15 EXACT Moments Failed WWE Attitude Era Gimmicks Actually Got Over

13. The Hardy Boyz (October 17, 1999)

In 2026 - and this has been the case for years - there is too much good wrestling for any of it to make a significant impression. Or perhaps “immediate” is the more accurate word to use. 

It’s still possible for a wrestler to get over, in this era of banger fatigue, by building an excellent body of work. AEW’s Kyle Fletcher has exploded over the last two years doing precisely that. But there’s so much well-worked if familiar back-and-forth pro wrestling available to watch multiple times every single week that the idea of a breakthrough match is as dead a concept as kayfabe. 

The Hardy Boyz were not over when introduced to screens in 1998, nor were they over when they first captured the WWF Tag Team titles from the Acolytes on July 5, 1999. In the Attitude Era, title wins were so frequent and thus meaningless that they no longer functioned as a marker of success or popularity. The matches weren’t silent, exactly, but arena roofs remained intact - until the Hardyz, alongside Edge and Christian, reinvented the Ladder match at No Mercy 1999. 

It was an incredibly dangerous and surreal spectacle, so brand new and out of control that it was almost difficult to register. It felt like something ECW would get around to in a few years before the WWF would rip it off a few years later still - and yet it was happening right in front of you, rendering you a gibbering wreck with every demented, terrifying spill from a death-defying height. 

The No Mercy 1999 ladder match was a colour out of space, a feat so influential that wrestling has literally chased the high for 27 years since.