I've recently been watching WWE stuff from late 96 and 97 and I'm wondering your thoughts on what point in time Vince become fully committed to the Attitude Era? For me, the Raw where Sid beats Bret in a steel cage match is significant for all the drama that went with it. Also, Stone Cold cheating to win the Rumble and being cheered for it stands out.
One more thing...do you feel that Bret being Canadian allowed for the attitude era to be a success? Without that there is no Canadian Stampede and do you think he'd been a over as a heel in the US without the heat from being Canadian?
Keep up the good work and I hope you make some money doing this, your work has kept me far more interested in wrestling than the WWE has.
I'd be making more money if both TNA and WWE were doing awesome stuff and drawing peoples interest at the same time. Which is why I find it so weird that people think I have it in for one promotion or the other at various times or that I want them to fail. The RAW 1000 show had a thousand comments! If WWE was doing Attitude-era numbers again I could retire and live on a gold boat, to steal Bryan Alvarez's famous metaphor.
Anyway, yeah, the Attitude era pretty much started with Bret's profanity-laden tirade, and I think even Vince has said so in the past. Obviously the set-in-stone start was the "Shades of grey / good guys and bad guys" speech from Vince, but I think when Bret went nuts on live TV he knew he had something special there.
In Foley's first book he said Vince called a talent meeting right after Pillman died, in October of '97, to discuss changing things, doing shades of grey, less gimmicks, anti-heroism, etc. Not that the didn't start pushing the envelope beforehand (esp. with Russo in everyone's ear), but I think that was truly when it sunk into Vince's mind that this was the only way to go to survive.
ReplyDeleteWhen did it end?
ReplyDeleteWould you consider the ending at WrestleMania X7 with Austin's heel turn or did it come later?
I remember at the time everyone was jumping ship watching wcw and I was trying to convince my mates that wwe had something really special with Bret Hart but no one brought it until things were 'hot'.
ReplyDeleteAnd then he did that interview with Pillman's widow. *Shakes head*
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of people here hate Bret Hart...but man, I miss the 1996-97 Bret.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people here hate Bret Hart? I can't stand him, but I'm pretty sure this is one of the most pro-Bret places on the net.
ReplyDeletenWo > Attitude Era, if at least for the fact that we know exactly when it began.
ReplyDeleteI don't go anywhere on the net (in regards to wrestling).
ReplyDeleteI'd say so. Seeing the (anti)hero of the era giving hugs to the most heinous villain in the wrestling was pretty much the end.
ReplyDeleteI would argue the Attitude Era was a gradual process that began with the debut of Goldust. It was followed by tweener Diesel, Bret and Bulldog in a bloody battle at IYH and then a cocky champion. From there the next big steps would be KOTR 96, the Pillman/Austin with a gun on Raw and then Bret's profanity-laden tirade. Vince may have given his speech after Pillman's death that they were upping the ante, but by that point Bret, HBK, and Austin all had done the shades of grey thing, You had Austin as the main face acting like a heel and cussing on TV. You had HBK giving edgier and edgier promos on his way to DX and of course you had the whole heel in the U.S./face in Canada thing with the Hart foundation.
ReplyDeleteI'd say it was before that, probably when the Radicals jumped from WCW, or maybe even when Russo left.
ReplyDeleteWhat was that
ReplyDeleteBryan Alvarez line about again?
I looooove bret Hart. He's in almost everyone of my favorite matches
ReplyDeleteTo a large degree, same here. Some people will say that if I don't like what people are saying here, I should leave. But it's not like I have a long list of wrestling websites I visit. I don't know who's credible and entertaining on the net regarding wrestling anymore (ten years ago, maybe).
ReplyDeleteAnd 1997 Bret was one of the most brilliant characters ever. Even Bret, who dissects his own character to the point of it being scary, doesn't give himself enough credit for that half-heel/half-patriotic turn. Everyone from the Un-Americans to Damien Sandow have tried to take something from Bret's original character.
Another fellow amateur wrestling historian. I'm not the only one. Yay.
ReplyDeleteI am in total agreement with you here. The seeds of the Attitude Era were planted long before the autumn of 1997. There were also two other things that I thought started to signal or push forward into the Attitude Era.
First, there were the "toughman" matchups of late '96. I think that's what they called it. Either way, you had a mostly heel Stone Cold taking on a mostly heel Mankind on Raw. You also had a mostly heel Stone Cold taking on monster heel Vader on Raw as well. They pretty much promoted these matches as "Hey, they may not be 'good' guys, but they're tougher than shoe leather--let's see who the bigger badass is."
Second, I would venture to say that the Nation of Domination also helped shift the tone of Raw. Gone was the ridiculous Modern Day Gladiator blue helmet getup. It was replaced by a leader of a more socially conscious group/organization. It seemed so out of place right after someone participated in squashing the Goon, the Pug, or TL Hopper in a previous segment, but that was actually a good thing.
I never understood the "one side must fail" mindset. As a wrestling fan, why would I *not* want RAW, SD, and Impact to all be really good at the same time? Holy shit, three days of great programming would be nirvana. WWE and TNA may have their lows (and I mean lows), but I'm always rooting for whoever's down to pick themselves up and find a way to make it entertaining again. I'm *thrilled* that Impact has been so good post-Russo after being insufferable for so long, because now that's one show I can look forward to week after week, and that, as DDP would say, is a good thing =D
ReplyDeleteIt's like the whole console war thing. Why does it matter to individuals if a console fails or not? If I had the deep pockets, I'd own all three current systems in a heartbeat.
(That said, fuck the SNES. Team Genesis 4 lyfe)
I would recommend the e-mailer search out "Timeline 1997 with Jim Cornette". It's a recap of his experiences in creative during that great year and how things slowly went towards Attitude. It's an amazing watch and hey, you get to spend 3 hours or so with one of the craziest and funniest people ever to be involved with pro wrestling.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's something you see a lot of in people -- with game consoles, sports teams, PC vs Mac, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt's sort of like brand loyalty but kicked up to another level -- where you are outwardly hostile towards another brand at least in part because of your allegiance to the other brand alone. It has definitely existed in wrestling for a long long time and was one of the main reasons they had to launch moderated versions of some of the old RSPW newsgroups -- you'd just get way too many "WWF sux!" "NWO blows!" type posts.
Pretty much what I said. People on the boards were accusing him of cheering on the downfall of WWE and profiting from the death of WCW, and his response was that his newsletter was doing gigantic numbers during the Monday Night Wars and why would he possibly want to give that up? Had the interest in wrestling in general continued on where it was in 1998, he could retired have on a boat made out of gold rather than living on whatever relatively smaller amount of money he makes now in a depressed wrestling climate.
ReplyDeleteAttitude Era officially kicked off with the Raw at MSG in Fall 97'.
ReplyDeleteI think the toughman matches were more about a lack of roster depth at the time. They were so desperate for TV matches that didn't involve guys like the Goon, to run against Nitro's PPV-like environment, that they just started throwing anything out there.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you're both overlooking the birth of the diva. Sunny's popularity on the Internet in 1996 was sort of a wake-up call for the company that their fans were interested in sex. They had only skirted the line up until that point, like when Perfect and Flair said they had pictures of Elizabeth. But they hadn't regularly run swimsuit competitions or even really tried to make money off half-naked women. That certainly changed.
I cite 2 things starting the AE.
ReplyDelete1. Hogan turning
2. Austin 3:16
Personally, it was the first "RAW is WAR" one week before the Bret tirade that made me think the WWF was into brand new territory tone-wise. You had indications of it beforehand, but that was the first real aesthetic shift after RAW went to two hours to drive home the badder image. I remember precisely where I was when that episode and the Bret tirade aired, and I can't say that for Austin 3:16.
ReplyDeleteIf we're to believe Vince Russo, it occurred during a creative meeting in late winter/early spring 1997. Russo said the Raw rating one week was below a 2.0 and Vince McMahon held up a copy of the Raw magazine, which Russo was editing and was the edgier version of the official WWF magazine, and proclaimed the product needed to reflect the edginess of the magazine. Russo had already been on the creative team at this point, but it was at this meeting that Russo really started to gain significant power and it wasn't long after that meeting that we saw the Bret Hart anti-USA stuff, Austin turning face, the Nation getting big TV time, Shawn Michaels returning, etc...
ReplyDeleteThe Austin/Tyson angle. The crazy mainstream pub turned it almost cartoon like. It's like your favorite underground band hitting the big time. The year before that, WWE was much more grittier, the show still looked like shit, and the storylines and wrestlers seemed a bit more realistic. Then you Austin driving beer trucks and a zamboni the next year.
ReplyDeleteNot saying I didn't love it, but comparing the year leading up to Austin/Tyson and the year that followed is like night and day.
I'll put up WWF Jan 97 to Jan 98 as the best television wrestling has ever produced.
ReplyDeleteThat'd be kind of an interesting thing to argue actually. Without the whole cool heel aspect of the NWO with Hall and Nash acting like straight up gangsters instead of cartoon characters (although Nash had a pretty meaty role right before he left), I'm not sure you ever convince Vince that anti-heroes are viable on top of a promotion.
ReplyDeleteI'm not an ECW fan for the most part, but we can all agree that both WCW and WWF pretty much copied whatever attitude they had from them, yes?
ReplyDeleteThat I agree 100%. I think the period right up to that point was great -- after that I'm not so convinced that it was the greatest time ever in wrestling.
ReplyDelete98-99 was when Russo had the most influence over Vince and it shows. I'm not so sure "raunch" = "attitude". To me, from the spawning of the NWO through the Austin-Tyson angle is where it's at for both promotions.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't include WCW or the nWo in the attitude era. At the beginning it was right in line with it, but it defaulted back to regular WCW wrestling show pretty quickly.
ReplyDeleteWCW copied more of the angles and gimmicks from ECW but WWF mostly tried to copy the look of it. At least a bigger production budget version of it.
ReplyDeleteThe next 18 months were some of the worst, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think that's pretty fair. I think both WWF and WCW came up with their own specific ideas for things, but both groups definitely copied the essence of it, essentially the framework. Although certainly some things were stolen directly -- i.e. sending guys through tables, the cardboard covered stop sign, etc.
ReplyDeleteScott I'm glad you make money off ads. That's great you deserve it for being a talented writer...just please don't turn into 411! Today they had 3 thong pics of Trish and each had an individual pop up on it and a side pop up also!
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the best sites on the net(although I miss the cartoon sharpshooter heading)
That's a good observation -- that is really the most fun time for both promotions.
ReplyDeleteWe've talked a lot about the WWF side of things in this thread, but Nitro was also rocking in 1997.
True, you didn't have any on top guys in WCW like a motivated Bret Hart, an uninjured Steve Austin, or Shawn Michaels to carry the main events (which is always funny to think about, given that was the big advantage WCW had over the WWF all through the 1980s and mid 1990s), but the NWO angle carried the top of the card in a fairly entertaining 'sports entertainment' manner, even if the matches were crummy. In 1995 and 1996, I think the one hour format was just too short for that roster and also pretty heavy on the "Hogan and Friends". Once they started to shunt some of the big slugs off to WCW Pro and the like, you'd usually be guaranteed a few entertaining matches and a variety of different styles of wrestling.
Plus WCW booked pretty tiny arenas through the end of 1996, so you never really had the massive crowds to really make the thing seem legit. As 1996 transitioned into 1997, you started to see the transformation -- with two out of the first three Nitro shows in the Superdome and the United Center. The United Center show was a near sell-out for a company that had to paper mid-level arenas like the Norfolk Scope a year and a half earlier.
I may be misunderstanding what you're saying. Personally, I wouldn't say it is part of it -- especially given that each respective era occurred in different companies. I do think the NWO played a big hand in helping Vince see it as a viable path to pursue.
ReplyDeleteI've been re-watching the shows thanks to Classics on Demand, and it's currently showing the famous Raw where Vince McMahon is in the hospital and both Mick Foley and Steve Austin visit Vince. To me, the show is largely still really good. Certain stuff now seems kinda juvenile, but the flow and most of the stuff is still fantastic. I don't think things started to get ridiculous until 1999. For my money, it started when they switched Road Dogg and Billy Gunn singles matches at WrestleMania XV just for the sake of swerves. Once that became common place, it started to become stupid. All that said, as a kid in 1999 (I was 11-12 years old), I freggin' loved it back then. But even I know that a lot of the stuff wouldn't be as appealing to an adult or hold up nearly as well today.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the WWF totally redeemed themselves in 2000 when they simultaneously had compelling storylines and some fantastic matches, both on the undercard and in the main event.
the end of 1996 was already very good as well. from stuff like the Austin/Pillmann incident to the first attempts to have confrontations that didn't have the regular face/heel alignment.
ReplyDeleteI'm still pissed we never got a crazy blow off brawl between Austin and Pillman in either fed.
ReplyDeleteWell said, sir. You make a stiff point. I mean, you make a strong point about sexuality emerging and really becoming a part of the Attitude Era.
ReplyDeleteExactly -- I'm a 49ers fan -- Fucking HATE the Raiders -- You can't like both, you just can't -- Is there any logical reason for my feelings? Nope, a lot of my good friends are Raider fans -- There's a lot of fun in the "one or the other" mentality -- The thing is, I want the Raiders to stick around so I can keep hating them :-)
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think the AE began when the WWF began officially acknowledging and outwardly mocking WCW via the "Billionaire Ted" sketches. To me, that was the first sign that something was about to change. True enough, those sketches were borne more out of desperation than anything else and the rest of the product was firmly stuck in "New Generation" mode, but that was really the first time you ever saw anything that "edgy" (by the standards of the time) on WWF television.
ReplyDelete