25 Most OUT OF POCKET WWE Attitude Era Moments

15. Paul Heyman Certainly Does Go Extreme With Jerry Lawler…

Vince McMahon’s cure for the common show speech and WrestleMania 17 are considered the formal start and end dates of the Attitude Era - but you can trace the origins of the period back to 1995, upon the debut of Goldust, and by 1996, Stone Cold Steve Austin was threatening to shoot Brian Pillman and the Undertaker and Mankind were battering one another in the backstage area with which the Fed became obsessed in the Attitude Era proper. The era really started to gather pace in 1997. Paul Heyman said something to Jerry Lawler before the Attitude Era that you’d never have heard when Chris Kreski held the pen. It was so out of pocket as to be litigious. 

On Raw, Jim Ross held a debate over the artistic merits of the emerging Extreme Championship Wrestling as part of the cross-promotional initiative ongoing at the time. Lawler basically said that ECW was a disgrace to the industry, filled with a bunch of braindead idiots capable only of bashing each other in the head with frying pans. Paul Heyman, typically, was more extreme in his response. 

Referencing Lawler’s 1993 charges of sodomy and statutory rape (which he ultimately avoided), Heyman asked “How ya doing at the seesaws in Louisville, Jerry?”

Heyman essentially called Lawler a fiddler on what was then rated family-friendly programming. This was quite the escalation, was it not?

“ECW wrestlers are technically limited and drawing 1,100 fans isn’t the brag you think it is”. 

“Yeah, well, you’re into kids, so…”