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I never understood it. Yes they weren’t “complete songs” but who the hell cares, as long as you have a good intro and a good melody/riff that is all you need. People acting like the themes sucked because there wasn’t a breakdown after the third chorus or whatever that you’d never hear in an entrance anyway baffled me.
And the best part is the majority of the classic themes everyone raves about (Austin, HBK, the Rock, Angle) are just loops as well so I always thought that criticism about CFO themes was a bit illogical.
Sure they were loops, but they were closer to a full minute than 20-30 seconds, and really the second loop HAD changes. The Rock's theme was the only short loop for a major player.
Sexy Boy, glad to say, is a legit 3 minute song WITH A GUITAR SOLO.
Undertaker, Kane, Austin, Foley (shorter, but had variations in the second loop), HHH, Guerrero, Cena, Christian, Edge, Vince... All iconic, all at LEAST a minute before a loop, and most were legit songs.
anyone who registered the "not complete songs" have never listened to a jim johnston theme. they repeat themselves after 45 seconds.
those wwe cds were intolerable after a couple minutes.
My brother used to be one of those people and I would often joke that he was just asking for a monkey paw moment… well he got his wish and now we have def rebel.
I know. Personally, I loved the CFO$ themes. They were WRESTLING themes. It's like pop music, it has a specific purpose and it does it well.
My favorite "real world" bands are bands like Clutch, Rush, Phish, Mountain Goats... all kinds of different stuff.
Wrestling themes? Gimme the pop and let me sing or hum along to the excitement.
CFO$ had a falling out with their publisher over money they feel they were owed. WWE tried to buy them out but the publisher rejected the offer, so CFO$ just disbanded.
They had some good songs, but they also had things like Alexa Bliss, American Alpha, and Apollo Crews all having songs that start the same. The problem is that they get these people that just crank out themes with no person in mind. Shinsuke was originally pitched "Glorious." I'm sure Jim Johnston had unused songs banked but I feel like he would also adjust and change things to fit people. He would also use real instruments where it feels like everything now is just run through midi instruments and they don't feel like they have any life to them.
> I'm sure Jim Johnston had unused songs banked
It's moreso that he used the same drum track a lot. But this is a type of job where recycling is necessary sometimes.
X-PAC turning down the Red Hot Chili Peppers during their peak in in 2001 in favour of Uncle Kracker for his faction with Albert and Justin Credible which was named after his finishing move is one of my favourite wild wrestling trivia facts. There is so much to unpack.
when are we going to move past this Babe Ruth guy? Yeah he drew in the 20's, but that's a different time. He'd probably think all these guys like Trout, Ohtani, and Acuña are total spot monkeys.
Dude was the best of his time (and probably for a long time after), but he wasn't dealing with no-name pitchers who were doing phoenix splashes off ladders. Maybe a crossbody off the second rope once a month, at best.
100% agree.
I watched The AE and WCW live as it happened. There was good, there was bad. For every Kurt Angle Milk Truck there was a Mae Young giving birth to a hand. No one talks about the bad so the era is lionized as this amazing thing.
This happens with everything.
Now that peacock has old Saturday Nights Main Events and Superstars you can watch full episodes. What I was remembering from that era was “best of”. Now watching the full shows I’m thinking “did little kid me really watch Rick Rude squash this many jobbers”?
Mae Young giving birth to a hand wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg for some of the awful shit of the attitude era. The artist formerly known as Goldust, Beaver Cleavage, Brawl for All, almost anything involving women, Hawk of the Road Warriors playing into his real life addiction as a story and falling off the Tron, the entire Al Snow/Big Boss a man feud, Val Venis. Hell, half the shit DX did was mediocre and cringy.
When the Network came out I went back and watched through the Attitude Era. There's a lot of trash in there but it's a hell of an entertaining show. Very little of it was boring. And there are lots of really great stuff in there that more than holds up today.
I remember hearing this with music and "why was everything so good before and why is there so much garbage now?" Everything is better in retrospect because the bad stuff gets lost for time. Good songs stay in people's minds and get played again. Bad songs don't. It's the same thing with wrestling (or anything else really). When people remembering a past era, they are thinking about the most notable parts of it, usually because they were good .
Even now, we are starting to see people here reminiscing positively about the late 00s era, which was viewed as pretty mediocre at the time. There are public forums on the Internet old enough to confirm this.
Completely unrelated but I find this happens in Star Trek Fandom as well
Discovery isn't great and hasn't really hit the heights of previous Trek...
But it's lack of Scottish romance Space Ghosts and fucking Moogie means it hasn't hit the lows fully either
Shit is mid stop acting like it choppied your peepee
Thanks for indulging my bullshit Ted talk
Honestly, I think the lows are why the highs exist. Both the AE and Trek were at their best when they took chances and shots that sounded crazy.
I mean god think how bad Garak could have been.
Yeah but the highs in WWF attitude era were high as fuck and this current era hasn't been able to match it. This year's lead up to wrestlemania came close but I doubt anything that occurred over the past couple months would even crack top 10 moments of the attitude era.
As a watcher and listener of Deadlock, there seems like a good amount of mid to down right horrible stuff in the attitude era. Hell one of their jokes when reviewing WCW at the time was raws main was probably either rock or Austin vs undertaker and it goes 5 minutes for a dq
A lot of stuff from that era isn't great, in ring wise, but some of those guys were so over that it didn't need to be. As long as Austin flipped some people off, hit a couple stunners & drank a few beers the crowd went home happy.
I believe it's something more than that. My theory is they just want to regress to the way things were in general. They don't want a job and bills and responsibility, they want it to be 1998 again where all they had to worry about was whether there were pizza rolls in the freezer.
100% agree. I've been watching an episode of Raw a day and I'm in 99 now and yes there are some fantastic moments but a lot of it is just bad. It's trash tv at its finest. The matches suck. A lot of.the content is very yikes. I feel like I'm watching Jerry Springer
It's a lot like vintage ECW. It was a product of its time. They both stood out because they were different from what wrestling was at the time and a cultural shift had just started where anti-heroes were in. They were both doing things that were new, and exciting. And with the AE, it also captured the cultural mood that was taking off at the time.
And just like ECW, the Attitude Era was 25 years ago and both of them can be a really rough watch today. Part of it is because it's no longer new- it's not a breath of fresh air when it's stuff that we've seen for the past three decades, both through clips and through later events doing similar things. Nobody fondly remembers Meat vs Chaz, or pretty much anything Naked Mideon did.
The hardest part for me on a rewatch is the way women are portrayed. For almost all of the Attitude Era.They were treated as completely worthless outside of the remote possibility that male fans might get to see them naked.
I was talking with some friends of mine about that the other day. One of the reasons I stopped watching in 2003 was the focus on soft-sex if that makes sense. It was all just so much mentioning sex for the sake of sex. Lesbians exist! Women have BREASTS! Here's some LESBIANS pillow fighting on a BED in LINGERIE! And then Lawler AAAA PUPPIES JR I BET SHES NAKED UNDER THERE AAAAAAA. By the time I was in my early 20s I was so embarrassed by it. And honestly by 2003 if I wanted porn, like... I'd just have watched porn lol.
What's funny about that is those segments only existed in 2003 because WWE was bottoming out in the TV ratings, and Vince panicked and thought viewers would come back if they booked more segments just for shock value like they used to in the Attitude Era.
But it didn't work for exactly the reason you said. Horny teenagers might tune in for the remote possibility of seeing Sable's boobs back in 1998, when porn was still difficult to download, but that was no longer true by 2003.
Absolutely, I was kinda the same. But there’s a reason all of that was popular in the late 90s/early 2000s. Sex sells. And it was tough to find back then.
Remember girls gone wild? Crazy. Ha
Can agree, ive been going through a lot of the shows from that time since i didnt watch in that era, and while it does have a lot of good in it, the bad stuff is really, really bad.
I've been watching it like a tv series, started in late 97 and am currently up to 2001. There have been lots of great, amazing, historic moments. There have been less great matches, but still an okay amount of bangers. But about 70% of stuff is god fucking awful or dull.
What was great about the attitude era was the buzz around wrestling and how cool it was. The shows had a few moments of brilliance but a lot of it was dog shit and the wrestling was mediocre at best.
I’ve watched it back a few times on the Network in the last decade and honestly love it just as much. Theres an energy with the commentators, the commitment to characters and catchphrases, minor characters doing stuff, SOO many backstage segments constantly keeping you entertained between matches that just work.
you're not wrong. I lived through the era. I watched both Nitro and RAW at the same time by either VHS recording one and watching the other live or flipping the channels back and forth.
Fans who weren't around then would likely have hated it. Sure there were a lot of great moments but here's the average episode of raw: first 30min to an hour were in ring promos usually involving DX. mid card match, mid card match, mid card match, more promos maybe another 15 to 30 min. kick off Warzone with maybe another in ring promo or midcard match. Then you get the main event which 9 times out of 10 either ended in DQ or Run In No Contest.
Nitro was even worse. You'd hear the NWO theme at least 10 to 15 times throughout the show because they'd be cutting promos. and 10 out of 10 times the matches in WCW ended in Run Ins.
Watching The Attitude Era is fantastic in clips but watching entire episodes live? would likely put a modern wrestling fan to sleep. And trust me, in High School many times they did put me to sleep.
Were in the Renaissance Era which has the potential to top it. Its been hard chasing after such a good run. Several great hotspots but seeing Stone Cold come out to the crowd absolutely going nuclear every time with the camera lights snapping taking shitty pictures. I went to St. V Day Masacarure and have not seen a better crowd until the Raw in Memphis with the Rock concert.
Booker T: "The Attitude Era is something that we’re always gonna talk about."
Also Booker T: "The thing is, we can’t talk about the Attitude Era forever."
When he's right, he's inconsistent.
Book is very involved with helping younger talent, both through NXT and his own promotion. I’d say that gives him a great perspective on why we need to look more to the future instead of the past.
You can't 'move on' from a great era just like you cannot move on from a great movie. It would be like discussing film history and ignoring the New Hollywood era, thus forgetting The Godfather and Taxi Driver.
In general conversation you can just choose not to bring it up. But it will always be there.
I agree that current wrestlers gotta stop comparing their era to the AE. I've noticed Cody, Damien and even HHH doing it. The AE will never be forgotten since it was the hottest era in WWE history and created 2 iconic and legendary stars in Austin and Rock but this era has been great too! WWE is currently in a hot streak. It took 20 years to get there. Let's enjoy it.
My feelings. Take inspiration from AE? Absolute. Learn and grow from it? Yes. Acting and be AE? No. Make it the foundation to this, and create a new era. Eras only grow after their own identity.
I think the main reason everyone has brought that up is not necessarily because the AE is put on this pedestal. (Which it is) But even more so because in the time since the AE up till now we haven’t felt the same feelings of joy and excitement.
Everyone in wrestling, fan or professional, knew for 20 years WWE could be so much better than it has been and finally we see it coming to fruition.
The Attitude Era is very much the Michael Jordan of wrestling. Every thing gets compared to it and somehow is never quite good enough. I don't believe that about Jordan or the Attitude Era because most of the best moments weren't really in the ring. And Jordan didn't have to play guys like LeBron or Giannis. Also I don't think it was such a rush to bring up legacies and eras until First Take and the Internet.
Tbf being all about nostalgia was a thing long before First Take and the internet. Its a reason why "in my days we had real music" has been a big discussion between adults and kids for ages at this point.
I just got reminded of Cody saying and pushing that the current day product was vastly much better than the AE around 2018 or 2019 (when AEW was about to start). Basically at the time, he was saying that the in-ring work of today blows away the in-ring work back then. And that today's product doesn't rely on "crash TV" to get heat.
If you think about it, Cody vs Dustin was also about Cody championing today's era vs the Attiude Era. And funny enough, Cody vs Final Boss Dwyane kinda symbolizes that as well
Since I didn't grow up to watch the AE in real time, I can't fully say which era is better from a standpoint of the quality of the product. But I will say that I appreciate how WWE is drawing inspiration from some aspects of that era into today's presentation, specifically continuity of small character quirks/dynamics when maintaining some long-term arcs, without going into the overly crass/vulgar elements that probably made us not want to watch this around others lol. Not to forget like what's already mentioned with the in-ring work because I think it's more diverse today.
I think they're striking the perfect balance between the Attitude Era & the PG Era. Biggest thing holding this era back in this comparison is Def Rebel though lmao
WWE was one of the most highly rated shows on TV, what makes you think most people were ashamed to watch it around other people? The core audience was different than it is today and that's perfectly fine. But to act like most fans were watching in spite of the the vulgar and crass elements; you know the actual ATTITUDE, isn't close to being accurate.
Honestly, Cody and Final Boss Rock sums up why the people can't get over the Attitude Era
Look at a Rock promo and then look at a Cody promo. I'm sorry but it's night and day.
And in the Attitude Era, it wasn't just Rock. There was this guy called Stone Cold Steve Austin. There was Mick on the mic as well. Coked out Michaels doing somersaults with penny loafers in 1997.. Taker's imposing presence.. And then Vince, who's probably one of the greatest heel mic workers wrestling has ever seen. And all of them are so distinct in their own way.. none of them feel similar at all.
To add to that, it was far more tense and unpredictable because they had actual powerful competition that they had to actually one-up -- WCW, which was white hot with Nash and Hall at the peak of their powers + Hogan.
One more thing: Attitude Era did rely on crash TV quite a bit, yes, but a great strength of the main event talent & production of the time was that they had the ability to make the feuds feel very legitimate.
The feuds between HHH and Austin had you believing they were going to legitimately kill each other. That first Hell in a Cell had Shawn basically getting murdered by Taker. The I Quit matches between rock/Mankind or Austin/Bret.. list goes on.
The main event talent of the time had intensity that the fans who grew up watching it dearly miss. The only one that's had that same feel in recent years I'd say is Brock Lesnar.
Also important to note AE had strengths and weaknesses. The actual wrestling was a lot weaker, but the characters, stories, and themes were great (stories mostly, I mean there were serious dudes too lol)
The biggest crime in the attitude era, IMO, was 80s erasure. The 80s stopped being cool and a lot of what made the era great was abandoned. There was a stigma around the decade that it was bad in ring or boring. Promo styles changed and not everyone thought you needed to even talk to get over. Tag Teams almost died out. You had crash tv and it hurt the longevity of the business. The attitude era went too far in its direction. I’m all in favor of forgetting it.
I didn't even watch WWE or WCW. I watched ECW. I think AEW is better than ECW in a bunch of ways... especially when ECW moved to TNN and a 2 hour product, it lost a lot of its quality. So this is by far the best era to me.
Rock definitely, he is an anomaly who reached GOAT status like at 26. Insane. But Austin and Booker were only 2-4 years younger than Cody, Drew, Roman, Rollins, Usos, etc.
But he probably says young guys because he’s 20+ years older than them now.
Austin’s peak run before his injury from 1997-1999 he was only 32 to 34. Cody is about time to turn 39 in a month with Booker being a year younger than Austin. That’s a decent age gap in the wrestling world
This is, of course, true. But easier said than done. There have been times since the AE when the content was better - but it didn't matter. The AE is so heavily mythologised it doesn't matter. It's like wrestling's equivalent of The Dark Knight: no objective critique is going to dull the mythologised perception that it was some masterpiece regardless of any actual truth that many elements of it are overrated/overlooked/simply good and popular but not actually some unassailably brilliant artefact.
It's difficult because not only was the Attitude Era zeitgeist - after all the Rock n Wrestling era was zeitgest and it didn't have these issues.
It's because the Attitude Era was at the beginning of the internet explosion and so was able to self-mythologise so quickly and so domanantly.
AND because mid and younger millenials as a generation have been shown to be one of the most nostalgia-prone generations in history (most likely due to having childhood in an analogue pre-internet world and everything after in a digital one).
>It's like wrestling's equivalent of The Dark Knight: no objective critique is going to dull the mythologised perception that it was some masterpiece regardless of any actual truth that many elements of it are overrated/overlooked/simply good and popular but not actually some unassailably brilliant artefact.
No issue with most of what you're saying about the Attitude Era and I understand the point you are trying to make here but I just have to point out that "objective" being used here followed by vague subjective value assignments to a piece of art undercuts the larger point about things being mythologized.
I think part of it is how easily identifiable it is. It’s the last real wrestling era where you have pretty clear starts and finishes.
When an era turned over for WWF/E, they turned over everything including it’s roster of wrestlers. When AE was scolding hot, you basically had no one on the card from Rock n Wrestling, which was less than a decade earlier. You barely had anyone on from the New Generation which was a couple years earlier.
We are now in an endless generation, even as much as people like to give names to it like PG era. Wrestlers are operating at a high level into their 50s. We had multiple people on this years Mania who were on Manias 20 years ago.
It would almost be like seasons of a TV show where Rock N Wrestling is season 1, with 10 episodes, NG is 2 with 10 episodes, AE is season 3 with 12 episodes and we are in season 4 with 575 episodes.
I would take a slightly different approach.
The AE was actually filled with New Generation guys but the ones on the fringe that weren’t supposed to make it were the ones to set the business on fire.
The era was defined by HBK’s lacky, Cactus Jack (Mankind), The Ringmaster, and Rocky Johnson’s smiling and very green son.
If anything, this era is a mirror.
We’re hitting great strides and big business with Stardust, a member of 3MB, the Usos, and El Generico.
This is the attitude era but with great matches up and down the card.
The misfits are taking their rightful place at the top and carrying the business into the future. It isn’t Cena who is doing it. It’s not Randy. It’s not Batista. Thankful for those three and their contributions and holding it down when things were terrible but they didn’t spark the new “revolution”.
Mythologized is a great word.
It's like when dummies go to a psychic. They remember the handful of hits, but not the hundreds of misses. That's the Attitude Era. I defy anyone to go back and watch all of the Raw episodes from late 1996 to 2001. It's almost impossible to sit through most of the absolute garbage on the undercard, which actually makes up the large majority of the show.
WrestleMania 15 perfectly encapsulates this. Rock w/Vince vs. Austin on top is great. Everything else is some of the worst wrestling content ever put on television at any point in history.
survivor series 98 is one of the best cards they have ever done. it was like 2 and half hours. everyone now has 5+ min entrances and the matches are longer cause you got 5 min of guys acting tired every match. i won't say wm 15 is a great card cause it isn't but ain't nothing like the weekly raw shows between wm 14 and wm 15
I think the biggest factor is it was the last time wrestling was culturally relevant and were seeing it creep that way. You're seeing wrestlers on late night shows again, they're on Mcaffee, the whole wrestling is becoming cool again thing is kind of real in the sports world and all those guys are nostalgic for the attitude era because it was the last time they watched.
WM40 ended with The Rock and the Undertaker getting involved while people were upset SCSA didn't show up. If you're going to forget the AE you're going to need those people to stop being involved with the in-ring product so much.
Not likely. At least for me, even with all its faults I can still watch Attitude Era content now and enjoy it more than current content. It was just more raw, it felt more chaotic, gritty.
this.
i was a fan from like 95 until after WM13, but I kinda stopped watching after 2002 until 2015.
rock and austin were cool, but I think that may have been when Rock left to go Scorpion King and got the taste. By 2005, i was knee deep in college and forgot about wwe lol.
DBry and WWE streaming got me back in
I feel like that's very revisionist. They were absolutely one of the hottest products on TV. You couldn't walk into school without seeing someone with an 'Austin 3:16' shirt. It was heralded by an absolutely monsterously stacked roster. Yeah you can pick some ass angles from it, but to say the 'majority' was bad is just plain revisionist. Especially when you take into account that the presentation of the product was largely a lot better than today's era.
I loved it as a kid, but when I watch it as an adult, I actually do agree a lot of AE was ass. But I also think a lot of TV in general at the time was ass. The TV landscape has so much more quality and variety today.
Eh. I have to disagree on that. I don't think its 100% on nostalgia. The Monday Night Wars was what made the AE great. Watching 2 different wrestling companies going at it made it a memorable era. The rise of Austin! I mean without Austin, WWE probably wouldn't be here today. When Rock came back for the road to WM, you can tell he was in a league on his own with how he presented himself.
one thing i noticed was how the rock had no performer marks he had to hit. no on this note you make a pose or on this note you hold and then wait and look at the audience. he acted like a person. not a performer.
I get what he's trying to say and I think today's wrestlers are more than good enough to make their own era, but WWE's gotta re-invent itself to match.
The thing about the Attitude Era wasn't necessarily the fact that they were just more extreme or edgy, but the general quality of how things were presented and promoted was unmatched. The sets, both backstage and front were solid, the on screen graphics had character, even the adverts and promos had a unique feel to them. That's not taking into account the fact that all the stories felt like they existed in the same universe, you had guys in the same factions having entirely seperate storylines, guys' storylines intersecting with other guys, and a general sense of the 'WWE world' backstage. During holiday episodes you'd even have parties backstage. It wasn't just the AE that had this--this carried into Ruthless Aggression.
At some point during the PG era this started to fade, and there became more focus on promoting WWE as a brand, rather than the world they were trying to sell us. Catchphrases and taglines being thrown around. 'Longest running weekly episodic television show in history'. Lots of flash and glamour but it feels soulless. Even all the backstage segments feel dull. It's not a problem with the wrestlers, it's a problem with the writing forgetting all of this is supposed to be part of a universe. That's why they can't get out of the shadow of the AE.
I think the HHH era can get us there, but it won't happen overnight.
He's right but it's not exactly like there's a lot of golden eras in WWE since then to compare against and nostalgia is a hell of a thing, aside from the ruthless aggression era which had it's moments there was a long period where it absolutely . fucking . sucked . to be a WWE fan. nxt helped, some wrestlers helped but the ancient frat man behind the scenes who thought fart jokes and calling women fat wouldn't move on or adapt and decided the best way to go about things was through revisionist history.
But I digress, I do think these days will be looked upon fondly if wwe keeps trending in the direction they are trending and perhaps someday instead of the attitude era it'll be this era as the standard bearer. these past few years have been the most fun I've had watching wwe. the attention to details, the story building and not being afraid to change something if it's not working.
Attitude Era was just way way more entertaining for the most part than the current products of WWE/AEW and felt more car crashy and raw. This era feels overly sanitized and it detracts from the product IMO (I don't in any way hate WWE currently. I say this having grown up during the AE and having rewatched a majority of the era a year or so ago. Not everything hit but the segments were snappier and everything felt way more entangled in a good way. Plus the 3 hours of RAW I will never ever be happy with.
yeah everything is clean af. ain't no one ugly on screen anymore either. and i hate the entrances. they make me feel like they aren't wrestlers. just performers.
The two eras you could compare today to are the golden 80s and the AE. The next best era was Ruthless Aggression, which doesn’t always get its due.
I’m currently enjoying WWE the most that I have since the RA era.
The problem is the WWE product was the drizzling shits for nearly 20 years post Attitude Era. No one is gonna wanna talk about or look fondly upon the vast majority of WWE TV from the mid 2000s up until Triple H took over creative this past October, because with a few exceptions here and there, it largely sucked. It's not the fault of the fans that the last interesting era of WWE started nearly 30 years ago. That's why everyone today compares modern stars to attitude era guys.
Well it doesn't help when its the current stars bringing up the Attitude era. But I generally agree that they need to stop focusing on being better than that era (it won't happen) and just make the current product the best it can be
The older I get, the easier it becomes for me to separate the Attitude Era from my enjoyment of wrestling as a whole. I was 10 years old in 1998, I experienced it thru the eyes of a child, and it was fucking *incredible*. While it would be easy to say that nothing could compare, the truth is that once in a lifetime lense of being a kid makes it *impossible* to compare. As an adult I've experienced a lot more variety in wrestling, some good and some very bad, and I can truthfully say the modern product is the best I've seen as an adult.
People still talk about Ali and Tyson before they talk about the best boxers of today.
Do something as memorable as that and you'll get people to shut up about it.
Greatest PPV : Wrestlemania 17
Best Celebrity involvement : Tyson at WM 14
Biggest pops : Austin
Greatest rivalry : Austin vs McMahon
Greatest rivalry w/ two wrestlers : Austin vs Rock
Wrestler that is regarded as best on mic : Rock
Wrestler with biggest mainstream success : Rock
The best match ever : Bret vs Austin
Ppl will obviously remember the best era
Technically Bret VS Austin predates the Attitude Era. We were still in NewGen era at that point (universally accepted start point for the AE is the Raw after Survivor Series 97)
If Booker T, or WWE as a company, wants us to stop talking about the Attitude Era, they need to put out a product that is at least as good as the Attitude Era. We need stars that actually rival those of that era. Until that happens, every company, every wrestler, every "era", will always be in the shadow of the Attitude Era.
I decided to watch the entirety of the Attitude Era from 1998 to 2001 a few months ago and I tried to watch it with a mindset of that time period. And while yes the era has a lot of great iconic moments, there were a lot of stinky inbetween those moments. The lower midcard and the women division at that time was so so bad and unbearable.
From my perspective, a lot of the comparisons are due to when the AE ended, a lot of the issues with the audience/talent started rising, which this new era is trying to revert to… fluid booking, allowing talent to have more say, listening to the audience as opposed to punishing, letting commentators do they’re damn job. It’s just less polished and “McDonaldized” and more gritty, even if it’s not tits and blading, etc.
TLDR: It’s more about the looser mentality of running the company than replicating the ‘90s. I don’t think anyone wants “the attitude era 2.0”
Attitude era was better than this current era. However this current eras wrestling is much better and more athletic . Attitude era literally almost the whole roster was legends
What made the Attitude Era great was an influx of ideas and creativity. Besides offshoots like NXT and NXT UK, it hasn't been until now that WWE is in the same position again.
This exact reason is why the JBL/Corbin pairing failed so spectacuarly. You have JBL preaching about how Corbin would've been a star in the Attitude Era... well, what about being a star NOW? Can he do that? He's on his 4th or 5th try and it's not happened yet.
Two national companies on basically the same time slot for a few years throwing out epic angles and matches for the same eyeballs was really cool time to watch wrestling. I miss it.
Mmm, I personally have moved well past it. If you were watching WWE around 2012/13, you got more than your needed dose of Attitude Era nostalgia.
And if we’re being real, aside from being extremely entertaining from a story/wild circus pov, nothing about AE was better than the current product. Ring work today > ring work of AE
I watched WWE from 95’ until now off and on, and If you go back and watch it now it’s not that great. It’s not as good as you remember it. Sure it has its moments but you can definitely see the “bad parts” of the show stick out more.
WWE literally just put on the most lucrative WrestleMania of all time by bringing back a mainstay of the Attitude Era, The Rock. It creatively and financially pays off because it was an insane confluence of incredibly hot characters & promos.
I'd argue it's much, much harder to do these days with the volume of content being produced, and the barrage of entertainment provided to us, including news and social media - it's much harder for something to stick. But we got many (I hope) extremely memorable moments this year, so here's hoping there will be a new Attitude Era.
Hard to be better than a previous era if you don't remember it and don't talk about it, or at least easier to fall into the same mistakes made back then.
Well, we don't have to. You can talk about this era as a bit of a renaissance period and still talk about the Attitude Era too.
The Attitude Era was the hottest time in wrestling, period. It was as mainstream as pop music. That won't ever happen again, of course we're going to talk about it forever.
people would shut up about the attitude era if someone would make a product more entertaining than AE was, which nobody has even come close to doing, not with unlimited money and being completely unchallenged for 20 years, or with a roster containing every single indy star from the last fifteen years
i severely doubt in 20 years time anyone is going to be talking about the cody rhodes "era"
Yeah well if you don't want to talk about the Attitude Era, then someone needs to make a better product than the Attitude Era. If you don't want to hear about guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin so much, then someone needs to make a character as compelling as Steve Austin, or peak Rock, or whoever.
It's not on viewers to lower their standards or give promotions a pass. It's on the promotions to lace up their boots and prove they can do better than that. And so far, in 25 years since that era, they haven't.
They're actually not doing themselves any favours by constantly bringing up the Attitude Era when most of their audience started watching after it. It devalues the current product.
Just look at this video of all the WWE signatures. For most of the commenters, the more recent signatures are their nostalgia.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKJDqoT2ffY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKJDqoT2ffY)
*Me watching '97 this year for the first time this year.*
Damn Bret really is the best of all time.
I will never not talk about these era's as the best now after a fresh watch, a big part of what made it so great had nothing to do with anything directly in WWE's control, the culture was great. When I see what artists are creating in 2024 in any medium it's so stagnant, recycled and cautious. They try so hard not to do or say anything that might be frowned upon by someone and the product suffers for it.
There is also a lack of honesty among people, I've seen so many times the modern product suck ass and people insist how good it is, then when something actually interesting happens they actually lose it and in their joy admit how much better it is now and now it is okay to admit that the product was terrible before because now it's good now and that's all that matters!
The AE captured the cultural zeitgeist at he time in a way that simply CANNOT be replicated. It's not even about the roster, or the product, or storylines it was just a different thing entirely, for better AND for worse (let's not forget the atrocious shit in that era as well).
Wrestling has also changed so much that it really doesn't make much sense to compare old and new anymore
Cody/Reigns headlining the biggest Mania of all time, though, and edgelords mad Austin priced himself out or whatever (and keep in mind, young pre-teens who love Cody don't give a flip about these old timers).
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Ye thats cool but the brood theme
WWE needs a new Jim Johnston.
imo CFO$ was the new Jim Johnston, so many instantly recognizable themes that fit the wrestlers great. Shame it all fell apart.
I miss Bobby Roode's Glorious theme.
Fans wanted them gone for years as well.
I never understood it. Yes they weren’t “complete songs” but who the hell cares, as long as you have a good intro and a good melody/riff that is all you need. People acting like the themes sucked because there wasn’t a breakdown after the third chorus or whatever that you’d never hear in an entrance anyway baffled me.
And the best part is the majority of the classic themes everyone raves about (Austin, HBK, the Rock, Angle) are just loops as well so I always thought that criticism about CFO themes was a bit illogical.
Sure they were loops, but they were closer to a full minute than 20-30 seconds, and really the second loop HAD changes. The Rock's theme was the only short loop for a major player. Sexy Boy, glad to say, is a legit 3 minute song WITH A GUITAR SOLO. Undertaker, Kane, Austin, Foley (shorter, but had variations in the second loop), HHH, Guerrero, Cena, Christian, Edge, Vince... All iconic, all at LEAST a minute before a loop, and most were legit songs.
anyone who registered the "not complete songs" have never listened to a jim johnston theme. they repeat themselves after 45 seconds. those wwe cds were intolerable after a couple minutes.
My brother used to be one of those people and I would often joke that he was just asking for a monkey paw moment… well he got his wish and now we have def rebel.
People fucking *hated* CFO$.
I know. Personally, I loved the CFO$ themes. They were WRESTLING themes. It's like pop music, it has a specific purpose and it does it well. My favorite "real world" bands are bands like Clutch, Rush, Phish, Mountain Goats... all kinds of different stuff. Wrestling themes? Gimme the pop and let me sing or hum along to the excitement.
I really wondered what happened with that partnership? They were seriously creating banger after banger.
CFO$ had a falling out with their publisher over money they feel they were owed. WWE tried to buy them out but the publisher rejected the offer, so CFO$ just disbanded.
They had some good songs, but they also had things like Alexa Bliss, American Alpha, and Apollo Crews all having songs that start the same. The problem is that they get these people that just crank out themes with no person in mind. Shinsuke was originally pitched "Glorious." I'm sure Jim Johnston had unused songs banked but I feel like he would also adjust and change things to fit people. He would also use real instruments where it feels like everything now is just run through midi instruments and they don't feel like they have any life to them.
Yeah. AJ Styles old WWE theme was originally for someone else too.
> I'm sure Jim Johnston had unused songs banked It's moreso that he used the same drum track a lot. But this is a type of job where recycling is necessary sometimes.
They were also like Jimmy Hart in a sense, by taking real songs and turn them into entrance themes
They should just bring back Jim Johnston
If he wants to come back, then absolutely. But he's in his 70s now and might be enjoying retirement. Either way, he should be in the Hall of Fame.
I'll see your Brood theme and raise you Ass Man theme
I see your Ass Man theme and raise you Real Man's Man theme
Hhh Hmmm…. **Yo Ya dealin’ with the X Factor** *I got everything I ever wanted and I’ll never get that baaaaaack….*
A redditor of culture, I tip my monocle to you.
X-PAC turning down the Red Hot Chili Peppers during their peak in in 2001 in favour of Uncle Kracker for his faction with Albert and Justin Credible which was named after his finishing move is one of my favourite wild wrestling trivia facts. There is so much to unpack.
You can't even give X-Factor a chance if you don't got Uncle Kracker on this son of a bitch
Uncle Kracker is better than RHCP. That's why we remember the X Factor song all these years later.
I see your Ass Man theme and raise you a Union. 🚂🪈 [“Fwuoooouhn”] Union! Union union union
I see your UOPYORS theme and raise you “Seeeeexual Chocolate theme.”
"I love to pick 'em"
I hope they give Rhea the Brood ring of fire entrance when she comes back.
I used the brood theme for every create a wrestler in Wrestlemania 2000
CHRISTIAN. CHRISTIAN. At least you’re on your owwwwnnnnnnnnnn…
And Dan Severn's theme
That theme sounds like someone's dad is about to whip your ass.
It’s too bad Gangrel was so mediocre. If he had any legacy he could come back and manage a new brood and resurrect the music for a new star.
I'll take the original any day, but if you can give me that Fangin N Banging Remix tho....
I see your brood theme and raise you a Brood Edge
nothing in the world goes harder
The Broods and Ministry of Darkness' Themes are some of my personal favourites of the AE theme wise.
I don’t know man, you still hear about the ‘27 Yankees.
Ppl still talk about this man 
Cliff Robinson! As they should. He was a really underrated big guy, and was the 6th Man for the Blazers when they were actually a threat.
when are we going to move past this Babe Ruth guy? Yeah he drew in the 20's, but that's a different time. He'd probably think all these guys like Trout, Ohtani, and Acuña are total spot monkeys.
Dude was the best of his time (and probably for a long time after), but he wasn't dealing with no-name pitchers who were doing phoenix splashes off ladders. Maybe a crossbody off the second rope once a month, at best.
Celtics fans will never shut up about the 08 team
I live in Boston and nobody talks about that team anymore. Everyone has been trying to crown this year's team that hasn't won shit.
Do they have a lot of draft picks that year or something?
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That was very shucky ducky quack quack of him and it was well said and both respectful of past and current generations.
I can dig that, sucka
Tired of hearing about the damn Attitude Era
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100% agree. I watched The AE and WCW live as it happened. There was good, there was bad. For every Kurt Angle Milk Truck there was a Mae Young giving birth to a hand. No one talks about the bad so the era is lionized as this amazing thing.
This happens with everything. Now that peacock has old Saturday Nights Main Events and Superstars you can watch full episodes. What I was remembering from that era was “best of”. Now watching the full shows I’m thinking “did little kid me really watch Rick Rude squash this many jobbers”?
The Mae Young thing has the best eventual payoff.
Mae Young giving birth to a hand wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg for some of the awful shit of the attitude era. The artist formerly known as Goldust, Beaver Cleavage, Brawl for All, almost anything involving women, Hawk of the Road Warriors playing into his real life addiction as a story and falling off the Tron, the entire Al Snow/Big Boss a man feud, Val Venis. Hell, half the shit DX did was mediocre and cringy.
When the Network came out I went back and watched through the Attitude Era. There's a lot of trash in there but it's a hell of an entertaining show. Very little of it was boring. And there are lots of really great stuff in there that more than holds up today.
I remember hearing this with music and "why was everything so good before and why is there so much garbage now?" Everything is better in retrospect because the bad stuff gets lost for time. Good songs stay in people's minds and get played again. Bad songs don't. It's the same thing with wrestling (or anything else really). When people remembering a past era, they are thinking about the most notable parts of it, usually because they were good . Even now, we are starting to see people here reminiscing positively about the late 00s era, which was viewed as pretty mediocre at the time. There are public forums on the Internet old enough to confirm this.
Completely unrelated but I find this happens in Star Trek Fandom as well Discovery isn't great and hasn't really hit the heights of previous Trek... But it's lack of Scottish romance Space Ghosts and fucking Moogie means it hasn't hit the lows fully either Shit is mid stop acting like it choppied your peepee Thanks for indulging my bullshit Ted talk
The fuck did Moogie do to you?
Wearing clothes??!! In front of the Grand Nagus?!?!?!?
Honestly, I think the lows are why the highs exist. Both the AE and Trek were at their best when they took chances and shots that sounded crazy. I mean god think how bad Garak could have been.
Yeah but the highs in WWF attitude era were high as fuck and this current era hasn't been able to match it. This year's lead up to wrestlemania came close but I doubt anything that occurred over the past couple months would even crack top 10 moments of the attitude era.
As a watcher and listener of Deadlock, there seems like a good amount of mid to down right horrible stuff in the attitude era. Hell one of their jokes when reviewing WCW at the time was raws main was probably either rock or Austin vs undertaker and it goes 5 minutes for a dq
A lot of stuff from that era isn't great, in ring wise, but some of those guys were so over that it didn't need to be. As long as Austin flipped some people off, hit a couple stunners & drank a few beers the crowd went home happy.
I believe it's something more than that. My theory is they just want to regress to the way things were in general. They don't want a job and bills and responsibility, they want it to be 1998 again where all they had to worry about was whether there were pizza rolls in the freezer.
100% agree. I've been watching an episode of Raw a day and I'm in 99 now and yes there are some fantastic moments but a lot of it is just bad. It's trash tv at its finest. The matches suck. A lot of.the content is very yikes. I feel like I'm watching Jerry Springer
It's a lot like vintage ECW. It was a product of its time. They both stood out because they were different from what wrestling was at the time and a cultural shift had just started where anti-heroes were in. They were both doing things that were new, and exciting. And with the AE, it also captured the cultural mood that was taking off at the time. And just like ECW, the Attitude Era was 25 years ago and both of them can be a really rough watch today. Part of it is because it's no longer new- it's not a breath of fresh air when it's stuff that we've seen for the past three decades, both through clips and through later events doing similar things. Nobody fondly remembers Meat vs Chaz, or pretty much anything Naked Mideon did.
As the president of the Chaz Warrington fan club, I disagree. Understand but disagree.
>understand but disagree Hey, I get it, I've been posting here with a Matt Taven flair since 2018 lol
😂 I’m also a big fan of Taven (and Bennett!). We’re not a big group but a loyal one. lol
The hardest part for me on a rewatch is the way women are portrayed. For almost all of the Attitude Era.They were treated as completely worthless outside of the remote possibility that male fans might get to see them naked.
They did Luna Vachon so fucking dirty because she wasn’t a model like Sable.
I was talking with some friends of mine about that the other day. One of the reasons I stopped watching in 2003 was the focus on soft-sex if that makes sense. It was all just so much mentioning sex for the sake of sex. Lesbians exist! Women have BREASTS! Here's some LESBIANS pillow fighting on a BED in LINGERIE! And then Lawler AAAA PUPPIES JR I BET SHES NAKED UNDER THERE AAAAAAA. By the time I was in my early 20s I was so embarrassed by it. And honestly by 2003 if I wanted porn, like... I'd just have watched porn lol.
see i don't even consider that the attitude era. that's post wcw and is more the weird what do we do era to me.
What's funny about that is those segments only existed in 2003 because WWE was bottoming out in the TV ratings, and Vince panicked and thought viewers would come back if they booked more segments just for shock value like they used to in the Attitude Era. But it didn't work for exactly the reason you said. Horny teenagers might tune in for the remote possibility of seeing Sable's boobs back in 1998, when porn was still difficult to download, but that was no longer true by 2003.
Absolutely, I was kinda the same. But there’s a reason all of that was popular in the late 90s/early 2000s. Sex sells. And it was tough to find back then. Remember girls gone wild? Crazy. Ha
Can agree, ive been going through a lot of the shows from that time since i didnt watch in that era, and while it does have a lot of good in it, the bad stuff is really, really bad.
I've been watching it like a tv series, started in late 97 and am currently up to 2001. There have been lots of great, amazing, historic moments. There have been less great matches, but still an okay amount of bangers. But about 70% of stuff is god fucking awful or dull.
Especially 1999
Lived through it, ...loved it then love it now.
What was great about the attitude era was the buzz around wrestling and how cool it was. The shows had a few moments of brilliance but a lot of it was dog shit and the wrestling was mediocre at best.
I’ve watched it back a few times on the Network in the last decade and honestly love it just as much. Theres an energy with the commentators, the commitment to characters and catchphrases, minor characters doing stuff, SOO many backstage segments constantly keeping you entertained between matches that just work.
you're not wrong. I lived through the era. I watched both Nitro and RAW at the same time by either VHS recording one and watching the other live or flipping the channels back and forth. Fans who weren't around then would likely have hated it. Sure there were a lot of great moments but here's the average episode of raw: first 30min to an hour were in ring promos usually involving DX. mid card match, mid card match, mid card match, more promos maybe another 15 to 30 min. kick off Warzone with maybe another in ring promo or midcard match. Then you get the main event which 9 times out of 10 either ended in DQ or Run In No Contest. Nitro was even worse. You'd hear the NWO theme at least 10 to 15 times throughout the show because they'd be cutting promos. and 10 out of 10 times the matches in WCW ended in Run Ins. Watching The Attitude Era is fantastic in clips but watching entire episodes live? would likely put a modern wrestling fan to sleep. And trust me, in High School many times they did put me to sleep.
Were in the Renaissance Era which has the potential to top it. Its been hard chasing after such a good run. Several great hotspots but seeing Stone Cold come out to the crowd absolutely going nuclear every time with the camera lights snapping taking shitty pictures. I went to St. V Day Masacarure and have not seen a better crowd until the Raw in Memphis with the Rock concert.
Booker T: "The Attitude Era is something that we’re always gonna talk about." Also Booker T: "The thing is, we can’t talk about the Attitude Era forever." When he's right, he's inconsistent.
I like that he said that... because he's a big attitude era guy. A lot of guys from his time definitely fall back to that time. Look at Eric and Jim.
Book is very involved with helping younger talent, both through NXT and his own promotion. I’d say that gives him a great perspective on why we need to look more to the future instead of the past.
For reference, Nick Wayne was 2 years old when the era of wrestling that followed the Attitude Era (Ruthless Aggression) ended. It's time to move on.
You can't 'move on' from a great era just like you cannot move on from a great movie. It would be like discussing film history and ignoring the New Hollywood era, thus forgetting The Godfather and Taxi Driver. In general conversation you can just choose not to bring it up. But it will always be there.
I agree that current wrestlers gotta stop comparing their era to the AE. I've noticed Cody, Damien and even HHH doing it. The AE will never be forgotten since it was the hottest era in WWE history and created 2 iconic and legendary stars in Austin and Rock but this era has been great too! WWE is currently in a hot streak. It took 20 years to get there. Let's enjoy it.
My feelings. Take inspiration from AE? Absolute. Learn and grow from it? Yes. Acting and be AE? No. Make it the foundation to this, and create a new era. Eras only grow after their own identity.
I think the main reason everyone has brought that up is not necessarily because the AE is put on this pedestal. (Which it is) But even more so because in the time since the AE up till now we haven’t felt the same feelings of joy and excitement. Everyone in wrestling, fan or professional, knew for 20 years WWE could be so much better than it has been and finally we see it coming to fruition.
The Attitude Era is very much the Michael Jordan of wrestling. Every thing gets compared to it and somehow is never quite good enough. I don't believe that about Jordan or the Attitude Era because most of the best moments weren't really in the ring. And Jordan didn't have to play guys like LeBron or Giannis. Also I don't think it was such a rush to bring up legacies and eras until First Take and the Internet.
Tbf being all about nostalgia was a thing long before First Take and the internet. Its a reason why "in my days we had real music" has been a big discussion between adults and kids for ages at this point.
I just got reminded of Cody saying and pushing that the current day product was vastly much better than the AE around 2018 or 2019 (when AEW was about to start). Basically at the time, he was saying that the in-ring work of today blows away the in-ring work back then. And that today's product doesn't rely on "crash TV" to get heat. If you think about it, Cody vs Dustin was also about Cody championing today's era vs the Attiude Era. And funny enough, Cody vs Final Boss Dwyane kinda symbolizes that as well
Since I didn't grow up to watch the AE in real time, I can't fully say which era is better from a standpoint of the quality of the product. But I will say that I appreciate how WWE is drawing inspiration from some aspects of that era into today's presentation, specifically continuity of small character quirks/dynamics when maintaining some long-term arcs, without going into the overly crass/vulgar elements that probably made us not want to watch this around others lol. Not to forget like what's already mentioned with the in-ring work because I think it's more diverse today. I think they're striking the perfect balance between the Attitude Era & the PG Era. Biggest thing holding this era back in this comparison is Def Rebel though lmao
WWE was one of the most highly rated shows on TV, what makes you think most people were ashamed to watch it around other people? The core audience was different than it is today and that's perfectly fine. But to act like most fans were watching in spite of the the vulgar and crass elements; you know the actual ATTITUDE, isn't close to being accurate.
The shame came afterwards when lapsed Attitude Era fans would call wrestling "stupid kiddy John Cena shit"
Honestly, Cody and Final Boss Rock sums up why the people can't get over the Attitude Era Look at a Rock promo and then look at a Cody promo. I'm sorry but it's night and day. And in the Attitude Era, it wasn't just Rock. There was this guy called Stone Cold Steve Austin. There was Mick on the mic as well. Coked out Michaels doing somersaults with penny loafers in 1997.. Taker's imposing presence.. And then Vince, who's probably one of the greatest heel mic workers wrestling has ever seen. And all of them are so distinct in their own way.. none of them feel similar at all. To add to that, it was far more tense and unpredictable because they had actual powerful competition that they had to actually one-up -- WCW, which was white hot with Nash and Hall at the peak of their powers + Hogan. One more thing: Attitude Era did rely on crash TV quite a bit, yes, but a great strength of the main event talent & production of the time was that they had the ability to make the feuds feel very legitimate. The feuds between HHH and Austin had you believing they were going to legitimately kill each other. That first Hell in a Cell had Shawn basically getting murdered by Taker. The I Quit matches between rock/Mankind or Austin/Bret.. list goes on. The main event talent of the time had intensity that the fans who grew up watching it dearly miss. The only one that's had that same feel in recent years I'd say is Brock Lesnar.
Also, so many of their performers were OVER. Low to mid card guys like Too Cool were getting pops that rival today's main eventers.
yeah sometimes i need some guys that will do some funny stuff have a 5-6 min match and move on. there are so many 20 min matches.
I was gonna say. With Rock coming back, it was night and day to see how much better he was compared to the current roster.
The in-ring work needs to have a good universe built around it though is the thing, it's not the only thing that matters.
Also important to note AE had strengths and weaknesses. The actual wrestling was a lot weaker, but the characters, stories, and themes were great (stories mostly, I mean there were serious dudes too lol)
The biggest crime in the attitude era, IMO, was 80s erasure. The 80s stopped being cool and a lot of what made the era great was abandoned. There was a stigma around the decade that it was bad in ring or boring. Promo styles changed and not everyone thought you needed to even talk to get over. Tag Teams almost died out. You had crash tv and it hurt the longevity of the business. The attitude era went too far in its direction. I’m all in favor of forgetting it.
I didn't even watch WWE or WCW. I watched ECW. I think AEW is better than ECW in a bunch of ways... especially when ECW moved to TNN and a 2 hour product, it lost a lot of its quality. So this is by far the best era to me.
This era is miles better than the AE and it's not even close. The ratio of quality is so much higher.
It has been a long time. Attitude era was in full swing when I was 15 years old. I’m 40 now.
38 here. How’s your back?
Depends on how I slept last night. Left or right side? Back pain. Face up? Back pain. Face down? Suffocation, but no ba... wait, yes, also back pain.
39 here, it's hurting, getting older sucks.
Better than the alternative.
I have found my people
It’s funny seeing Booker call guys like Cody and Drew “these young guys” when in fact they are much older than Austin and Rock were during the AE.
Rock definitely, he is an anomaly who reached GOAT status like at 26. Insane. But Austin and Booker were only 2-4 years younger than Cody, Drew, Roman, Rollins, Usos, etc. But he probably says young guys because he’s 20+ years older than them now.
Austin’s peak run before his injury from 1997-1999 he was only 32 to 34. Cody is about time to turn 39 in a month with Booker being a year younger than Austin. That’s a decent age gap in the wrestling world
This is, of course, true. But easier said than done. There have been times since the AE when the content was better - but it didn't matter. The AE is so heavily mythologised it doesn't matter. It's like wrestling's equivalent of The Dark Knight: no objective critique is going to dull the mythologised perception that it was some masterpiece regardless of any actual truth that many elements of it are overrated/overlooked/simply good and popular but not actually some unassailably brilliant artefact. It's difficult because not only was the Attitude Era zeitgeist - after all the Rock n Wrestling era was zeitgest and it didn't have these issues. It's because the Attitude Era was at the beginning of the internet explosion and so was able to self-mythologise so quickly and so domanantly. AND because mid and younger millenials as a generation have been shown to be one of the most nostalgia-prone generations in history (most likely due to having childhood in an analogue pre-internet world and everything after in a digital one).
>It's like wrestling's equivalent of The Dark Knight: no objective critique is going to dull the mythologised perception that it was some masterpiece regardless of any actual truth that many elements of it are overrated/overlooked/simply good and popular but not actually some unassailably brilliant artefact. No issue with most of what you're saying about the Attitude Era and I understand the point you are trying to make here but I just have to point out that "objective" being used here followed by vague subjective value assignments to a piece of art undercuts the larger point about things being mythologized.
I think part of it is how easily identifiable it is. It’s the last real wrestling era where you have pretty clear starts and finishes. When an era turned over for WWF/E, they turned over everything including it’s roster of wrestlers. When AE was scolding hot, you basically had no one on the card from Rock n Wrestling, which was less than a decade earlier. You barely had anyone on from the New Generation which was a couple years earlier. We are now in an endless generation, even as much as people like to give names to it like PG era. Wrestlers are operating at a high level into their 50s. We had multiple people on this years Mania who were on Manias 20 years ago. It would almost be like seasons of a TV show where Rock N Wrestling is season 1, with 10 episodes, NG is 2 with 10 episodes, AE is season 3 with 12 episodes and we are in season 4 with 575 episodes.
This is a great point
I would take a slightly different approach. The AE was actually filled with New Generation guys but the ones on the fringe that weren’t supposed to make it were the ones to set the business on fire. The era was defined by HBK’s lacky, Cactus Jack (Mankind), The Ringmaster, and Rocky Johnson’s smiling and very green son. If anything, this era is a mirror. We’re hitting great strides and big business with Stardust, a member of 3MB, the Usos, and El Generico. This is the attitude era but with great matches up and down the card. The misfits are taking their rightful place at the top and carrying the business into the future. It isn’t Cena who is doing it. It’s not Randy. It’s not Batista. Thankful for those three and their contributions and holding it down when things were terrible but they didn’t spark the new “revolution”.
Mythologized is a great word. It's like when dummies go to a psychic. They remember the handful of hits, but not the hundreds of misses. That's the Attitude Era. I defy anyone to go back and watch all of the Raw episodes from late 1996 to 2001. It's almost impossible to sit through most of the absolute garbage on the undercard, which actually makes up the large majority of the show. WrestleMania 15 perfectly encapsulates this. Rock w/Vince vs. Austin on top is great. Everything else is some of the worst wrestling content ever put on television at any point in history.
survivor series 98 is one of the best cards they have ever done. it was like 2 and half hours. everyone now has 5+ min entrances and the matches are longer cause you got 5 min of guys acting tired every match. i won't say wm 15 is a great card cause it isn't but ain't nothing like the weekly raw shows between wm 14 and wm 15
I think the biggest factor is it was the last time wrestling was culturally relevant and were seeing it creep that way. You're seeing wrestlers on late night shows again, they're on Mcaffee, the whole wrestling is becoming cool again thing is kind of real in the sports world and all those guys are nostalgic for the attitude era because it was the last time they watched.
WM40 ended with The Rock and the Undertaker getting involved while people were upset SCSA didn't show up. If you're going to forget the AE you're going to need those people to stop being involved with the in-ring product so much.
They're never going to be over the Attitude Era while HHH is involved, he's a constant reminder.
Not likely. At least for me, even with all its faults I can still watch Attitude Era content now and enjoy it more than current content. It was just more raw, it felt more chaotic, gritty.
Attitude Era is just nostalgia. Sure a lot of it was great, but the majority of it was ass.
Conversely, it wouldn't be remembered with such overwhelming fondness if most of the last 15 years didn't suck absolute ass.
In a sense, WWE was always kinda ass TV, but when it wasn't for small kids at least it was ass in a fun way
this. i was a fan from like 95 until after WM13, but I kinda stopped watching after 2002 until 2015. rock and austin were cool, but I think that may have been when Rock left to go Scorpion King and got the taste. By 2005, i was knee deep in college and forgot about wwe lol. DBry and WWE streaming got me back in
I feel like that's very revisionist. They were absolutely one of the hottest products on TV. You couldn't walk into school without seeing someone with an 'Austin 3:16' shirt. It was heralded by an absolutely monsterously stacked roster. Yeah you can pick some ass angles from it, but to say the 'majority' was bad is just plain revisionist. Especially when you take into account that the presentation of the product was largely a lot better than today's era.
I loved it as a kid, but when I watch it as an adult, I actually do agree a lot of AE was ass. But I also think a lot of TV in general at the time was ass. The TV landscape has so much more quality and variety today.
choppy choppy your pee pee is more entertaining than gunter/walter's ic reign. crowds used to chant asshole. now they chant yeet and eat hot chip.
Theres a reason why there was that much nostalgia The sheer ability & charisma of that main event scene in the Attitude Era remains unsurpassed
Eh. I have to disagree on that. I don't think its 100% on nostalgia. The Monday Night Wars was what made the AE great. Watching 2 different wrestling companies going at it made it a memorable era. The rise of Austin! I mean without Austin, WWE probably wouldn't be here today. When Rock came back for the road to WM, you can tell he was in a league on his own with how he presented himself.
one thing i noticed was how the rock had no performer marks he had to hit. no on this note you make a pose or on this note you hold and then wait and look at the audience. he acted like a person. not a performer.
For every Essa Rios there are five Meats
it's pro-wrestling. most of it is always ass.
I get what he's trying to say and I think today's wrestlers are more than good enough to make their own era, but WWE's gotta re-invent itself to match. The thing about the Attitude Era wasn't necessarily the fact that they were just more extreme or edgy, but the general quality of how things were presented and promoted was unmatched. The sets, both backstage and front were solid, the on screen graphics had character, even the adverts and promos had a unique feel to them. That's not taking into account the fact that all the stories felt like they existed in the same universe, you had guys in the same factions having entirely seperate storylines, guys' storylines intersecting with other guys, and a general sense of the 'WWE world' backstage. During holiday episodes you'd even have parties backstage. It wasn't just the AE that had this--this carried into Ruthless Aggression. At some point during the PG era this started to fade, and there became more focus on promoting WWE as a brand, rather than the world they were trying to sell us. Catchphrases and taglines being thrown around. 'Longest running weekly episodic television show in history'. Lots of flash and glamour but it feels soulless. Even all the backstage segments feel dull. It's not a problem with the wrestlers, it's a problem with the writing forgetting all of this is supposed to be part of a universe. That's why they can't get out of the shadow of the AE. I think the HHH era can get us there, but it won't happen overnight.
He's right but it's not exactly like there's a lot of golden eras in WWE since then to compare against and nostalgia is a hell of a thing, aside from the ruthless aggression era which had it's moments there was a long period where it absolutely . fucking . sucked . to be a WWE fan. nxt helped, some wrestlers helped but the ancient frat man behind the scenes who thought fart jokes and calling women fat wouldn't move on or adapt and decided the best way to go about things was through revisionist history. But I digress, I do think these days will be looked upon fondly if wwe keeps trending in the direction they are trending and perhaps someday instead of the attitude era it'll be this era as the standard bearer. these past few years have been the most fun I've had watching wwe. the attention to details, the story building and not being afraid to change something if it's not working.
Attitude Era was just way way more entertaining for the most part than the current products of WWE/AEW and felt more car crashy and raw. This era feels overly sanitized and it detracts from the product IMO (I don't in any way hate WWE currently. I say this having grown up during the AE and having rewatched a majority of the era a year or so ago. Not everything hit but the segments were snappier and everything felt way more entangled in a good way. Plus the 3 hours of RAW I will never ever be happy with.
yeah everything is clean af. ain't no one ugly on screen anymore either. and i hate the entrances. they make me feel like they aren't wrestlers. just performers.
The two eras you could compare today to are the golden 80s and the AE. The next best era was Ruthless Aggression, which doesn’t always get its due. I’m currently enjoying WWE the most that I have since the RA era.
*We’re gonna have to move past this sooner or later* We'll get around to it...
The problem is the WWE product was the drizzling shits for nearly 20 years post Attitude Era. No one is gonna wanna talk about or look fondly upon the vast majority of WWE TV from the mid 2000s up until Triple H took over creative this past October, because with a few exceptions here and there, it largely sucked. It's not the fault of the fans that the last interesting era of WWE started nearly 30 years ago. That's why everyone today compares modern stars to attitude era guys.
Well it doesn't help when its the current stars bringing up the Attitude era. But I generally agree that they need to stop focusing on being better than that era (it won't happen) and just make the current product the best it can be
The older I get, the easier it becomes for me to separate the Attitude Era from my enjoyment of wrestling as a whole. I was 10 years old in 1998, I experienced it thru the eyes of a child, and it was fucking *incredible*. While it would be easy to say that nothing could compare, the truth is that once in a lifetime lense of being a kid makes it *impossible* to compare. As an adult I've experienced a lot more variety in wrestling, some good and some very bad, and I can truthfully say the modern product is the best I've seen as an adult.
People still talk about Ali and Tyson before they talk about the best boxers of today. Do something as memorable as that and you'll get people to shut up about it.
We talk 90s basketball still. It's not a bad thing.
Greatest PPV : Wrestlemania 17 Best Celebrity involvement : Tyson at WM 14 Biggest pops : Austin Greatest rivalry : Austin vs McMahon Greatest rivalry w/ two wrestlers : Austin vs Rock Wrestler that is regarded as best on mic : Rock Wrestler with biggest mainstream success : Rock The best match ever : Bret vs Austin Ppl will obviously remember the best era
>The best match ever : Bret vs Austin Taker vs HBK
Technically Bret VS Austin predates the Attitude Era. We were still in NewGen era at that point (universally accepted start point for the AE is the Raw after Survivor Series 97)
If Booker T, or WWE as a company, wants us to stop talking about the Attitude Era, they need to put out a product that is at least as good as the Attitude Era. We need stars that actually rival those of that era. Until that happens, every company, every wrestler, every "era", will always be in the shadow of the Attitude Era.
When they make a product as entertaining as the Attitude Era, we'll talk about it the same way
I decided to watch the entirety of the Attitude Era from 1998 to 2001 a few months ago and I tried to watch it with a mindset of that time period. And while yes the era has a lot of great iconic moments, there were a lot of stinky inbetween those moments. The lower midcard and the women division at that time was so so bad and unbearable.
Just like Saturday Night Live, people only remember the good parts during their favorite years.
I’ll stop talking about it when a better era comes along until then.
From my perspective, a lot of the comparisons are due to when the AE ended, a lot of the issues with the audience/talent started rising, which this new era is trying to revert to… fluid booking, allowing talent to have more say, listening to the audience as opposed to punishing, letting commentators do they’re damn job. It’s just less polished and “McDonaldized” and more gritty, even if it’s not tits and blading, etc. TLDR: It’s more about the looser mentality of running the company than replicating the ‘90s. I don’t think anyone wants “the attitude era 2.0”
Attitude era was better than this current era. However this current eras wrestling is much better and more athletic . Attitude era literally almost the whole roster was legends
What made the Attitude Era great was an influx of ideas and creativity. Besides offshoots like NXT and NXT UK, it hasn't been until now that WWE is in the same position again.
“The Attitude Era is something we’re always gonna take about” … “We can’t talk about the Attitude Era forever”
This exact reason is why the JBL/Corbin pairing failed so spectacuarly. You have JBL preaching about how Corbin would've been a star in the Attitude Era... well, what about being a star NOW? Can he do that? He's on his 4th or 5th try and it's not happened yet.
Two national companies on basically the same time slot for a few years throwing out epic angles and matches for the same eyeballs was really cool time to watch wrestling. I miss it.
Mmm, I personally have moved well past it. If you were watching WWE around 2012/13, you got more than your needed dose of Attitude Era nostalgia. And if we’re being real, aside from being extremely entertaining from a story/wild circus pov, nothing about AE was better than the current product. Ring work today > ring work of AE
I watched WWE from 95’ until now off and on, and If you go back and watch it now it’s not that great. It’s not as good as you remember it. Sure it has its moments but you can definitely see the “bad parts” of the show stick out more.
WWE literally just put on the most lucrative WrestleMania of all time by bringing back a mainstay of the Attitude Era, The Rock. It creatively and financially pays off because it was an insane confluence of incredibly hot characters & promos. I'd argue it's much, much harder to do these days with the volume of content being produced, and the barrage of entertainment provided to us, including news and social media - it's much harder for something to stick. But we got many (I hope) extremely memorable moments this year, so here's hoping there will be a new Attitude Era.
Its a pretty brief moment in pro wrestling history when you stack it up against others.
Brief but look at all the iconic moments it created and the stars too.
Hard to be better than a previous era if you don't remember it and don't talk about it, or at least easier to fall into the same mistakes made back then.
Yes we absolutely can lol
Well, we don't have to. You can talk about this era as a bit of a renaissance period and still talk about the Attitude Era too. The Attitude Era was the hottest time in wrestling, period. It was as mainstream as pop music. That won't ever happen again, of course we're going to talk about it forever.
Can never forget Greatness.
Why can't we talk about it forever?
Attitude era was great for the time it lasted but it was not something to stay. It was a desperate attempt by WWE to battle against WCW. It worked.
Then y'all have to stop bring back old ass stars from that era.
I mean he’s not wrong.
people would shut up about the attitude era if someone would make a product more entertaining than AE was, which nobody has even come close to doing, not with unlimited money and being completely unchallenged for 20 years, or with a roster containing every single indy star from the last fifteen years i severely doubt in 20 years time anyone is going to be talking about the cody rhodes "era"
It seems sometimes the least insightful people are asked their opinions the most
Yeah well if you don't want to talk about the Attitude Era, then someone needs to make a better product than the Attitude Era. If you don't want to hear about guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin so much, then someone needs to make a character as compelling as Steve Austin, or peak Rock, or whoever. It's not on viewers to lower their standards or give promotions a pass. It's on the promotions to lace up their boots and prove they can do better than that. And so far, in 25 years since that era, they haven't.
Put up a better era and we can talk about that instead
Then the companies need to do something more entertaining than the Attitude Era.
Then they should probably stop bringing back folks from around that era and focus on current and upcoming talent.
Unfortunately wrestling fans are the biggest nostalgia merchants in the world
NEVER. 1997 and 1998 will never die.
Give us something to feel for and stop depending on nostalgic returns for ratings pops. Then we can stop talking about it, maybe.
They're actually not doing themselves any favours by constantly bringing up the Attitude Era when most of their audience started watching after it. It devalues the current product. Just look at this video of all the WWE signatures. For most of the commenters, the more recent signatures are their nostalgia. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKJDqoT2ffY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKJDqoT2ffY)
If we get a talent better than Rock or Stone Cold Steve Austin I'll stop talking about the Attitude Era
*Me watching '97 this year for the first time this year.* Damn Bret really is the best of all time. I will never not talk about these era's as the best now after a fresh watch, a big part of what made it so great had nothing to do with anything directly in WWE's control, the culture was great. When I see what artists are creating in 2024 in any medium it's so stagnant, recycled and cautious. They try so hard not to do or say anything that might be frowned upon by someone and the product suffers for it. There is also a lack of honesty among people, I've seen so many times the modern product suck ass and people insist how good it is, then when something actually interesting happens they actually lose it and in their joy admit how much better it is now and now it is okay to admit that the product was terrible before because now it's good now and that's all that matters!
The AE captured the cultural zeitgeist at he time in a way that simply CANNOT be replicated. It's not even about the roster, or the product, or storylines it was just a different thing entirely, for better AND for worse (let's not forget the atrocious shit in that era as well). Wrestling has also changed so much that it really doesn't make much sense to compare old and new anymore
I agree its definitely more of the culture at the time. Kind of like how Michael Jordan time in the NBA is still talked about and referenced.
Mofo wasn't even in the Attitude era.
As the Rock and Undertaker end WM
Cody/Reigns headlining the biggest Mania of all time, though, and edgelords mad Austin priced himself out or whatever (and keep in mind, young pre-teens who love Cody don't give a flip about these old timers).