10 Attitude Era Elements WWE Must Copy Today
6. Embrace The Unexpected
At some point, WWE Creative decided it was going to be a television drama not unlike your Breaking Bads and Scandals of the world, creating long and drawn-out stories that are epic in nature.
They would stay on track, hitting every pre-planned chapter and concluding it the way they had envisioned at the start, regardless of whether or not audiences rejected it.
Any element of the unexpected was erased, the lone exception being
Daniel Bryan's journey leading into WrestleMania XXX, in which fans
forced the hand of management by "hijacking" shows.
That makes for a product that fans are bitter and unenthusiastic about and angry toward. When things are going wrong and WWE Creative stubbornly hangs onto a story that is proven flawed or ineffective.
Embracing the unexpected and altering things to fit the energy of the show is the best way to bring about the excitement of the Atittude Era. Baxck then, it was not inconceivable for every broadcast to feature at least one notable twist or turn.
Not all of them made sense strictly from a storytelling perspective, but those angles rarely hung around or had long-reaching consequences.
This past February, audiences were clearly clamoring for Dean Ambrose to
defeat Triple H for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at the
expense of the Roman Reigns journey.
They were more organically attracted to the consummate underdog and his lunatic ways than they were the more aesthetically pleasing Reigns.
Rather than making the appropriate alterations, they banished Ambrose to a glorified midcard programme with Brock Lesnar and pushed Reigns to the title victory, infuriating fans and leading to a thunderous ovation of boos from the (supposed) 101,000 fans.
That never would have happened in the Attitude Era, an era as much about giving fans what they want as it was providing industry-changing television.