20 Biggest Myths WWE Tells About Its History

11. The Attitude Era Was A Golden Age

The Myth: The Attitude Era was an unparalleled period of commercial and creative triumph.

The Truth: This one is half true. 1998-2001 saw pro wrestling reach unparalleled heights of popularity, absolutely. Creatively, it had peaks and valleys; the high points were high indeed, but man were the lows low.

WWE has always aimed for low-hanging fruit, but never as consistently as they did under the aegis of “crash TV.”

The flip side of Steve Austin being allowed to flip people off was Mae Young giving birth to a rubber band, Droz vomiting on demand for fun and profit, and Road Warrior Hawk threatening to kill himself on television. Big Boss Man killed Al Snow's dog and fed it to him, which led to a match where "vicious attack dogs" had sex and defecated live on PPV.

The match quality suffered as well. Television matches rarely went for more than a few minutes, although that was probably for the best. Today, we're used to a Raw where Sami Zayn can wrestle Chris Jericho for 15 minutes, but nobody needed to see Crash Holly work an armbar on Bull Buchanan for a quarter hour.