With the release of THQ's WWE 13 approaching us with renewed en-vigour I decided to look back on arguably, and there will always be arguments, the most iconic and popular eras in professional wrestling; The Attitude Era. So pop a top on a can of woop-ass, fold up your steel chair and start shining up your size 13's as I take an indepth look as to why we loved this time in wrestling so much...
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1. Wrestling Grew Up...Kinda
Look at the difference between the characters, colours, costumes, etc. of the 80's Rock 'n' Wrasslin' era in comparison to the Attitude Era; the 80's as a decade was all colour and vibrancy, which can be seen through and through in the wrestling at this time, in fact the darkest it probably got was when Undertaker emerged from Death Valley at Survivor Series 1990. Attitude in its very nature was summed up by its name both in style and characters. Gone were the likes of the iconic vitamin munching Hulk Hogan, instead replaced by the foul mouthed beer swilling Stone Cold Steve Austin. The colourful outfits and ring setups were instead replaced with a lot of black and white, only getting colourful when it was either red or a darker shade of a colour. Though it did take them until the mid to late 90's to make this switch (at least in the case of the then WWF) it shows that wrestling acknowledged what their fans wanted and ran in that direction. Think about it; if wrestling had remained the flamboyant disco coloured gem that it was in the 80's then the fans that grew up with it would no doubt grow out of it, throw in the fact that during this time Generation X (no not DX!) was in full swing and a lot of the programs that traditionally appealed to adolescent types were revered by the youth of the time. By switching to a more adult feel, with more 'realistic' characters the 80's children could grow up and still enjoy their wrestling fix whilst new kids could watch it because it was 'cool'to do so, which leads me to my next point: