Looking back at the Attitude Era.....

[Shai]

Why did I think some of this was cool? No really, I rented the Attitude Era set from the library and 15 year old me was an idiot. Yeah some of it was amazing but damn stuff like Mae Young giving birth to a hand, Mark Henry as a sundae, a female stable being called PMS. Jesus, What the heck was that stuff?

[Perd]

All the bad stuff, of that era, is offset by the copious amounts of Steve Blackman.

[A Platypus Rave]

May 11, 2016 14:06:29 GMT -5 Shai said:

Why did I think some of this was cool? No really, I rented the Attitude Era set from the library and 15 year old me was an idiot. Yeah some of it was amazing but damn stuff like Mae Young giving birth to a hand, Mark Henry as a sundae, a female stable being called PMS. Jesus, What the heck was that stuff?

My guess... A lot of the good stuff was a sign of the times type thing for one and helped you ignore the really absolutely awful stuff. (remember the late 90's EVERYTHING was X-TREME!)

It's one reason of the many reasons why Russo's shit doesn't work anymore 2016 doesn't have the same cultural zeitgeist as 1996 no longer being able to mask the stupid shit he wrote for everyone else.

[Big Bad Kahuna]

Yeah the edgy zeitgeisty xtreme theme of the characters, angles and look of the show make it kinda hard to watch at times

"ZOMG BUHBUH PUTTING MAE THRU DAT TABLE, SHE'S AN OLD WOMAN OMG WHAT DA HELL??" *eyeroll*

[Push R Truth]

The few times I've been able to actually talk to a "BRING BACK THE ATTITUDE ERA!" person the conversations are all similar: When they explained the Attitude Era it sounded an awful lot like every match on TV contained Austin, Foley, Undertaker, HHH and the Rock all fighting eachother. Sometimes they mix Hogan,Sting, or Flair into the mix.


Their memory of the Attitude Era really seemed like it was a bunch of main events on RAW and NITRO just tossed into a blender. But I think for the average person it's easy to forget 90% of the rest of the show. Shit, I have a hard time remembering what happened outside of Dean vs Jericho on Monday's RAW.

[MAGGLE]

I completely agree with the OP, I would go as far as to say that I would rather have the current era than the attidute era

[Bub (BLM)]

I was 14-16 during the Attitude Era as well, so I ate it up. I was the target demographic, an immature teenage boy. Watching it back as a 31 year old man, yeah, I can't stand most of it.

I will say though that the Attitude Era was far better at utilizing talent and giving everyone a purpose to exist than today's product is. Even the lower card guys got angles and mic time. And that was with less weekly TV than they have now.

[Big Poppa Pumpkin]

biggest thing that stood out for me when I last revisited the Attitude era stuff was how utterly terrible Undertaker was

also the undercard of most PPVs were almost impressively bad from around 1998 until 2000

[Shai]

May 11, 2016 15:02:08 GMT -5 Bub (BLM) said:

I was 14-16 during the Attitude Era as well, so I ate it up. I was the target demographic, an immature teenage boy. Watching it back as a 31 year old man, yeah, I can't stand most of it.

I will say though that the Attitude Era was far better at utilizing talent and giving everyone a purpose to exist than today's product is. Even the lower card guys got angles and mic time. And that was with less weekly TV than they have now.

Exactly, I'm female but I was a tomboy to the extreme so I had the mindset of a teenage boy. I loved all of it. I even look back at pictures of me wearing old wwe shirts like....my mom let me wear that to school at 15?...holy shit!

[Fade is a CodyCryBaby]

Well, the performers were having fun. So there was that.

[Gremlin]

Is there an opposite of rose colored glasses? Wrestling in the attitude era was fresh and exciting. It had huge mainstream appeal and lots of people (everyone that I knew) were watching. Was it turrble? Yes, of course. It's WWE not high art or anything. But everyone was talking about it the next day. I miss the people I was watching with more than the era itself.

WCW Saturday Night was more of my jam, anyway.

[ERON]

I was in my late teens-early 20s, and I hated WWF during the Attitude Era. It drove me to watch WCW almost exclusively until Russo jumped ship.

[cool]

Mark Henry was a delicious Ice Cream treat? Did he try to eat himself?

[Shai]

May 11, 2016 19:36:35 GMT -5 cool said:

Mark Henry was a delicious Ice Cream treat? Did he try to eat himself?

I don't know if your being sarcastic or not but there was a thing on raw where Jackie and Terri Runnels tied him up sprayed ice cream toppings on him and acted like kinky sex was about to take place. 

[Deleted]

I'm a little different from most posters of this forum I'd prefer wwe to be like that than what we currently get I'm a big fan of characters and episodic storytelling and while a lot of the attitude era was bad you could tell the people in charge were trying while today you get a lot of good wrestling that doesn't matter and shows that seem like they took 30 seconds of effort.I miss the crowds being hot and I miss the product being hot everyone I knew watched and I still have fond memories of trying explain to my grandma what she just watched.

[ASYLUMHAUSEN]

May 11, 2016 14:06:29 GMT -5 Shai said:

Why did I think some of this was cool?

Well....

May 11, 2016 14:06:29 GMT -5 Shai said:

15 year old me

...answered your own question.

[Deleted]

May 11, 2016 19:41:26 GMT -5 Shai said:

May 11, 2016 19:36:35 GMT -5 cool said:

Mark Henry was a delicious Ice Cream treat? Did he try to eat himself?

I don't know if your being sarcastic or not but there was a thing on raw where Jackie and Terri Runnels tied him up sprayed ice cream toppings on him and acted like kinky sex was about to take place. 

I recently rewatched this and I had forgotten they had a clamp on his man region it was a nice attention to detail.

[Shai]

May 11, 2016 19:55:11 GMT -5 ASYLUMHAUSEN said:

May 11, 2016 14:06:29 GMT -5 Shai said:

Why did I think some of this was cool?

Well....

May 11, 2016 14:06:29 GMT -5 Shai said:

15 year old me

...answered your own question.

You are absolutely right, I rented the set after my mom pulled out a picture of me wearing that Val Venis shirt with the sperm lettering. I had a kid last year and I would never let my 15 year old wear some shit like that. 

[benstudd]

I guess I'm the opposite as being a WCW guy I hated most things from the WWF AE cause it was too obvious and cartoonish and stupid. I'm not a Russo fan.

But given how the product has become, nowadays I look back and think hey it wasn't that bad. They knew how to create stars at least. They knew how to generate heat. All the Raw following Mania nowadays are off the hook with many suprises, etc...Well back in the day, it was like this every Monday. It seemed like people were genuinely excited by the product(even if I was not).

There were stuff I hated so much from that time like Meat or for whatever reasons Ninjas tried to cut Val Venis' dick. The Higher Power reveal was a let down.

[darkjourney]

1. Must watch TV. You didn't want to miss a Monday. (Now you can miss 6 months, come back and theres the Mcmahon's bickering and the same old guys in the Main event)
2. Everyone on the card meant something. (Now 2-5 wrestlers mean something out of like 100 plus on the roster)
3. Storylines (Unlike today where its just the Mcmahon's making matches backstage with no storyline to fuel the matches and make them mean something)
4. Creative Freedom (None today)
5. Better writers (Yea.. Russo/Ferrera/Cornette/Prichard etc are 10 times better than the current writing staff)
6. Guys on Top who should have been on top (unlike today)
7. Vince playing great evil authority figure (HHH/Stephanie pale in comparison)