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Post by Urn Anderson on Jan 1, 2024 22:41:25 GMT -5
I don’t even think a “no” even comes close to covering it. WWF during the Attitude era was, without exaggeration, every bit as ingrained in pop culture as Taylor Swift is now or the MCU was at its prime. You couldn’t go anywhere, pick up a magazine, or turn on a TV without hearing about it. Media wasn’t segmented like it is now, so instead of thousands of different interests you could pursue while interacting with people around the world about them, there was a handful of things that would be INSANELY popular for a couple of years before burning out. There might be hot crowds AT the wrestling shows, but big box retail stores don’t have dedicated wrestling sections and you don’t see kiosks popping up in every mall that just sell bootleg wrestling shirts. There was a time when you couldn’t go ANYWHERE without seeing at least one person wearing an Austin 3:16 or nWo shirt. It’s nearly impossible to describe just how big it was then. Kids were getting suspended nationwide for crotch chopping! I almost was one of them! My junior high principal even ended an assembly with his arms in the air saying “I’ve got TWO WORDS FOR YA!” before pointing at us and saying “thank you!” That’s how ridiculously big it was.
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Post by "Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik on Jan 1, 2024 23:07:09 GMT -5
More profitable but not as hot or mainstream but to be fair, I'm not sure wrestling will ever reach that level again. Like they're doing big houses in a lot of places but some of the numbers they did from 1998-2001 are just insane.
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Post by Feargus McReddit on Jan 1, 2024 23:10:25 GMT -5
I’ll say it again, I think people should just be happy WWE is where it is right now. People are aware it exists and reference it but expecting it to be where it was in the late 90s/00s when barely anything is outside of, like, a handful of things, undermines the success WWE has right now.
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Post by Jindrak Mark on Jan 1, 2024 23:12:41 GMT -5
Hottest in 22-23 years but impossible to reach attitude era levels.
I saw an Eddie Kingston interview today saying he hoped AEW and WWE could get to Monday night war level ratings and yeah obviously it would be great but realistically has a 0.1% chance of happening.
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Jan 1, 2024 23:13:09 GMT -5
Hell no, but they’re doing the best they’ve done probably since then.
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Post by darbus alan on Jan 1, 2024 23:15:14 GMT -5
The weirdest thing with the Attitude Era is that until WrestleMania X-Seven, they were pretty conservative with the kinds of venues they'd run. Even the biggest shows just ran in regular-ass arenas. Granted I feel like Wrestlemania's importance during the New Generation and Attitude Eras was way more downplayed than it is in the current era. Like yeah, they got important matches, but outside of the name, Wrestlemania felt like just another show they'd put on during those years, especially XV and 2000.
Just imagine how insane those crowds would've been in the Attitude Era if WWE ran those Manias in the venues they run current Manias in.
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Post by BayleyTiffyCodyCenaJudyHopps on Jan 1, 2024 23:19:05 GMT -5
I have a question:
When fans talk about WWE and wrestling not being at its Attitude era peak, what’s with the finality and regretful tone?
No fan has ever answered this question with “eh, wrestling is doing alright”. It’s always “NEVER AGAIN will we have this much fun! We wrestling fans used to have it all, and look at us! Now we’re living under a bridge, with pet rocks and Furbys and beanie babies all the forgotten hot things!”
It’s like, we can’t appreciate more stadium shows on the regular and all these good products springing up now? No, if our lovable indie stars aren’t on the cover of People or Good Morning America, then we’re all mud-showing.
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Fade
Patti Mayonnaise
Posts: 38,494
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Post by Fade on Jan 1, 2024 23:21:39 GMT -5
I have a question: When fans talk about WWE and wrestling not being at its Attitude era peak, what’s with the finality and regretful tone? No fan has ever answered this question with “eh, wrestling is doing alright”. It’s always “NEVER AGAIN will we have this much fun! We wrestling fans used to have it all, and look at us! Now we’re living under a bridge, with pet rocks and Furbys and beanie babies all the forgotten hot things!” It’s like, we can’t appreciate more stadium shows on the regular and all these good products springing up now? No, if our lovable indie stars aren’t on the cover of People or Good Morning America, then we’re all mud-showing. I think it’s awesome to be a fan of wrestling rn in general. You can bring up wwe, AEW, Japan, it can bleed into entertainment and Hollywood and mma but I think that’s part of it: so much content. Whereas back then, lot less of it, so what was hot was pronounced. The Taylor swift comparison was good cuz she’s like..one of the big tent poles today. Everybody knows Taylor swift.
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Post by BayleyTiffyCodyCenaJudyHopps on Jan 1, 2024 23:25:58 GMT -5
I have a question: When fans talk about WWE and wrestling not being at its Attitude era peak, what’s with the finality and regretful tone? No fan has ever answered this question with “eh, wrestling is doing alright”. It’s always “NEVER AGAIN will we have this much fun! We wrestling fans used to have it all, and look at us! Now we’re living under a bridge, with pet rocks and Furbys and beanie babies all the forgotten hot things!” It’s like, we can’t appreciate more stadium shows on the regular and all these good products springing up now? No, if our lovable indie stars aren’t on the cover of People or Good Morning America, then we’re all mud-showing. I think it’s awesome to be a fan of wrestling rn in general. You can bring up wwe, AEW, Japan, it can bleed into entertainment and Hollywood and mma but I think that’s part of it: so much content. Whereas back then, lot less of it, so what was hot was pronounced. The Taylor swift comparison was good cuz she’s like..one of the big tent poles today. Everybody knows Taylor swift. I’m not sure if even Gorgeous George was Taylor Swift big. Austin and Hogan, not even close. If you’re AJ Styles level, you are a celebrity to me.
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Post by Fake Jesus on Jan 1, 2024 23:31:38 GMT -5
WWE is hotter now because they're booking things their fans want to see. In the 90s it was actually cool. WWE now remains monumentally uncool. Crying Vince might be a meme but I'd be crying if anyone I know had to watch a Seth Rollins promo
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Post by Feargus McReddit on Jan 1, 2024 23:34:24 GMT -5
I have a question: When fans talk about WWE and wrestling not being at its Attitude era peak, what’s with the finality and regretful tone? No fan has ever answered this question with “eh, wrestling is doing alright”. It’s always “NEVER AGAIN will we have this much fun! We wrestling fans used to have it all, and look at us! Now we’re living under a bridge, with pet rocks and Furbys and beanie babies all the forgotten hot things!” It’s like, we can’t appreciate more stadium shows on the regular and all these good products springing up now? No, if our lovable indie stars aren’t on the cover of People or Good Morning America, then we’re all mud-showing. I’ll put it another way; I’m a subscriber to a service called Dropout, a comedy based streaming service that “only” has 6 figures in subscribers, an absolute drop in the ocean compared to any other service out there, but Variety did an article about it near the end of last year because that counters some of the narratives about streaming as a whole. variety.com/2023/streaming/news/dropout-subscribers-double-new-shows-sam-reich-1235829675/amp/And this is a service that’s main selling point right now is improv game shows, D&D and old CollegeHumor content. As cool as it would be, Sam Reich and Brennan Lee Mulligan aren’t going to appear on The View to announce the next Dimension 20 season but considering they’re a viable successful company right now to a niche audience, why would they be? Dimension 20’s doing a UK and Ireland tour in March/April and all the shows are sold out. There are bigger podcasts that haven’t achieved that yet doing shows here at the same time. It’s the same with WWE. Sure, Roman appearing on Fallon is cool (and helps that NBC Universal makes that happen) but your attendances are high and viewerships are good without needing to do that. AEW’s deal with WBD’s going so well, Willow Nightingale’s going to be on one of the Top Chef spin-offs this week. WWE’s had people on Celebrity Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune as recently as a month ago (the former should probably be forgotten about, though but anyway). That has more mainstream staying power than being a fad people remember from an era that ages like milk yearly.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2024 23:41:35 GMT -5
Some I am sure have already said it but if you were not there to experience it than it is impossible to explain how hot wrestling was back then.
Wrestling may be on a little hot streak now but it is absoloutley nowhere close to that period in time.
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Renslayer
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
every time i come around your city...
Posts: 17,282
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Post by Renslayer on Jan 1, 2024 23:59:47 GMT -5
The weirdest thing with the Attitude Era is that until WrestleMania X-Seven, they were pretty conservative with the kinds of venues they'd run. Even the biggest shows just ran in regular-ass arenas. Granted I feel like Wrestlemania's importance during the New Generation and Attitude Eras was way more downplayed than it is in the current era. Like yeah, they got important matches, but outside of the name, Wrestlemania felt like just another show they'd put on during those years, especially XV and 2000.
Just imagine how insane those crowds would've been in the Attitude Era if WWE ran those Manias in the venues they run current Manias in.
Now that I think about, did they run any stadiums with Austin there prior to his neck surgery in 99?
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Post by Feargus McReddit on Jan 2, 2024 0:02:40 GMT -5
The weirdest thing with the Attitude Era is that until WrestleMania X-Seven, they were pretty conservative with the kinds of venues they'd run. Even the biggest shows just ran in regular-ass arenas. Granted I feel like Wrestlemania's importance during the New Generation and Attitude Eras was way more downplayed than it is in the current era. Like yeah, they got important matches, but outside of the name, Wrestlemania felt like just another show they'd put on during those years, especially XV and 2000.
Just imagine how insane those crowds would've been in the Attitude Era if WWE ran those Manias in the venues they run current Manias in.
Now that I think about, did they run any stadiums with Austin there prior to his neck surgery in 99? I think they ran the Georgia Dome for a Raw around the time Nitro was there and it never reached the max capacity for it even if that capacity was super high and I’m pretty sure that’s the closest to a “stadium” they ran. Which, again, feels super weird in hindsight.
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Jan 2, 2024 0:45:12 GMT -5
Now that I think about, did they run any stadiums with Austin there prior to his neck surgery in 99? I think they ran the Georgia Dome for a Raw around the time Nitro was there and it never reached the max capacity for it even if that capacity was super high and I’m pretty sure that’s the closest to a “stadium” they ran. Which, again, feels super weird in hindsight. They ran the Toronto Skydome in like February 1999 or something like that.
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Post by Feargus McReddit on Jan 2, 2024 0:49:26 GMT -5
I think they ran the Georgia Dome for a Raw around the time Nitro was there and it never reached the max capacity for it even if that capacity was super high and I’m pretty sure that’s the closest to a “stadium” they ran. Which, again, feels super weird in hindsight. They ran the Toronto Skydome in like February 1999 or something like that. They probably ran places like that at a lower capacity for random Raws or whatever but PPVs were mostly in 20k seater venues which just feels like a really odd misstep but they also weren’t on the stock exchange so people at Wall Street wouldn’t have gone “Hey, Erm, why aren’t you running the sort of places the Super Bowl is in? Demand is clearly exceeding supply here”.
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Post by Rolent Tex on Jan 2, 2024 0:58:15 GMT -5
I don’t even think a “no” even comes close to covering it. WWF during the Attitude era was, without exaggeration, every bit as ingrained in pop culture as Taylor Swift is now or the MCU was at its prime. You couldn’t go anywhere, pick up a magazine, or turn on a TV without hearing about it. Media wasn’t segmented like it is now, so instead of thousands of different interests you could pursue while interacting with people around the world about them, there was a handful of things that would be INSANELY popular for a couple of years before burning out. There might be hot crowds AT the wrestling shows, but big box retail stores don’t have dedicated wrestling sections and you don’t see kiosks popping up in every mall that just sell bootleg wrestling shirts. There was a time when you couldn’t go ANYWHERE without seeing at least one person wearing an Austin 3:16 or nWo shirt. It’s nearly impossible to describe just how big it was then. This. I couldn’t wear my nWo or DX shirts anywear without getting props or someone talking a lot of trash. It’s was so much damn fun being a fan back then. Since then I’d wear my “Captain Charisma” shirt and get asked if it was the name of my boat.
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Schizo
Dennis Stamp
Posts: 3,901
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Post by Schizo on Jan 2, 2024 1:55:12 GMT -5
WWE was hot during the attitude era for it’s time and WWE now is still hot based on how our culture in 2023 is. There’s no comparing the two. two different eras of WWE, two hot Products
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Post by Ryushinku on Jan 2, 2024 4:41:04 GMT -5
Some ways no, some ways yeah.
I mean, you could say Attitude Era looks like peanuts next to, say, Andre-Hogan doing 33 million viewers on Main Event in 1988. But that's not a fair comparison due to media fragmentation.
I do believe it gets more respect now than in the Attitude Era. I was 20 at the time, it was hugely popular and counter-culture, but viewed in a very Jerry Springer hugely popular way by a lot of people. The general public seem to understand and accept the whole deal better now, the athleticism and presentation.
WWE are killing it in sales and attendance and sponsorships and social media stuff right now and the best they've been for easy a decade plus if not longer. In a changed and changing media landscape, that's success worth touting.
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Post by bearned on Jan 2, 2024 5:19:13 GMT -5
There is a ton of momentum and quite possibly the wrestling product itself is much better, but it’s not anywhere near as white hot as the attitude era, that period was insane.
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