10 Best Years To Be A WWE Fan
4. 2005
The post-Attitude Era slump following WrestleMania X-Seven found WWE in a perpetual identity crisis.
2001's botched Invasion angle saw the company's wrestlers cast as babyfaces even as the organisation itself grossly mishandled what should have been the biggest money angle in its history. 2002 saw a lawsuit force a name change but not a philosophical one, with grabby failed attempts to recapture the magic resulting in fans abandoning the product in droves. 2003 and 2004 continued a managed decline as Triple H's seemingly endless reign atop Raw resulted in f*cking Bradshaw of all old locker room pr*cks being considered the lesser of two evils.
WrestleMania was superb, Batista and John Cena got over thanks to decent rubs from the aforementioned supervillains, and the WWE-produced ECW One Night Stand was probably the greatest nostalgia show in the history of the industry. The buzz, even if most of it was residual from one of Sandman's abandoned beer cans, was real.
2005 was not a 1990s phoenix, but the mid-2000s dumpster fire couldn't really be referred to as a business up in flames. It was energetic and enthusiastic, even if it didn't exactly drag things into a decade that was already half-finished.