10 Ways Today's WWE Is Better Than The Attitude Era
10. More Variety In The Main Event
WWE has drawn a lot of complaints from their fans over the years for not ascending new talent to the main event scene. We grew complacent with never-ending John Cena vs. Randy Orton matches, or whatever else they had planned for Big Match John that month. But right now? It’s really not that big of a problem.
In fact, the top stars in the Attitude Era had a much tighter lock on the top of the card than top stars do today. In the years 1999 and 2000, here are the top six people who main-evented the most pay-per-views:
The Rock -17
Triple H- 16
Steve Austin -13
The Undertaker- 6
Mick Foley - 6
Vince McMahon - 5
In comparison, here are the top six wrestlers who have been in main event matches in the past two years (from Backlash 2016 to Hell in a Cell 2014).
Seth Rollins - 11
Roman Reigns -11
Dean Ambrose - 9
Brock Lesnar - 7
AJ Styles - 3
Randy Orton - 3
A couple things come to mind. The Shield is running the show right now, which is exactly what many fans wanted/predicted a couple years ago. You may not love everything they're doing, but they are sure as hell being given an opportunity. AJ Styles has ascended to the main event scene sooner than just about any WWE wrestler in history and guys that fans were sick of like Orton and Cena have stepped aside to give others a chance.
Yes, The Attitude Era stars are bigger than what we see on today's scene, but if you weren't a huge fan of (or just started to tire of) Rock/Hunter/Austin, over the course of those years, you were basically screwed.