Was The WWF Attitude Era Actually Good? | Explained | partsFUNknown - video Dailymotion

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What was your favorite, if there was any, moment of the WWF Attitude era? Is Vince McMahon Actually Good?: https://youtu.be/ZlRkn49WxgI  For exclusive Early Access to the next episode check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/partsFUNknown  Subscribe: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q | Make sure to enable ALL push notifications! Watch More PartFUNknown: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLvCO_flsEnKylfKTab7Q92RDBN-fOz0m  It's thought to be the most popular period of wrestling in history - pulling in millions of viewers every single week - but was The WWF Attitude Era Actually Good? Luke Owen discusses with the help of Adam Blampied, Brian Zane, Daniel J Layton, and Grand PooBear.  Brian Zane's Wrestling With Wregret - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjCDlbCvET6a6K53TV9ZhZA Daniel J Layton - https://www.youtube.com/user/DanielJLayton Grand PooBear - https://www.youtube.com/user/nilladh  Follow PartsFUNknown TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsFUNknown FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsFUNknown  QuizzleMania: A Wrestling Comedy Quiz Show! On Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/quizzlemania-a-wrestling-comedy-quiz-show/id1482419385  City British Wrestling: The Official Podcast Feed on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6RfWW29m4sk070YC03Kx5y  About PartsFunknown How Adam Would Book, No Rolls Barred, Explained. PFK makes wrestling EXTRA FUN. For brand partnerships, contact: dominic@playbookmedia.co.uk  #partsfunknown #wrestling #videoessay

Transcript

00:00 [SPLAT]

00:02 Let's talk about nostalgia porn.

00:06 Nostalgia porn is a term that's thrown around a lot these days as millennials age further into their 30s and into their 40s.

00:15 We're a generation that can't afford to buy out, so we spend our disposable income on

00:20 useless tat that reminds us of the better days.

00:24 We bloody love the stuff that we grew up on as kids and corporations are very quick to latch onto that and

00:30 exploit every penny that we have on stuff that we used to love.

00:34 I mean look, I'm a man in my mid-30s sat in front of a Sonic the Hedgehog poster from 1991 and

00:40 I mean just look at this office.

00:42 And a lot of the stuff we loved in our childhood doesn't really hold up. I mean, I've got all the Transformers DVDs,

00:53 I've got them all over there, you can see them in the background,

00:55 but really if you look back at them, they're a bit cack.

00:58 Not everything from the 80s was as great as Ready Player One or Stranger Things makes them out to be.

01:04 We're actually heading into a period of time where 90s is going to become the new nostalgia porn,

01:09 so expect loads of Netflix series to be set within that time frame making references to

01:14 Scream and Clueless. And believe me, I know a thing or two about 90s nostalgia porn.

01:20 Subscribe to Under Consultation, the Games Master Retrospective Podcast hosted by Luke Owen.

01:24 I honestly don't know if this is something that Gen Zers have boomers. Boomers certainly did for the 60s and the 70s,

01:31 but not to the degree that Gen Xers and Millennials did and still do.

01:35 Wrestling fans and particularly WWE have their own brand of nostalgia porn.

01:41 It's called the Attitude Era, a period of time that's had countless DVDs released on it, books written, network specials, and even

01:49 entire episodes of Raw have been dedicated to the memory and nostalgic love of the Attitude Era.

01:55 But even outside of that on week-to-week television,

01:58 it feels like the names of Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Ettel get roared off on commentary and in promos all the time.

02:05 Wrestlers of today reminiscing about the good old days when Raw was drawing six million people a week rather than

02:11 one and a half. A time when wrestlers weren't just wrestlers, but legit celebrities.

02:17 Appearing in TV show cameos, on the covers of magazines, being interviewed on TV and taken seriously.

02:23 This was all certainly helped by the fact that it wasn't just WWE that was hot with Steve Austin and The Rock,

02:29 because WCW had the NWO, Goldberg and Sting, and ECW was providing a real

02:35 alternative to fans who thought Vince McMahon and Ted Turner's products were too tame.

02:40 Wrestling was the hottest thing on the planet and WWE still constantly pined for those days,

02:45 even though business-wise they're doing much better now financially than they ever have been.

02:50 The Attitude Era is held as like the gold standard.

02:53 But kind of like the conversation we had about CM Punk last week,

02:57 is this something we should look back on fondly or is it only good with the nostalgia goggles?

03:02 Is the Attitude Era actually good?

03:04 But in order to really answer this we need to define what the Attitude Era actually is and

03:11 the only way to do that

03:14 is with science.

03:15 [Music]

03:17 Right, okay, let's do some science. Let's science this-

03:22 Right, it's time to science this- oh.

03:26 Does that make sense? Science? No, no, no. For this, for this we need history.

03:33 [Music]

03:35 Yes, no, that's good. I feel much more, much more historically accurate now as we go through the history portion of this show.

03:44 Okay, right. So according to the WWE Network, Attitude Era,

03:48 15th of December, day after my birthday,

03:51 1997 when I turned-

03:54 12. I turned 12. I turned 12. Survivor Series 1997 is also when apparently it started.

04:01 WWE have also said in documentaries that it started at King of the Ring

04:06 1996 with that Austin 316 promo. What's the next one?

04:12 There have also been those that claim that it started at

04:16 WrestleMania 14.

04:19 At the start of the the Austin era. I've left a gap there because other people have claimed that it started January 18th

04:26 1998 with the Mike Tyson anger, with the Tyson, Tyson Austin, Tyson Austin, etc, etc. So so far we've got

04:34 1990s. Anyway, there's more to go. Vince Russo, whose opinion matters about as much as mine, has said that it started,

04:42 let me put this up here, with the debut of Goldust in August

04:46 1995. Other WWE documentaries have said that it started with Pillman's Got a Gun, November 4th

04:53 1996, we came after King of the Ring. Now Bret Hart, who some people have said

04:58 completely missed the Attitude Era, has also been credited for creating the Attitude Era with his

05:04 frustratingly goddamn word for it, which is March 1997. Where does this go?

05:08 March 1997, it goes right there. And some people, some people, have even claimed that it was the start of

05:19 D-Generation X, I'm gonna have to put that there, D-Generation X on August 11th 1997. And by some people,

05:25 I mean Triple H and Shawn Michaels. Literally no one else thinks this.

05:29 Apparently the Attitude Era can start from anywhere from the, from August 1995,

05:35 through to WrestleMania, that last one, WrestleMania in March in 1998. So

05:41 any, any point here could have been the actual start of the Attitude Era.

05:46 But the question is, oh this is hot, might actually have to say, if I take this off, is it gonna reveal that it's not actually a real

05:53 shirt? Fun fact people, like if I, if I undo this, hold on,

05:57 it just stops. Look at this, look, it's like, I look like a Bella. We now know, at least we think we know when it started,

06:05 but when did it end? Some people will say that it was

06:09 WrestleMania X7 in

06:12 2001, because that is when Stone Cold Steve Austin turned heel,

06:16 ECW was dead, ECW was dead, and everyone stopped watching wrestling.

06:20 So a good claim as to why that is the end of the Attitude Era. Others, kind of myself included,

06:27 feel it's a little bit later with Survivor Series 2001, because that had the Team

06:33 WWF versus Team

06:36 WCW and ECW match. Shane McMahon's in this match. The invasion was f***ing stupid.

06:43 I also could see the argument for it ending at Vengeance

06:48 2001 a month later, because this is when WWF

06:52 officially retired the WCW Championship. Like that's, this for me is the actual official death of

06:58 WCW. It's the last time the WCW title was defended. Lastly, there are those that think that it ended in

07:07 May

07:09 2002. This is when

07:11 WWF stopped becoming WWF. They got the F out and became

07:14 WWE and they started the Ruthless Aggression Era. They stopped using Attitude altogether. So here's what we know. The Attitude Era began

07:22 between between

07:25 1995, August 1995 and March 1998 and it ended between

07:30 April, April 2001 and May 2002. So

07:35 hmm, did that clear anything up for anyone?

07:39 I don't know. I mean, maybe it did. I've got to take this off, take off my, this is not being a real cravat.

07:44 The time frame of this is important because we need to know what it is exactly that people are praising.

07:53 When I talk to people about their memories of the Attitude Era, it's the stars that they bring up. Steve Austin, The Rock,

07:59 Mankind, Undertaker, Kane, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, China, Triple H, Hardy Boys, Dudley Boys, Edge and Christian,

08:07 Trish Stratus, Lita, D'Lo Brown, APA, Right To Censor, the list honestly goes on and on and on.

08:13 I didn't even scratch the surface of the big names from the time.

08:16 It always seemed that even when certain stars were being cycled out, there was a whole new crop waiting to take their place.

08:22 No one ever felt stale and Monday Night Raw, particularly between 1998 and 2000, felt like must-see

08:30 television. Which is why they were able to air a

08:35 one minute segment with Rock and Mankind that was almost pointless,

08:39 and it was the highest rated moment of the entire Attitude Era. Bear in mind that

08:44 21 minutes is basically an entire episode of Friends without the ad breaks.

08:50 But the story between Rock and Mankind was

08:53 incredibly heartwarming and the characters were so good that it's impossible to take your eyes off it and switch over to something else.

09:00 This is what people love and remember fondly. It's Austin vs. McMahon. It's The Rock turning heel and becoming the corporate champion.

09:08 It's Triple H marrying Stephanie and then Steph turning her back on her dad to form the McMahon-Helmsley regime.

09:14 It's Mick Foley as Commissioner, the debut of Kane, the tag feud between the Dudleys, Edge and Christian, and the Hardy Boys,

09:21 the China and Eddie stuff, the hardcore 24/7 corporate ministry.

09:26 It really feels you could pick any point in the Attitude Era, load it up on the network, and it will have a good storyline on there.

09:33 Well, mostly, but we will get on to that.

09:36 If you've watched this show before or you follow me on Twitter,

09:39 you'll know that I posted a poll asking if you think the Attitude Era is actually good.

09:43 Which, again, we'll get to in a little bit,

09:45 but one of the common threads of thought was that the in-ring quality of the Attitude Era was actually bad.

09:53 This possibly stems from changing wrestling styles. The 80s style feels different to the late 90s,

09:58 it feels different to the mid-2000s, that feels different to the current day.

10:02 But are we really gonna sit here and say that the TLC matches were bad?

10:06 That Rock vs. Triple H at Backlash 2000 was bad?

10:10 That Triple H vs. Cactus Jack at the Rumble was bad?

10:14 That Michaels vs. Undertaker inside Hell in a Cell was bad in-ring action?

10:19 That seems insane to me. Like, not every match was five stars, but...

10:24 And again, not every match today is five stars.

10:27 Was the in-ring quality of the Attitude Era so bad that it prompted this many people to say the same thing?

10:34 Clint McArthur, hey, did you notice?

10:37 Let's do some science.

10:41 [Science music]

10:43 You didn't really think I was gonna do this video without going through some science, did you?

10:48 You all missed it with the CM Punk episode, so I've gone through some science.

10:52 I've gone through the star ratings, like the Charlotte Flair video, looking at WrestleMania in particular,

10:57 because it's the biggest night of the year.

11:00 However, historically, the Attitude Era doesn't really fare well with WrestleMania.

11:05 People don't tend to remember the moments.

11:07 Funny, you know, Austin winning the title, Austin turning heel, TLC, etc.

11:12 But people don't tend to-- the hardcore triple threat--

11:14 people don't really rate the matches very highly.

11:17 And I think that's kind of reflected, because WrestleMania 14,

11:21 the first one of our Attitude Era, and of course you believe Vince Russo, of course,

11:26 is a star and three quarters.

11:30 That is-- that's not a good start.

11:33 WrestleMania 15 either, 'cause that gets a star and a quarter, which is-- I mean, that's really bad.

11:39 It's a McMahon in every corner, and a bullsh*t match in every corner as well.

11:44 A pay-per-view, a WrestleMania with not a single singles match on it,

11:48 WrestleMania 2000, again, star and a quarter for WrestleMania 2000.

11:54 So we've not even broken the two-star barrier yet.

11:58 WrestleMania X-7, thought to be one of the greatest WWF pay-per-views of all time, right?

12:03 T to B, top to bottom, thought to be one of the best WrestleManias ever.

12:07 It's even got a near perfect-- it's like four and three quarters star match between Benoit and Angle.

12:12 Plus you've got Austin, and you've got Rock, and you've got TLC-- TLC2, I believe it was.

12:18 And you've got, of course, the hardcore triple threat.

12:20 So WrestleMania X-7, greatest WrestleMania of all time, two and a half stars.

12:26 Two and a half stars.

12:32 Deary me.

12:33 And then let's look at WrestleMania X-8, which has got Rock Hogan on the card,

12:38 and a terrible main event between Triple H and Jericho.

12:41 Star and a half for WrestleMania X-8.

12:44 So oof.

12:47 Oof my goof.

12:49 That's not-- that's not great.

12:51 Do you know what that is?

12:52 That is an average star rating of star and three quarters for WrestleMania.

13:00 To try and give it some comparison, let's see what the competition were doing.

13:03 And let's look at WCW's equivalent of WrestleMania, Starrcade.

13:08 Here we go.

13:09 Starrcade 1996, already off to a better start, two and a half stars.

13:13 Their first one, 1996, it's got two and a half stars.

13:16 Absolutely walked it.

13:17 Nope, 1997, three quarters of a star.

13:20 Three quarters of a bloody star.

13:22 For Starrcade '97-- this is the one with Sting Hogan on it.

13:26 Year later, Starrcade 1998, two and a quarter stars.

13:29 So that's going in the right direction.

13:31 Starrcade 1999, however, is a star and a quarter.

13:34 Two and a quarter stars, finally, for Starrcade 2000,

13:39 the last proper Starrcade, not WWE's bull[BLEEP] house show version.

13:43 Proper Starrcade.

13:45 Two and a quarter stars there for Starrcade.

13:47 I've suddenly realized that I've not done any maths for this one.

13:52 Hold on.

13:53 The iPad doesn't have a calculator on it.

13:55 I have to use Google.

13:56 Got some maths.

13:59 Got some maths.

14:00 Got some maths, folks.

14:01 It's OK.

14:01 Done it now.

14:02 This, one and three quarter stars.

14:04 This, one and three quarter stars.

14:08 Huh, would you look at that.

14:09 Was wrestling just not as good then?

14:12 Like, is it just-- is it not as good as I remember it being?

14:15 Is it literally more that it was just about the characters

14:18 and the storylines as opposed to the actual wrestling, which

14:20 I suppose could be a good argument?

14:22 Because like, you know, look at this.

14:24 One of my all time favorite pay-per-views from this era,

14:26 Backlash 2000.

14:27 It's got two and three quarter stars.

14:29 I mean, it's better than WrestleMania,

14:30 but it's not exactly-- it's not blow away stuff, is it?

14:33 But maybe it's not just an Attitude Era problem.

14:36 Maybe it's just a WWE problem, because I

14:39 looked at WrestleMania 35, last year's WrestleMania,

14:42 that Dave Meltzer star ranks for that,

14:44 and it was two and a half stars.

14:47 It's still not like amazing, considering

14:49 that everyone says, you know, now is the best era of wrestling

14:51 ever.

14:52 It's still only two and a half stars for WrestleMania

14:54 last year, which was actually a pretty good-- it was bloody

14:56 long-- but it was a pretty good show.

14:59 So where does this argument come from,

15:01 that wrestling is better now?

15:03 NXT TakeOver Brooklyn has got an average star rating of--

15:08 you know, TakeOver Brooklyn, a couple of nights

15:10 before this one, has an average star rating of four

15:14 and a bloody half stars.

15:16 It was a near perfect show.

15:18 And if you're going to argue-- Big Rook, 4/23/16,

15:21 see you in the comments--

15:23 if you're going to argue that Meltzer has got some vendetta

15:25 against WWE or WrestleMania, or you

15:29 want to pull the Tokyo Dome argument nonsense.

15:32 New Japan Dominion.

15:34 This is the show with the Okada Omega Four seven star match.

15:38 So seven stars.

15:39 But the show average, four stars,

15:41 which is less than Brooklyn's four and a half.

15:44 I suppose what we have found out is that WrestleMania's

15:46 from the attitude era were a bit cack.

15:48 But then again, so were Starrcades from the time.

15:51 Backlash was a little bit better,

15:52 but you know, WrestleMania hasn't really

15:54 been great for 20 years, apparently.

15:57 Maybe this proves something.

15:58 Honestly, I just don't know anymore.

16:02 But even in that science, Rock vs. Mankind

16:05 is a great example of a bad match being lifted highly

16:09 by great crowd reaction.

16:10 If Drew McIntyre and Seth Rollins went out there today

16:13 and did the exact same match, it would not

16:16 get the same reaction.

16:17 That's nothing against McIntyre and Rollins.

16:19 They're just not the same level of stars

16:21 that Rock and Hogan were.

16:22 And they wouldn't go out there and have the exact same match.

16:25 They would do something that's actually way better.

16:27 But WWE haven't allowed them to position themselves

16:31 as those sorts of top stars.

16:33 Realistically, John Cena is the only star

16:37 that's comparable to The Rock and Steve Austin.

16:39 And I think it can be argued that he's

16:42 become a bigger star outside of WWE than he was in their walls.

16:47 If anything, they probably held down his potential.

16:51 So I don't know.

16:52 Was the attitude era actually good?

16:55 So here's the thing about the attitude era.

16:56 It's like a game of two halves.

16:58 You have '98 to sort of mid '99.

17:02 And it's qualitatively not very good to garbage.

17:05 Like, it is just a bit of a dumpster fire.

17:09 The matches aren't very exciting.

17:11 The storylines that have a chance

17:12 to go beyond a couple of weeks before being forgotten about

17:15 are kind of cringe.

17:16 And then you get to late '99 and the entirety of 2000,

17:20 right the way up to WrestleMania X7.

17:22 And it is legitimately everything

17:24 that we love about wrestling.

17:26 Like, so proper storylines, technical brilliance.

17:29 If it weren't for the attitude era and all the crazy stuff

17:31 they were doing and the wild characters

17:33 they were showing every week, I very likely

17:35 would not have become a fan or stayed

17:37 a fan for as long as I have.

17:38 So I credit that time period with being

17:41 a very formative period for me as a wrestling fan.

17:44 Everyone talks about Money in the Bank 2011.

17:46 Everyone talks about, oh my god, that

17:48 crowd made that match brilliant.

17:51 That crowd was at every single Attu Dera show.

17:54 People cared that much about the characters

17:56 and about the kind of crazy weekly TV.

18:00 It was just exciting.

18:01 Plus, Raw was two hours long, which helps.

18:04 The match quality in your main event is so high.

18:07 But on your mid-card, it's so, so, so, so low.

18:11 Nothing compared to the mid-card matches

18:13 we get in, say, AEW or NXT today.

18:15 It's insane.

18:16 So while the Attitude Era, I think,

18:17 was also the best time in wrestling,

18:19 I think in a lot of ways it's also kind of one of the worst.

18:22 The thing a lot of us fans don't want to admit

18:24 is that the glue that really held us all together,

18:27 the most gripping element of that kind of 2000s heyday,

18:31 was the McMahon-Helmsley regime.

18:33 The Kurt, Triple H, and Stephanie love triangle

18:36 was so good.

18:38 The McMahon drama was so interesting,

18:41 the interpersonal relationships.

18:43 I think the Attitude Era is best known for doing a lot

18:45 of different and innovative things

18:47 to get fans to watch and see what they were doing

18:49 on television, things that wrestling companies had never

18:51 really done before or since.

18:53 And in some cases, rightfully so,

18:55 because quite frankly, a lot of what

18:56 they did in the Attitude Era did not age very well.

18:59 What Brian mentioned in his video

19:01 is something that actually got brought up a lot in the Twitter

19:03 responses to the poll.

19:04 Because although Yes won by 76.3%,

19:08 a lot of the replies brought up those bad storylines.

19:11 If by good you mean entertaining in the way watching

19:14 fail videos is entertaining, then yes.

19:17 If you mean good as in a constant output

19:19 of high-quality matches and quality storytelling,

19:22 not so much.

19:23 It featured five to six of the most entertaining wrestlers

19:26 of all time at their peaks.

19:28 And everything else was kind of really bad

19:29 when you go back on it.

19:30 The great stuff was as good as wrestling has ever been,

19:33 but the bad stuff was the worst wrestling has ever been too.

19:37 There was a lot of really top quality stories at the time,

19:41 but the quality of wrestling was a lot lower.

19:43 And when the stories were bad, they was really bad.

19:46 Produced many great moments, but for all the good,

19:49 there is plenty of bad they had produced.

19:52 The more I go back and watch of it,

19:53 the more I realize how desperate and cheap

19:55 a lot of the angles were.

19:57 - And it's true, there is a lot of bad in the Attitude Era.

20:00 For every good moment that I listed earlier,

20:02 there's three to four moments that you could say

20:05 were at best nonsense and downright offensive at worst.

20:10 Trish Stratus being made to bark like a dog,

20:12 DX doing blackface, Beaver Cleavage being a character

20:15 based on incest that transitioned

20:17 into a poor taste wife-beating angle,

20:20 chopping off Val Venus's dick,

20:22 PMS doing a faked miscarriage, Hawks alcohol abuse,

20:26 Boss Man making Al Snow eat his own dog,

20:29 Mark Henry and Sammy,

20:31 DX pretending to rape Stephanie McMahon.

20:34 The list goes on and on.

20:36 I've not even touched on the treatment of women,

20:38 using them as nothing but sex symbols to wrestling gravy

20:41 for the lads to have a collective wank over

20:43 while Jerry Lawler screamed about puppies ad nauseum.

20:46 And that's just the tasteless stuff.

20:48 Like there's also all those dumb storylines

20:50 like the Howa Power, Moppy,

20:52 Mae Young giving birth to a hand,

20:54 the Union, the Invasion,

20:56 who ran over Stone Cold Steve Austin.

20:59 WWE gets criticized a lot nowadays

21:01 for its week to week booking

21:02 and throwing stuff against a wall and seeing what sticks,

21:04 but really the Attitude Era was no different.

21:08 And it's that car crash booking

21:10 that actually kept people watching.

21:13 This response on Twitter from Hector

21:15 really sums it up for me.

21:16 "It's all relative.

21:17 "2020 me who understands racism, sexism, homophobia

21:21 "wouldn't want that crap on TV,

21:23 "but I wouldn't be watching today without it."

21:26 And really what WWF was doing,

21:27 particularly the shocking stuff,

21:29 was just a product of its time.

21:31 The 90s was this rebellious age where Gen Xers

21:34 took over TV with irreverent ideas

21:36 that were meant to shock the system.

21:38 Howard Stern made a name for himself

21:41 by pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable

21:43 on public radio.

21:44 Jerry Springer made an entire career

21:46 off the back of exploiting people

21:48 for saying weird stuff on television.

21:50 South Park made headlines

21:51 because it featured swearing children and a singing poo.

21:55 Tom Green was inexplicably popular around this time

21:58 and could have only existed in this period of time.

22:01 It wasn't just the US either.

22:03 We had shows like The Word

22:04 that featured this guy drinking his own sick because.

22:07 - I'll do anything to get on TV.

22:09 - The Howard Stern movie, Private Parts,

22:12 kind of embellishes a lot of what Howard Stern

22:14 actually did during the time,

22:16 but this scene really does sum up the attitude towards him

22:20 and therefore the attitude towards

22:22 a lot of popular culture in the late 90s.

22:25 - The average radio listener listens for 18 minutes.

22:28 The average Howard Stern fan listens for,

22:31 are you ready for this, an hour and 20 minutes.

22:34 - How can that be?

22:35 - The answer most commonly given,

22:36 I wanna see what he'll say next.

22:38 - All right, okay, fine,

22:40 but what about the people who hate Stern?

22:43 - Good point.

22:44 The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours

22:47 a day.

22:48 - But if they hate him, why do they listen?

22:54 - Most common answer, I wanna see what he'll say next.

22:57 - A lot of the attitude era has dated badly,

23:00 but then again, so has a lot of TV, music,

23:02 and movies from that time period.

23:04 Nostalgia goggles can only carry you so far.

23:07 Video games are still wicked, by the way.

23:09 If you do want to learn more about the attitude era,

23:11 I highly recommend watching Brian Zane's video work

23:14 because he's done amazing stuff on this topic.

23:17 I'd also recommend Brian Alvarez's weekly

23:19 WWF versus WCW reviews that he did over on

23:22 Wrestling Observer with Brian and Vinny.

23:23 And of course, the AE podcast boys have got

23:27 an incredible back catalog that reviewed every pay-per-view

23:30 from the time and even some of the TV shows

23:32 to really dive into whether it holds up or not.

23:35 So I guess in conclusion,

23:37 the attitude era was a bit of a mixed bag.

23:40 It's looked on fondly now because it had big names

23:42 doing big named things and millions of people

23:45 were watching it and paying millions of dollars

23:47 to either see the shows live

23:49 or even just buy a piece of merchandise.

23:51 The in-ring quality wasn't there as we've discussed,

23:54 but then again, the TV matches were only like two minutes,

23:56 including entrances, so it's kind of hard

23:59 to tell a good in-ring story.

24:01 But if you were to ask a random dorm kid from the time

24:03 who was watching Raw on a weekly basis

24:05 as to why they watched it,

24:07 they wouldn't be talking about the wrestling.

24:09 They'd be talking about the characters and the storylines.

24:12 But was it actually good?

24:15 I don't know on this one.

24:17 The bad does outweigh the good,

24:18 and while without it, I probably wouldn't be here

24:21 talking to you fine people as a wrestling fan,

24:24 I don't think I can look back on it as fondly as I once did.

24:29 I've kind of grown up.

24:31 This may seem like a cop-out answer

24:32 and I do apologize for that,

24:34 but if you were to ask me the question in 1999 and 2000,

24:38 I would say 100% yes,

24:39 but if you were to ask me in 2020,

24:43 I think I've gotta say no.

24:46 No, I don't think it was actually good.

24:48 - My favorite match of the added era, there is no debate,

24:54 Hell in a Cell, Undertaker, Mankind, King of the Ring, 1998.

24:58 It is probably the most emblematic match of the time

25:00 you could possibly think of.

25:02 It is shocking, it is brutal at times,

25:04 but you cannot look away from that match.

25:06 A distant second place for me, though,

25:08 would have to be the street fight with Triple H

25:09 and Cactus Jack, Royal Rumble, 2000.

25:12 - I thought about it and, oh no, it's Vince versus Shane,

25:15 WrestleMania X-Seven.

25:17 I care about wrestling as a crowd sport.

25:19 I don't care as much about moves.

25:21 You know, moves are cool,

25:22 but I care about it in terms of fan reactions

25:24 and big payoffs to big, stupid storylines,

25:28 and there's no bigger payoff

25:29 than Linda rising from her chair

25:31 and then Mick Folius rounding on him,

25:32 and then the kick into the trash can,

25:35 and then the one, two, three, like,

25:37 absolute stupid wrestling perfection.

Was The WWF Attitude Era Actually Good? | Explained | partsFUNknown

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