Attitude Era

[Hawk]

The topic of the Attitude Era came up in the Unpopular Opinion thread. Instead of hijacking it and turning it into a discussion about the Attitude Era, I figured it deserved it's own place. 

I have said it once, and I'll say it again. I loved the Attitude Era; or at least I loved the era of the Attitude Era. From third grade through fifth, or maybe sixth, I was obsessed with wrestling. Every trip to the grocery store resulted in the new issue of WWF Magazine. Each week I got $5 for allowance, which got me a new Jakks figure from K-Mart. My aunt had some sort of PPV hookup and would tape the events for me. In fourth grade we wrote a paper on who our hero was and I wrote about Stone Cold! I was balls to the wall about it. 

Then I stopped caring, but I always remembered my love of the Attitude Era. 

Skullgore raised a good point in the Unpopular Opinion thread. Storylines like "I choppy choppy your pee pee" were ridiculous and have not aged well at all. The matches certainly took a backseat to the drama that unfolded. I get it, Monday Night Wars, fighting for ratings/survival. They did what they had to do. 

Say whatever your thoughts are about the Attitude Era here. Hell, it may even be fun to point out a high point vs a low point. 


High point: The entire Brothers of Destruction storyline. OH MY GOD I remember it clearly when Kane first appeared. It was all my friends and I talked about at school for the next week. Kane wants to kill Undertaker. Kane and Undertaker are brothers! Undertaker refuses to fight him...now they're going to fight at Wrestlemania! KANE SURVIVED THREE TOMBSTONES!!! It was great. 

Low point: The Godfather, the Ho-Train, and his solicitation before matches.  

[Papa Chopper]

IMHO...if we're speaking relativistically...even the bad parts of the attitude era, for me, fall under the category of "so bad it's good"....Mae Young giving birth to a hand notwithstanding.....

So in an overall sense compared to say to say the "funk of 92-97"...where for every HBK vs Bret you had Mantaur, The Goon, and Duke the Dumpster, and more.

Even the "cartoon era" between the first 8 manias.... wasn't was fun....I mean the comedy was pretty cringe worthy....Howard Finkel and the Rogaine ads, Tugboat, etc...but you also had better characters and a tighter product.

I always think of the Attitude Era as a coming of age, maturing of the content... And the at point only really hits home if you grew up watching the previous Era....otherwise the appreciation for the evolution is kinda lost on people IMHO.

[Thumper Moore III]

High point: Mankind’s elevation from weird, shrieking horror heel to the “three faces of Foley” because they allowed him to be himself.

Low point: Trish barking like a dog. Just awful. To say it hasn’t aged well would be to not acknowledge how awful it was even at the time.

[Deleted]

I wasn't alive at the time, but I have always loved that era & find all stories & videos that I can. I love the chaos of it, even the dumb stories like choppy your pee pee, because it was different. In today's WWE every storyline is pretty much the same, generic story. The Attitude era had a lot of "Attitude" as the name suggests.

[Deleted]

A lot of ppl crap on the hardcore title now, but it was a fun title, & ppl at that time seemed to love it. & I actually really like the godfather, especially when he was in the nation. Mainly cuz he had a larger than life character. We don't see that much anymore. Guys like The Rock, Steve Austin, DX, Undertaker, Kane, & Mankind had these amazing characters & rivalries. Another thing is blood, wrestling needs blood, it adds to the drama. Then there's the extreme stuff. Everything looked so brutal back then. I know the hardcore stuff today still hurts todays wrestlers, but the stuff back then was on a whole other level. I'm hoping AEW becomes a real challenge to WWE, because competition benefits everyone in Wrestling.