trish, Tori, Sable, Lita running around in scandalous clothing, in pillow fights, bra and panties matches all to get men and teenagers on boners. Fans always complain about the current diva’s division, I agree it is dire and painful to watch sometimes but it wasn’t that great in the Attitude Era either.
Fans make out the Attitude Era was perfect, it wasn’t, there was plenty of dreadful moments too.
Mae Young gave birth to a hand.
The Big Show having pooping problems.
Chris Jericho feuding and losing to Chyna.
Gillberg and the JOB Squad.
Jeff Jarrett feuding and losing to Chyna.
Patterson and Brisco “hulking up” every week.
The Godfather and his “hos”.
Rikishi running down Austin.
Mankind becoming “funny”.
Kane doing crotch chops.
PMS and Meat (Sean Stasiak).
Al Snow, Big Boss Man and the dog “pepper”.
Linda McMahon talking.
Beaver Cleavage.
Steve Blackman talking.
Making Owen Hart the Blue Blazer again.
Not so different after all, are the? Many WWE fans complained about having horrible celebrities in the WWE such as Snooki, Bob Barker etc. Yet they don’t bring up the likes of Mike Tyson and Drew Carey being in the fucking Royal Rumble!
The thing that makes me think it was overrated the most was the fact most of us would of been a kid. Everyone tends to say that this era would of been the best because we were going through that timeline so to say, it was a much simpler time, we had little worries. Money, relationships, family conflict etc all shit like that was irrelevant to worry as you were a kid so you just see that stage of your life as simple. So no matter what happened, nobody could do no wrong. Now we understand the business a lot more, so when something goes wrong, usually it’s due to bad booking or whatever. But back then, we mightn’t of seen that stuff. I’m speaking on the majority here, not everyone of course, but this is pretty much a fact in my opinion.
Okay so I am wrapping this up, if I write more it will be just too negative, I don’t think at all it was a bad era, hell no, it was awesome to watch, but without the swearing, sexual content and violence would it of been as rated as what it is now? People that I come across don’t remember the wrestling during that era, any pro wrestling era should be remembered for what matches they provided us with. But when you try to remember the Attitude Era, how many classic and I mean classic matches can you name/mention from the top of your head, without researching anything? That is my point in all of this.
Before I finish this up, here us a lovely picture you will all adore:
Quite honestly, I believe the majority of people who say they want the AE back, just had the idea that it was awesome planted in their minds. I believe that, bc if older adults have lived through multiple eras, and tend to prefer the pre-AE product. Children don’t know anything about eras, so that leaves teens, who are too young to remember the AE for the most part. You can remember bits here and there, which is true in my case.
Personally, I prefer the Aggression Era; good mix of wrestling and storylines. Plus, it’s when I actually began to comprehend what was happening, and better remember it.
I was going to say something else here, but forgot…man I hate when that happens.
So yeah, I kinda think the AE is over-hyped, however, from a business standpoint, the margins don’t lie.
Anyway, two nit-picky things, that if I don’t point, I’ll explode.
The AE did cause the MNW; was the other way around. Secondly, Vince Russo is not responsible for the AE, bc he is not the cause of business swings.
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I get what you’re saying about the age and all that and I agree, There is storylines that I don’t recall fully and stuff but still know the biggest part of them.
The aggression era was just as good in my book, it was just a tone or two down minus WCW wars.
You mean the AE didn’t? If I wrote it opposite it was just a typo. I know Russo wasn’ responsible.
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I blame Vince Russo… but to be honest. Post Vince Russo has done a lot of crazy ass things. In fact in TNA pre Vince Russo they did crazy things that he gets blamed for even if he’s not in the company.
If you ever see a legit #2 where McMahon begins to sweat, we’ll see the Attitude Era back. Why have it now when there’s no competition? That would just burn fans out.
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”Why have it now when there’s no competition? That would just burn fans out.” this is exactly true, I mentioned that basically in my first column on here.
Russo gets a lot of sack I suppose than what he deserves but he is still in idiot IMO.
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Thanks Ray. I went out on a limb by saying the unpopular thing. I feared getting responses like it should always be the Attitude era every night with trucks and hardcore and blood and rebeling!
Speaking of Russo… I read something that might or might not be true, about how he was getting paid $350,000 a year in 1999 by the WWF. I think I could have that nightmare job for that money. I remember hearing early interviews with him explaining they’d watch the same episodes of Jerry Springer 4x in a row and write the Attitude era based on episodes.
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I still say if the Attitude Era had happened with the net around, it would’ve never gotten as big as it did. Change in fans>change in booking.
http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/columns/212820/Shining-a-Spotlight-12.01.11:-Cynical-Minds.htm
That explains a ton.
Also, because this is just too awesome.
http://www.411mania.com/wrestling/news/212991/%5BPHOTO%5D-John-Cena-Sports-a-New-Look-in-Japan.htm
🙂
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I sincerely hope he will not be wearing that for the next 10 years 😦
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Those pants were big in the 90’s and are still big in Japan. That’s why he wore them.
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I don’t know why so many people try to suggest that the Attitude Era might be overrated. That’s the era in which the WWE made the most money. You can’t dispute that it was a very popular era and it was uncool if you WEREN’T a wrestling fan. When I was in 6th grade, it seemed like almost my entire class were hardcore WWF fans.
“The thing that makes me think it was overrated the most was the fact most of us would of been a kid.”
That’s somewhat true. Old people will insist that the music they grew up listening to is a lot better than today’s music. And Star Wars fans will never like any of the new Star Wars movies because they saw the old movies when they were younger.
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To my knowledge Ray is the only one to have brought it up. I love the Attitude era too. It has its flaws just like every era or ever wrestling company. You can’t argue with the 6.0+ ratings RAW was getting compared to the 3.4s its getting now. Even WCW in its dying days still managed to get a 3.0+.
But the Aittitude era did raise the bar just like the 80s raised the bar and the early 90s were very meh. Bret, Shawn, Razor & Diesel were great… but Goon, Mantaur, Knuckleball Shwartz weren’t.
And yes everyone will be nostalgiac for their glory days of when something was new and fresh. I started watching wrestling post Hogan era with Bret, Shawn, 1-2-3 Kid, Razor, Perfect… but I don’t think that was the greatest era.
I also think having the Internet as a glaring reminder to everything doesn’t help either. Why watch Jeff Hardy now when you can see his greatest matches on Youtube?
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In terms of how successful it was I’m not disagreeing that, because it is a fact it was most successful, but I just think they were ‘lucky’ so to speak that they were that successful, if that was based on just wrestling and stuff excluding the violence, would it of been successful? My problem with it was it just didn’t give many memorable matches compared to the praise it gets.
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Godfather was awesome…and over!!!
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I might watch that tonight, own it on DVD 🙂
I have been in Dublin last 2 days, back home now, I brought my laptop but didn’t get much time to use it.
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I still haven’t seen that movie.
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@Workmacer: Regarding Russo: I don’t think I’d believe that TBH, like would the wrestlers of even earned that much back then? I know Rock and Austin would of gotten a fair bit but IDK.
That’s true, in the example you said about Hardy, same goes for all the others too, that could be one of TNA’s biggest problems, recycling old WCW and/or WWE wrestlers just makes them less competitive.
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While that’s true about Impact using old WWE/WCW wrestlers, wrestlers would bounce back and forth all the time between WWE and WCW. Luger was WCW-WWE-WCW. Flair was WCW-WWE-WCW-WWE-IMPACT. Steiner was WCW-WWE-WCW-WWE-Impact. Hogan was WWE-WCW-WWE-Impact. This isn’t new, it’s just that there is a forum in the internet that allows people to air complaints.
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That’s true but not what I was saying, they were at ‘war’, trying to kill each other for ratings back then , wrestlers weren’t washed up or recyclables like they’re being used in TNA now, examples are Hogan, Flair. Hardy’s even in TNA.
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Nash- WCW-WWE-WCW-WWE-TNA-WWE
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Wrestlers would be paid less than someone who works for the company 24/7. I’m sure Jim Ross, Michael Cole and John Laurenitus get paid more than the mid carders. In coming up with my booking, it takes hours to come up with week by week storylines. Then actually writing out scripts takes longer. Plus who else can keep up with the schedule? It’s a hellish job or so the former writers would have you believe.
I’ve always posted on Dixie’s page to push home grown workers so when we see Roode, AJ, Storm, and so on and want to see their best of matches, we buy TNA DVDs and not WWE. We wear TNA T-shirts to their shows and not old WWE T-Shirts of Ken Anderson, RVD or Hardy.
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I see where you’re coming from and you are probably right but I am still unsure. I know that the writers and back-room staff would do more work than the wrestlers in a week but it is the wrestlers than sell the tickets, merchandise, attract sponsorships etc so IDK really if Russo would of gotten that much, not saying you’re wrong BTW.
That’s a very good point, altough I have never been to a TNA show yet, I do understand what you’re saying. I think TNA are afraid to ‘trust’ their home grown stars or something, IDK. They always seem to want to depend on ex WWE stars.
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Ummmm… I agree and disagree in some ways. On the one hand I agree that it was more violent and that’s why many people liked it. But at the same time that’s what people are into. Sure it’s not the best “wrestling” but it’s entertaining and I think if WWE are looking for ratings and entertainment over wrestling which at the moment I feel they’re trying to do then maybe they should take some advice from the Attitude Era.
Secondly, one of the reasons the Attitude Era was so widely praised was down to one fact: the wrestlers. No one is replacing or going to replace the likes of -The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H (in prime), Undertaker, Kane, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho so on and so forth! No one in today’s WWE is as good on the mic as some of those guys mentioned in the list.
I think comparing the two eras; Attitude vs PG there’s always only going to be one winner. It’s kind of unfair to compare and contrast each of the eras because they are SO different.
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I understand where you’re coming from but I’m not comparing eras, I’m just talking about the Attitude Era only. The AE happened because it had to, people wanted to see more violence than the other brand etc. Each brand just did what they had to do to be the dominant brand to have the upper hand on each other. Wrestling quality was forgotten about sadly. The AE got a lot of fans in, but I think they are sports entertainment fans but not fully wrestling fans.
Like a wrestling fan would watch a lot of Indy wrestling, if a fan just watches WWE and TNA then IMO they are sport entertainment fans. The violence, sex appealing women etc got fans in to just watch it and not care about the wrestling quality.
Rock is a born wrestler, he knows it inside out, not so much with Austin but he can still pull off a great match.
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Oh no I didn’t mean you were comparing I just mean that I also dislike how people are like, “PG sux let’s get the attitude era back” cos at the end of the day they’re both very different. I think if people keep comparing it with Attitude Era then they will most likely be disappointed 9 out of 10 times they compare.
I agree with what you say, any wrestling fan watches and reads about the other promotions. ROH is my favourite promotion outside of WWE, I think they’re talent is great. Also on the subject of this did you hear Evolve and DGUSA are merging? Pretty cool.
And on the subject of The Rock.. My opinion of him has weakened a bit after I read an article where Punk slated The Rock because he’s a huge hollywood diva now whereby he didn’t speak with any talents backstage and went from limo to his own dressing room to the ring, back to the dressing room and then straight to the limo. If what Punk is saying is true & I do believe him then The Rock’s a bit of a bitch. I mean, isn’t it standard wrestler code to greet and meet everyone in the locker room? Especially those higher up? He’s clearly got an ego now… Which is sad. Veteran/Legend or not he should still stick to showing respect which he didn’t show.
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@ Ray: They weren’t at “war’ in the early 90’s when Flair, Luger, Steiner, went from WCW to WWE. What Impact is doing isn’t new at all.
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Okay, but those guys weren’t washed up back then, they still had it, still interesting to watch.
Look at TNA now, who is interested to see Hogan, Hardy, Flair, Matt Hardy etc? No offence to any of them but I’m just not interested to see what happens and stuff with them.
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Hogan is the biggest name in wrestling, ever. He did have worth.
Flair could’ve been used as a mentor.
Matt Hardy had value, but got pretty messed up.
Jeff was in his prime. When he left WWE, he was possably the 2nd most over face behind Cena.
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@J: Nash, yes I agree but he is an exception that is in WWE now. I was talking about why TNA are not being competitive, they feature (some, maybe too many) that we seen the best of them in their prime before.
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@Capt. Yes, that is all true but right now, none of them are in their prime not what they used to be.
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Right now. But when they hired them is a different story.
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Good point. That’s true.
I’m not sure if Lucas will be posting up his HIWBI column this week so not sure if anything else will be posted today.
I’m going sleep now so TTTYL 🙂
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Night Night Ray!
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@Ryan. Regarding The Rock. I know you love Punk and all but Rock isn’t on a full term contract for WWE, IMO only Vince and Rock know how much he is getting, maybe one or two more do but I’d say it is not known how much Rock actually gets, it could be quite low. Rock’s I Bring It t-shirt, all of those proceeds went to charity and stuff. But fact is, Rock doesn’t have to be there to greet them, as he said he’d been up since 3AM, he was working all the time, and it is true because he did tweet that early and shit like he said in that RAW promo. Anyway, as a fan you shouldn’t care to much what goes on backstage in certain ways, like we still saw him, he still entertained, who cares if he didn’t have time to greet some superstars backstage? I don’t think Rock owes anything to anybody.
About Evolve and DGUSA, I didn’t know that, rarely watch any of those promotions but merging would be the best thing for them IMO.
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I love Punk but Rockie is one of my all time favourites, he was my favourite from the attitude era and will always entertain me. But I do care what goes on backstage. These guys and gals are still humans at the end of the day and if one of them is being a dick to others and practically ignoring them then I have a problem with liking them as a person and when I don’t like someone as a person I tend not to like them full stop. The Rock only done a few shows, whereas the rest of the locker room are on the road constantly yet they give time to each other. What sort of company would Vince be running if no one communicated with each other? Or think of this, what would it be like if none of the wrestling rambles staff talked amongst themselves on this and on twitter? It’d be pretty suckish. Just because the Rock is a movie star now and can headline an event at the clap of his hand doesn’t mean he has to be a dick about it. It all comes down to respect at the end of the day, and if you’re looking some you better give some out also. No one respects a jackass.
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Yeah, I do hope Rock tones it down the more he’s backstage.
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I saw the “Rise and Fall of ECW” today. Good stuff. Makes me wish ECW was still around (the “original” ECW not WWECW.
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I should try watch that, never seen it before. I saw Rise and Fall of WCW, though.
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Is Punk Jesus? Why is he glowing?
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Because he’s meant to stand out 😛
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3D Punk? I’ll pass.
3D Divas? Yes, please!
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haha, that banner is just there until our new logo is made by Clare, hopefully it’ll be read soon!
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The best banner is Bruce.
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Bruce? What does that mean?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_(comics)
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PAHA that was a good one capt! 🙂
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ah, lol.
I’m going out for a bit, be back later!
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Yeah, I gotta leave. Peace.
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@ ry3694: I do my best…and usually fail.
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