As a long-time observer of the WWE product, and a man in his late-20s, I’ve grown accustomed to the statement, “Back in the Attitude Era…” which was followed with nothing but positive comments.
To be honest, I am about as guilty as anyone else when it comes to this crime.
Val Venis had his member chopped off by Kaientai, or Mae Young giving birth to a hand? Big deal. We’ll point out the dozens upon dozens of terrible backstage segments in the month of April alone. The Attitude Era had more amazing moments than it did bad ones, unlike the current product, which routinely put out the mental strainer in an attempt to collect a single good thing about last week’s show through all the negative diarrhoea.
But then I asked myself, “What exactly do you remember from the Attitude Era, Shawn?”
Of course there’s the automatic names like Stone Cold Steve Austin, embarrassing Vince McMahon every week, The Rock, and his runs with the Nation of Domination and the Corporation, D-Generation X and their juvenile jokes about the male genitalia, and the battle between The Undertaker and Kane, with the late Paul Bearer observing on the sidelines and adding fuel to the fire.
Funny side note: There was that hilarious image of The Rock and his fanny pack that went somewhat viral on social media recently that got more than it’s fair share of laughs and mild jokes. You know who else wore a fanny pack, on Raw, no less? Stone Cold Steve Austin. Yeah, that’s right. Chugging beers, kicking asses, and wearing fanny packs.
Well, that does it. Dean Ambrose is great, and his build to be a Stone Cold-like character is working, but he is no Steve Austin. Not yet anyway. Roman Reigns could be the next Samoan-native star, following in The Rock’s footsteps, and he’s even hated on like The Rock was during his days in the Nation, but again, he’s not there yet. Besides them, and a few names on the rise, how can today’s stars compete and get to the level of the names in the Attitude Era? What can Seth Rollins, Bray Wyatt, Wade Barrett, Dolph Ziggler, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Finn Balor, and a surplus of other names do to match up with the glory years?
Let us instead complain about how Kane is wrestling in the first match of the night again. The Attitude Era would never have wrestlers, nearing or past their expiry date, wrestling matches. Back in my day, in 1998, we had Raw opening up with sensational matches involving 43-year-old Vader taking on 37-year-old Barry Windham. We had Legion of Doom 2000 taking on the Disciples of Apocalypse in excellent tag team action. Heck, we even had a legend in Terry Funk teaming up with Scorpio to battle Kaientai in a 2-on-3 handicap match. A match that was interrupted by Bradshaw and Taka Michinoku.
Sounds like great television, right? All of that was in one episode of Raw, back when it was a two hour show. Factor in commercial time, and fans were getting slightly over an hour and a half of wrestling every week. Fortunately enough for Attitude Era fans, we got Steve Austin battling the group of Vince McMahon, Gerald Brisco and Pat Patterson at the top and bottom of the show. Kind of like how Dean Ambrose is butting heads with Seth Rollins and The Authority, or how Daniel Bryan was the poster-boy for anti-Authority as he battled Triple H. We also had Owen Hart taking on Triple H in singles action, and that ended with both DX and NOD entering the ring, causing the match to end in a No Contest.
Don’t like the current efforts of #GiveDivasAChance this month? The Bellas versus Naomi and Tamina Snuka not doing it for you? Well surely a Sable Bomb to Marc Mero was great for the Women’s division in 1998. Only…Sable lost in one-on-one match against Mero just two weeks later, ultimately leading to a humiliating kayafbe exit from the company.
Tuning into every episode of Raw this month, I decided to take a step back and watch the 1998 counterpart. The point wasn’t to compare both products, as the sport of wrestling has drastically changed over the decade and a half of history, but to relive the program I watched as a pre-teen, and see if I could enjoy it now, as someone nearing his 30s. Not only did I find myself underwhelmed, but quite frankly, I was disappointed.
Don’t get me wrong, the Ministry of Darkness is still one of my favourite stables of all-time, and the crowd reaction Steve Austin would get, upon the glass shattering, still leaves goosebumps on my arms, but do you see the problem in this paragraph? I have once again listed the same few names that have popped up previously in this article.
The Attitude Era is, and forever will be, a big part of my childhood, and something I’ll always hold dear to me, but when it comes time to comparing the actual wrestling product, I find myself enjoying today’s brand more.
John Cena will still continue his same old tired act, but it is no more redundant than penis jokes or catchphrases that are repeated over and over again ad nauseum in one promo. I instead choose to focus on how entertaining the tag team matches have been between New Day and Kidd & Cesaro, and how the athleticism between these two teams is a notch above what I have witnessed during the same month of wrestling in 1998. I enjoy what Triple H and Stephanie McMahon bring to the table, with their smug arrogance and hint of annoyance, as much as I enjoyed Vince McMahon’s interaction with Gerald Brisco and Pat Patterson.
If we’re going to play tic-for-tat in the world of things that sucked in each Era, specifically the month of May, then let’s have at it. Dean Ambrose’s Justin Bieber joke towards Seth Rollins had you rolling your eyes? So did Triple H’s reference to “beating skins” as part of his explanation about playing the drums, when really we knew exactly what he was shooting for. Ambrose also had some fun backstage, like Austin did when he beat up a security guard, but then there’s Jerry Lawler sneaking Al Snow into the building by putting a blue cloak over him, promising him a meeting with Vince McMahon if he protected him from attacks by superstars in the locker room.
Why is it that as a wrestling fan, I became more excited with a mini-Shield reunion at Payback, the debut of Sami Zayn on Raw in Montreal, and the upcoming debut of Kevin Owens at Elimination Chamber, over such events in May of 1998 like Stone Cold defending the WWF Title against Dude Love, The Rock taking on Farooq, and Kane taking on Big Van Vader in a mask-vs-mask match. Again, this all happened in May, like the examples I used for the current product.
So let me ask you this; has the handful of exceptional moments in the Attitude Era clouded your judgement of wrestling to the point where you are willing to forget all the filler and cringe-worthy content that took up the majority of each week? I challenge everyone reading to watch the month of June 1998 after watching June 2015 and ask yourself which show, from start to finish, you enjoyed more.
Maybe you’ll discover what I already have. That the Attitude Era was a time of moments, all coming from the Attitudes of a select few characters.
In today’s world, using wrestling terminology, the Attitude Era was the equivalent of spot wrestling. A one and a half hour program filled with average wrestling and storylines that the fans had to sit through, waiting for those one or two moments to jump to their feet and cheer.
Main photo courtesy of wwe.com
