Real talk: Attitude Era wasn't that good

[The Electric Lady]

When I say Attitude Era, I mean WCW AND WWF.

At the time, it was fun, because we had different sensibilities and it was hot and popular.

But looking back at WWF Attitude Era ppvs, AE was pretty crap outside of the main event, WCW Cruiserweight division, and WWF tag team division, and even that was highly flawed. How many times did Mankind and Rock exchange the belt to make it lose all of its value? Almost everything ending with a run in, the blatant sexism, stupid storylines that had no end, the vulgarity, inflated egos, and "exxxtreme" nature made it pretty bad. WCW was even worse. NWO storyline went to shyt, World Orders always popping up every week, the same old wrestlers main eventing, finger poke of death, fukking up Goldberg's run, the whole gamut.

Going through the catalog, 80's NWA and Golden Era WWF were much, much better.

1998-2001 were very middling years of wrestling, looking back on it, and so many things were done to make sure the business would never be resurrected in terms of general popularity ever again.

The Attitude Era does not deserve the modern accolades it has garnered and deserves to rest in the pages of history. When people compare today's wrasslin to AE, I want to because today's wrestling has a far better in ring quality, and the only thing they need to work on are storylines.

I forgot to mention another relic of the AE. Hardcore wrestling. Pure unmitigated hillbilly Hardcore wrestling sucks.

 

[Swiggy]

In hindsight, this argument can definitely be made. But breh, being in the middle of that movement, Austin, nWo, Rock, DX

 

[The Electric Lady]

In hindsight, this argument can definitely be made. But breh, being in the middle of that movement, Austin, nWo, Rock, DX

Agreed.

 

[jadillac]

80's & 90's WWF ages better b/c it wasn't trying to be cutting edge. It was just smooth, you can watch long ass WM 6 all the way thru b/c it flowed well.

Attitude era, and I'm speaking for WWF b/c personally I always thought WCW in that era was borderline trash, was good but it clearly focused too much on the main events and again, it tried to be too cutting edge. In fairness, it had to be cutting edge b/c ppl were tired of lame tradtional gimmicks, so it worked. The rebellion, the crotch chopping, sexuality with the Divas, etc.

But in retrospect, that's not going to sustain a company long-term and THAT'S why we're in the PG-era now.

Overall, I'd say it was 50/50 good & bad. The good stuff is still good.

 

[Dog Based Gremlin]

so no love for the TLC matches, a pretty entertaining Hardcore title division, cruiserweights in WCW, technical matches with Benoit vs Booker, etc, and a Who's Who of Legends each week on WWE and WCW, no part timer

 

[Ed MOTHEREFFING G]

the biggest draw in the entire history of wrestling was "tough guy that you can't beat up" or "hero that defeats the bad guy that you want to see lose"

the attitude era did that better than any era ever

"tough guy that you can't beat up" - Austin, Goldberg, Taz, Dudleys, Taker
"hero that defeats the bad guy that you want to see lose" - Austin, Rock, Mankind, Sting, RVD, MIKEY WHIPWRECK, Taz


Thats what made the era best IMO. They took the core parts of wrestling, added the stuff you discussed on top of it, had two of the the 3-4 best storylines EVER running at once, and made an awesome era of watching.

Now the few people who fit those two molds, like Daniel Bryan, get over like insanity.

 

[llt23]

Yeah WCW sucked during that era, but everyone knew that. People only watched WCW for the cruiserweights. I know the ratings war is highly publicised with WCW crapping on WWF for a couple of years, but I remember in school everyone just talked about WWF. Those storylines were what we cared about. Nash and Hall were cool for a minute, but they werent Bret and Shawn. Only thing that made WCW cool aside from the cruiserweights was the video games.

Of course in hindsight some of the stuff sucked. But i still look back on it pretty fondly. There was a good amount of talent and tons of legends. And any era that broke Austin and the Rock deserves to be mentioned in the upper echelon. Those guys are bigger than Hogan at this point, arguably. For me though, after Shawn left, and a few months of trying to ride the DX train without him, I gave up and only watched sporadically til I finally just stopped completely. So there definitely is some merit to it sucking I guess.

And golden era WWF is a snoozefest once any match actually takes place. Promos were awesome, but the wrestling was trash outside of the hart foundation and the rockers

 

[Momentum]

The product was never better than Ruthless Aggression IMO.

 

[Riley Escobar]

I wouldn't go that far, as 2000 was probably one of the best years they ever had in terms of talent, storylines and match quality but:

http://www.thecoli.com/threads/real-talk-most-of-raw-in-1999-was-fukking-garbage.75674

 

[Big Jo]

I do think the Attitude era gets put on a pedestal, but nostalgia will do that to just about anything

I prefer the late 80s/ early 90s WWF by a big margin myself. There was something magical about that time in wrestling that will never be re-created

That said, it's really just a matter of your personal opinion. And we always remember things as better than they were

 

[The Electric Lady]

so no love for the TLC matches, a pretty entertaining Hardcore title division, cruiserweights in WCW, technical matches with Benoit vs Booker, etc, and a Who's Who of Legends each week on WWE and WCW, no part timer

I gave cruiserweight division love. I trashed the hardcore division.

 

[Swiggy]

the biggest draw in the entire history of wrestling was "tough guy that you can't beat up" or "hero that defeats the bad guy that you want to see lose"

the attitude era did that better than any era ever

"tough guy that you can't beat up" - Austin, Goldberg, Taz, Dudleys, Taker
"hero that defeats the bad guy that you want to see lose" - Austin, Rock, Mankind, Sting, RVD, MIKEY WHIPWRECK, Taz


Thats what made the era best IMO. They took the core parts of wrestling, added the stuff you discussed on top of it, had two of the the 3-4 best storylines EVER running at once, and made an awesome era of watching.

Now the few people who fit those two molds, like Daniel Bryan, get over like insanity.

Ed just dropped the forward for an introductory to the history of pro wrestling book

 

[Slystallion]

I was a young teen when the attitude era was going down and to be honest I recall missing the days of Hogan Warrior and Savage and even the new generation period of Bret Razor Taker Lex Yoko Shawn era at the time because I felt the attitude era was filled with cheap catch phrases and cheap pops because they were allowed to be risque with the content

some of the stuff was awful with Jerry Lawler talking about puppies, but when it was good it was really good especially when it came to Austin and Rock on the mic or Hall and Nash showing up on Nitro not to mention crowds were really alive and engaged and storylines had some cool twists like that Vince McMahon it was me all along but the wrestling was mostly brawling spotfests with broken announcer tables and chairs and every now and then a cool shane mcmahon kurt angle or jeff hardy spot

I remember WCW trying to have a struggle attitude with Vince Russo and creating the new blood vs the F*ck you new blood led by Hulk Hogan against Kidman....WTF

 

[Big Jo]

oh and what I actually hated about the attitude era was that everybody and their mother became a wrestling fan overnight

all the sudden people with no real knowledge of the sport were acting like they had been watching it for years. i'll never forget the idiot in middle school who told me the new age outlaws won the tag titles at wrestlemania 5. this was before the internet was really popping off so i literally brought my PWI almanac to school the next day just to show him he was a dumbass

 

[Ed MOTHERFUCKING G]

Hardcore was fun as a break in the show when done right. Ecw style new jack fukkery was too much but the 24/7 spike dudley crash holly is legit some of the best tv theyve ever had