10 Big Misconceptions People Have About WWE's Attitude Era

5. The Attitude Was Born From ECW's Extreme Revolution

Over time, fans and wrestling historians have claimed that Vince McMahon saw the moderate success Paul Heyman had with his ECW promotion and stole the ideas to go edgier and more controversial for the Attitude Era. While that may have been the case in the early portion of the build to the industry-changing era, it was not for the majority of the three-year run. Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara, head writers of Raw at the time, attribute the direction change to regularly watching The Jerry Springer and recognizing the change in attitude of the wrestling fans. The evil Mr. McMahon character really ignited the flame that became WWE's renaissance. That certainly did not come from ECW. Instead, one could conceivably point to WCW and Eric Bischoff becoming an evil authority figure a year earlier, something rarely touched upon, as the motivation for the character. From there, McMahon interacted with the rebellious Steve Austin to create magic and lead the company back to the top of the wrestling industry. Russo admits to seeing very little ECW programming prior to taking a writing job with WWE and as such, likely would not have used it as motivation or as an influence in his work. Whether one can take him at his word, Heyman at his word or McMahon at his word when the topic comes up for discussion given their laxness with the truth is an entirely other question.