One MIND-BLOWING Secret From EVERY Month Of The WWE Attitude Era

41. December 1997 | Same Old, Same Old

December 1997, so defined by D-Generation X making dick jokes and treating pure wrestling like a farce that the In Your House pay-per-view was named after them, was the month everything changed. The WWF even said it out loud on their TV programme. Except, Vince was more resistant to it than you might remember. 

This isn’t the “secret” entry here, since it’s widely-known at this point, but Vince scrambled post-Montreal. Not entirely confident that WCW would ruin Bret Hart, despite his later claims of prescience, Vince offered the Ultimate Warrior a lot of money to make a comeback. This is not the only typical move Vince had planned to make. 

The New Generation Era was defined by many a thing, some of which was overlooked and brilliant, but the Undertaker feuding with goofy Monsters of the Week wasn’t one of them. ‘Taker’s role in the Attitude Era was divisive - the man himself was low on the run and petitioned to become the American Badass in order to get with the times - but his daft n’ demented soap opera storyline with Kane was at least something new for him. While this was long-planned, Vince had devised a diversion straight out of 1993 to keep ‘Taker busy ahead of WrestleMania 14: a feud with the Interrogator. Better remembered as Kurrgan of the Oddities, Robert Maillet was a Giant Gonzales-sized lump who fared significantly better in Hollywood than in the ring. 

Meltzer reported in the December 8 edition of the Observer that, mercifully, this direction was abandoned. Was this because it was too much of a throwback, or because Interrogator was so useless?