The Impossible End Of Wrestling’s Worst Era

In March 2001, the WWF purchased WCW. It was the very definition of a pyrrhic victory, but Vince McMahon was still dumb, arrogant and reckless enough to celebrate it regardless.

The resulting Invasion angle was never going to work. Hulk Hogan, Goldberg et al. elected to do nothing for free by sitting out their contracts, as well they should have. It was the correct decision for a worker who bumps for a living well before it became obvious, through the mishandling of Diamond Dallas Page and Booker T, that the WWF held no interest in positioning the former WCW wrestlers on the same level as the top WWF stars. The case of DDP was particularly, morbidly hilarious. He rose to fame as a creative workhorse of a babyface in WCW. In the WWF, as a heel, despite being married to Kimberly Page at the time, he stalked the Undertaker’s then-wife Sara. His motivation?

Diamond Dallas Page - whose segments invariably thrashed the Undertaker’s in the ratings throughout 1997 - wanted ‘Taker to make him famous. If that’s how Vince McMahon perceived very large and very known men, the breakout prospects from the ECWA Super 8 tournament stood absolutely no chance.

The Invasion was a doomed non-starter even with the best of intentions. The star power simply did not exist. The WWF’s arrogance didn’t help, obviously, but there was no real demand, either. The WWF fanbase had been conditioned over the years to receive WCW as the lesser knock-off outfit: a message that was reinforced through the booking every single week. The WWF could have waited, heavily teased the formation of a new WCW, signed Hogan et al., appointed a different showrunner to book a relaunched Nitro using the third and fourth hours of television, and created a very different feel to that old SmackDown slot to develop two audiences. That was never going to happen. Vince won with his vision. The intent to rebuild WCW as a brand was not there. Vince would have sooner rebooted ECW, and in fact did five years later. By Survivor Series, the ordeal was over.

The monopoly was a definitionally awful framework with which to promote pro wrestling: the story that never ends. No other promotion of renown existed on the cable stage. A wrestler couldn’t jump over to WWE to create a shocking, iconic moment and refresh company storylines. The same old stars felt overexposed as, in parallel - years after WWE had ruined the territory system - new, super-green acts were shoved under the bright lights to fail.

Even if WWE was booked really rather well and was willing to patiently embrace pro wrestlers who didn’t move like robotic, über-juiced freaks, it would not have functioned correctly. Wrestling, which never ends, can get tedious or skippable enough with competition. Without competition, WWE floundered. Drastically.

WWE was not booked well at all.

It would be reductive to state that WWE bought WCW and was dismal for the next two decades of its existence. WWE at least recognised that they’d broken the mechanisms of how wrestling should function. To correct this, the brand extension era was launched in 2002, which was quite funny conceptually, given what hadn’t happened the prior year. People don’t want WCW.

They want two WWEs, if anything!

The rosters were split between Raw and SmackDown. For a while, each brand promoted their own pay-per-views. In theory, this was an astute idea. In theory, it made WWE feel less homogenised and more appealing to a wider audience.

They got it right twice, like the broken clock WWE was.

The Kurt Angle Vs. Shawn Michaels programme of 2005 was magnificent. Despite both being contracted to WWE, because neither had been drafted to the other show in the near three years that preceded it - and because Angle debuted during Shawn’s four-year hiatus - it felt weirdly impossible. WWE’s early, disciplined approach worked. This was the closest WWE had come to harnessing the wonderful possibilities of old. Angle Vs. Michaels somehow felt like an inter-promotional dream match in the context of the time period.

The premise and development of the feud was incredible. After he was quickly, shockingly eliminated from the 2005 Royal Rumble match by Shawn, Kurt became obsessed. He insisted that he was a better wrestler than Shawn. In fact, everything Shawn could do, Kurt could do better. As part of this campaign, Kurt infamously “covered”, complete with new lyrics, Shawn’s ‘Sexy Boy’ theme song, after which, in a really well done heat angle, he made Sensational Sherri’s ankle hurt. In another inspired idea, Angle defeated Shawn’s old Rocker partner Marty Jannetty on the March 15 SmackDown. It probably went too long, at 17:44, but what a commendable showing and great idea for a subplot. WWE felt interesting again on the road to WrestleMania 21. Two new megastars, in John Cena and Batista, were set to be anointed. The Money In The Bank match was the most original and promising new gimmick concept in years. As random and brief as it was, Jannetty’s cameo signified that anybody could show up, and not just some oafish developmental greenhorn who’d take months and months to get over, if they ever did.

Angle Vs. Michaels was incredible. It clicked as beautifully as the wider storyline did. In a great twist, while it was a familiar beat in Angle’s matches, the thread of Michaels outclassing him on the mat with some atypical amateur exchanges drew the intense killer from the humiliated wrestling machine. Between January and April, WWE fans were treated to both the composite brilliance of Kurt Angle and a cruel glimpse of the old creative paradigm.

This programme, as exceptional as it was, followed the death of the actual idea of the brand extension.

The consensus opinion that Monday Night Raw was the dismal sports entertainment show and SmackDown some workrate utopia is overstated. On SmackDown, to list just three events that unfolded during Heyman’s time as lead writer, Dawn Marie screwed Al Wilson to death, Billy refused to marry Chuck because he wasn’t “gay or nothin’”, and Torrie Wilson defeated Nidia in a bikini contest. On a fundamental core level, Raw and SmackDown were very similar shows, which was always going to happen when they were each overseen and approved by the same person: Vince McMahon.

Still, there’s something to it. Which memory persists as a fond one to this day: the ‘SmackDown Six’, or Bubba Ray Dudley’s singles run?

On his own WWE Bio DVD ‘’Ladies And Gentleman, My Name Is Paul Heyman’, Heyman expressed his belief that he was removed from the position as SmackDown lead writer because those above him in WWE resented that “his” show performed better than the Raw flagship - which starred Triple H - that was WWE’s priority. This wasn’t Heyman’s trademark brand of hyperbole. In January 2002, before the rosters were split, Raw handily out-drew SmackDown, as it always had done.

In February and March, it often did so by a full ratings point. However, by the time Heyman’s vision for the show materialised, a shift happened. SmackDown started to equalise or outright defeat Raw nearly half the time. In September, it was a clean sweep for the entire month in SmackDown’s favour. This didn’t just happen; Raw was entrenched as the big show of the week. SmackDown, historically, was stigmatised as the B-show. Across that month of September 2002, the ‘SmackDown Six’ was pushed heavily. On September 10, Chavo Guerrero and Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle all won matches (the latter over Rey Mysterio in a blinding SummerSlam sequel). On September 24, Edge went over Eddie in a superb No Disqualification WWE Match of the Year contender. In the main event, in a match almost as good, Rey went over Angle and Benoit in a breathless Triple Threat sprint.

In the WWE of 2024, the paradigm has since shifted from kick pads to “cinema”, but 22 years ago, a portion of the fanbase, reeling from the endless stunts and over-the-top angles and terrible carny finishes of the Attitude Era, were wildly enthusiastic about the direction of SmackDown. For all of eight months, beyond the mandatory schlock booked to appease Vince McMahon, SmackDown was the hotbed of in-ring action and intra-match storytelling. There was a TV-sized audience for professional wrestling in the United States, and Paul Heyman captured them. For eight months. When he wasn’t as horny as the rest of them.

Out of the writer’s room door by February 2003, the other side of the story puts it that Heyman was impossible to deal with and would not “play the game”.

So what?

He was actually winning a game that was far more important, but that wouldn’t stand. Vince McMahon, who encouraged the competition, threw a temper tantrum, and - isn’t this ironic? - took his ball and ran home from the challenge. SmackDown was Raw and Raw was SmackDown and the Attitude Era never really ended. ‘Ruthless Aggression’, in tone, format, and spirit, was simply an extension of a grotesquely ugly and grabby time.

To a not inconsiderable number of fans, who hadn’t learned the lesson imparted by the Invasion angle, this was the first sign that WWE was no longer for them. You put your money where your mouth was, but WWE - inexplicably, until you learned of the childish psyche that Vince McMahon calls his thoughts and feelings - didn’t want it like that.

Vince McMahon didn’t learn the lesson, either. Why would he have? His grand vision for “sports entertainment” had defeated wrasslin’. He didn’t have to worry about it anymore - or at least, he didn’t think he had to worry about it.

At several points, Vince McMahon had the opportunity to get ahead of the trend that would one day undermine his monopoly.

Mick Foley in 2004 made a few appearances for Ring Of Honor. It was hardly a memorable chapter in a vaunted time for the promotion - it seemed as much an excuse on Foley’s part to rant about Ric Flair as to endorse the next generation of talent - but he was genuinely impressed by Samoa Joe and CM Punk. He was so impressed that he personally recommended both to Vince McMahon. That was a mistake. Vince’s contrarian childlike demeanour compelled him to brush off the suggestion; he never did like it when somebody else thought they had the inside track. Also working against Samoa Joe: he was “fat”.

Yes, according to an old episode of Something To Wrestle, Bruce Prichard confirmed that Vince looked upon Joe not as the best wrestler in North America but rather a “big fat Samoan”. Between Prichard’s trademark embellishment and Vince’s physique bias, it’s difficult to tell whether that was a verbatim quote, but regardless, Joe did not turn up on the WWE main roster until 2017, years into a physical decline.

Samoa Joe was so fantastic in 2005 that he wrestled Kenta Kobashi and the ROH fans received him as an equal to one of the most revered babyfaces in professional wrestling history. Joe was an intense, cool, killer, the very definition of aura. He also boasted so much in the way of substance. In many ways, if not every single last one of them, he was the ideal professional wrestler. The issue is that the only game in town didn’t want pro wrestlers, much less fat ones.

Joe was the first sign of an invisible enemy encroaching - a new way of doing things that would one day become a cable hit - but, because he was years away from that shift in his prime, he instead attempted to make his fortune in Total Non-Stop Action.

TNA was a joke of a promotion. It was actually a tragicomedy; people needed it to be good, it so often was good in spite of itself, but it was ultimately too stupid to ever compete with the WWE juggernaut. Booked by Vince Russo, it was an outfit so dumb that it was actually worse - significantly so - than the general public’s perception of the medium. These people - whose perception of you makes advertisers uneasy about selling their wares in the commercial breaks of a pro wrestling TV show - think wrestling is a pathetic interest in and of itself. They couldn’t even conceive of something as harebrained as the Reverse Battle Royal, in which the wrestlers had to enter rather than exit the ring (!). Logically, the match should have been a running race, but they chose to brawl for a while first. Wrestlers were so moronic under Vince Russo’s direction that they in effect couldn’t even walk through an open door.

CM Punk did sign with WWE, but only because they’d heard some distant chatter about his promo skills and because Paul Heyman was adamant that they had to recruit him. Sometimes it was easier to simply shut him up and let him get his own way - and it was only the rebooted ECW. The stakes were low, and the brand needed bodies.

ECW was the latest phase of the recurring, cruel trend. WWE would convince the ‘Universe’ that they were doing the proper wrestling thing, and decide shortly thereafter that they could not be bothered. Stunned by the huge sales of the ‘Rise And Fall Of ECW’ DVD, WWE promoted the One Night Stand tribute nostalgia show in 2005. That was another roaring success, and so WWE decided to reboot the brand and turn it into a weekly TV show. The weekly TV show was dire, a soulless thing indistinguishable from the main roster after a matter of weeks beyond the odd curio, like Big Show Vs. Ric Flair in a Hardcore match. After the ECW faithful very vocally rejected Batista Vs. Show in the Hammerstein Ballroom, ECW was taped on the same night as SmackDown. The underground brand had made it mainstream, sort of, as the monkey’s paw curled and the Sandman defeated Matt Striker via count-out in the land of “extreme” in front of a bunch of disinterested people who actually wanted to watch Batista. This should have underscored to Vince McMahon - who heard volleying chants of “Let’s go Cena/Cena sucks!” every single Monday - that there were in fact two audiences.

CONT'D...