Was The WWF Attitude Era Actually Good? | Explained | partsFUNknown
What was your favorite, if there was any, moment of the WWF Attitude era?
Is Vince McMahon Actually Good?: https://youtu.be/ZlRkn49WxgI
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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
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How Adam Would Book, No Rolls Barred, Explained. PFK makes wrestling EXTRA FUN.
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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.