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QOTD - July 1st, 2013

Greetings. Today we have question from Gavin Lee about whether or not the Attitude Era holds up.

"People always wax lyrical about the Attitude Era although it was great and wrestling gained a lot of mainstream exposure and gasp! It actually was cool to watch!  However looking back in hindsight do you agree apart from the story lines and the odd stand out match especially in 98-99 that the standard of the matches in general was poor looking at Mr Keith's rants and watching them back the vast majority of PPVs were basically one match cards and a shit undercard with the exception of 2000. In my opinion the standard of wrestling was better in 2001 to say 2004 when Angle Eddie Brock etc were in their primes and there was more than one match cards. What do you think or what's your best era of wrestling?"

I started watching wrestling in 1995, when I was 11. So I was 15 when the Attitude Era was in it's prime. I was EXACTLY who they wanted watching their shows. I loved it then. It was so much fun. But looking back? It's fucking dreadful. PPVs were extremely crappy, with, as you stated, one-match cards. However, the matches & the stories behind'em were pretty damn fantastic. 2000 and 2001 were far greater, as they had the influx of fantastic wrestlers like Malenko, Guerrero, Benoit, and people like Austin feeling rejuvenated.

My favorite era was actually the year 1998. I loved Stone Cold, DX, and Mick Foley. And I loved the Wolfpac and Chris Jericho. Wrestling was at such a fever pitch in the summer of 1998, and I was reveling in it.

How say you?

Comments

  1. 1997 holds up as the best still I think, and 1998 wwe and wcw really hold up. 1999 is a little tough to watch out side rock and scsa

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  2. Yeah, I think that's fair. As 1999 started to near, Russo was absolutely out of control with all of his bullshit.

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  3. My favorite era will always be JCP from about 85-89. That's when I first got into wrestling as a kid and I loved The Horsemen.

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  4. 1998 holds up very well in my opinion. Even though the last few months when the match quality goes down there are still intriguing story lines. Not to mention the summer of 1998 is ridiculously fun with Austin-Taker and DX-Nation


    As much as people love 1997 I think I enjoy 1998 all the more because Austin was so damn over that it is a spectacle every time he comes out. The Austin-Shawn feud, the Austin-Foley, Austin-Kane and Austin-Taker are all fun to watch. And of course, Austin-McMahon.

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  5. In the moment, that Era was perfect. Looking back? Well, Austin is still awesome, and there are a ton of gems throughout...but man, a lot is just the drizzling shits.

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  6. I grew up on the NWA starting in 1988, so 88 through the end of 1990 will always be my favorite period of wrestling.

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  7. No idea why the Attitude Era match quality gets shit on so much. I can name just as many classic matches from that era as any other.

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  8. I enjoyed it while it was going on, so WWF did their job. Trying to compare to JCP is a fool's errand.

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  9. I dont think it holds up but who cares. It was an extremely inventive, cutting edge product, with two of the biggest stars of all time at their apex. Throw I'm DX, Foley, UT, Vince, etc, and I'll doubt I'll ever be as entertained with wrestling as I was back then. As Caliber mentioned, being the perfect demographic (teenage male) helped also.

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  10. davidbonzaisaldanamontgomeryJuly 1, 2013 at 12:58 PM

    The one thing I think this era has over the AE is depth of quality workers on the rosters (there are very few guys they have that I think, "Oh man, this is gonna suck", which is a huge change from even 5 or so years ago) and the bigger focus on matches on the shows. There's still squash matches aplenty, but we also do get several solid-to-excellent 15 minute matches across both RAW and SD, and sometimes that's enough to persevere through the shows when the booking isn't working. I hope the booking does continue to trend in the right direction, because there's a shit-ton of guys in the WWE fold I love seeing work.


    But yeah, the Attitude Era is definitely seen through rose-tinted goggles. Yeah, there were some truly iconic moments and matches, but there's a lot of stuff too that we would hate if it happened today. Hell, a lot of the jokes and skits were juvenile on par with what Cena does, just with more sexual language because that was the cool thing to do in the late-90s, South Park era.

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  11. You also need to factor in the lack of competitive TV matches and the vastly different number of PPVs between these eras. 1 hour of mostly squash matches and 4-5 PPVs vs. 2 hours of mostly competitive matches and 12 PPVs.

    Beyond that, I think it's back to that age-old Blog of Doom question: would you rather a 10-match PPV with 10 average matches or 9 shit matches and 1 4-5 star? The Attitude Era was more often than not the latter.

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  12. I feel the opposite about the depth. Take a guy like Val Venis. He couldn't get past the midcard because of the stacked roster but if he walked through their doors today, he'd be main eventing in a month.

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  13. I miss the variety of the AE, Golden Age etc. Too many of these guys look like twinks and do the same 10 or so moves with little to no crowd work. UGH the choreographed entrances! It's a shame because WWE currently has great athletes.



    Get off my lawn!

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  14. To me, whether or not it holds up isn't really the point. It was very, very Zeitgeist-y: it was the right time, and the right stars, for that style to shove the WWF back into the public consciousness.

    I think there's a decent number of people who post here who are around the same age as I am (30 next month) but late '97-early '98 is when I started watching wrestling. Never liked it as a young kid, wasn't until my freshman year of high school that I really got it, or got into it, at all. So even though I quickly became somewhat smarky since I was older when I first got into it, it's hard to look back at 1998 with anything but nostalgia. So it's hard for me to really say if it holds up, even if I don't think it matters.

    And like Caliber said, when you refer to the "Attitude Era" you really have to be more specific. If we're talking about the Russo Era, yeah, there was a lot of terrible shit and bad matches but at least everyone had something to do. When you get into 2000, a lot of the vulgarity and sexual stuff calmed down (not all, not even most, but a good chunk) and more importantly, the roster was vastly improved. Not only did you have the additions of Jericho, Angle, Eddy and Benoit, but just as importantly Rock and HHH had massively improved from two years earlier and had become great workers in their own right. You had a clearly defined hierarchy of faces and heels, but upward mobility within that hierarchy.



    So, I think almost everything from Russo leaving to the Invasion holds up as a near-uninterrupted 20-month run of unrepentant awesomeness that will hold up to anything this dear pseudo-sport of ours ever produced. The two years before that, yeah, a lot of silly garbage that's borderline cringe-worthy. But again, I think that's missing the point. It was era-defining and stood out as something different.

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  15. davidbonzaisaldanamontgomeryJuly 1, 2013 at 4:22 PM

    The "zeitgeist-y" that you brought is why I think it would be a mistake to try to replicate it the way a lot of folks in the IWC and fans who have left the product want to these days. It was the right product for the right time, sort of fell in with all the rebellious media that hooked us all (South Park, The Matrix, Fight Club, Office Space, etc.) but by the time we reached 2006 and HHH and Candice Michelle were getting blown under a table at the same time, it felt very passe.

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  16. Hated it then, hate it even more so now. I dug the storylines for the most part but the matches were horrible. I hated the WWF Main Event Style ™. Growing up on NWA and Mid-South with 80s WWF mixed in, all I cared about was the wrestling, and I almost tuned out for good then.

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  17. Storylines and CRASH TV dominated the Attitude Era and made it must-see TV. Even with the plethora of dirt sheets (Scoops, anyone?) out there Monday night was definitely wrestling night and required viewing. While OTE '98 was essentially a one-match show the SCSA-Dude Love match is required viewing for any and all wrestling fans to this day.
    In as much as I hated the nWo due to Hogan's involvement it gave me a reason to watch Nitro every Monday to see if WCW could ever get the upper hand. The Sting-Hogan saga from 1997 is a classic storyline that holds up very well.

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