10 Biggest Turning Points For WWE In 1997
5. Steve Austin Suffers A Serious Neck Injury
EFFECT: The main event style changes to what would become an Attitude Era-standard
It's a miracle that Austin didn't end up worse off after Owen Hart's piledriver, which gave him a highly-compressive stinger. Austin would be out of action for roughly three months, but even upon returning, his matches were initially short to accommodate his bad neck.
At Survivor Series and In Your House: D-Generation X, Austin went over in matches that spanned five minutes or less, and the bumps he took were few and far between. He just didn't feel comfortable taking a high amount of bumps at that time.
What happened was they had lucked into a match formula that would engulf the Attitude Era: fast-paced punch-and-kick fests that would spill all over ringside and into the crowd, which was an ideal concept for viewers with short attention spans.
Austin, once a keen technician whose brawling was his secondary skill, led this new movement.