10 Fascinating WWE WrestleMania 14 Facts
Austin and Tyson lead the way for WWE's furious comeback.
WWE's Attitude Era was the uninhibited cousin of the long-faded Rock 'n Wrestling Era, though there are some striking similarities between the movements. Both were headed up by a charismatic bald-headed brawler (Hogan, Austin), both found a media foothold in MTV (the Cyndi Lauper connection for Hogan, Celebrity Deathmatch for Austin), and both had a lead villain that was prone to controversy (Piper, Michaels). Most importantly, each era found use for an iconic roughneck. In the eighties, Hogan buddied up to television tough guy Mr. T. Austin's equivalent, however, would not be cast as his bench-pressing ally.
On the night of January 19, 1998, Monday Night Raw came within a few thousand households of finally ending their ratings war drought with WCW's Monday Nitro. Facilitating the near-victory was the presence of Mike Tyson, who engaged in a frenzied, anarchic pull-apart scuffle with Austin in the program's final minutes. The exiled heavyweight boxer was a media lightning rod, and his notoriety was just the voltage that Vince McMahon was looking for.
There is no official date that denotes the start of the Attitude Era, but one could surmise that WrestleMania 14 was Attitude's Woodstock, a defining event that symbolized an era better than any other.
For further reading on WrestleMania 14 and the era, check out Titan Screwed, written by James Dixon and myself, available at WhatCulture Shop
10. Vince McMahon Reportedly Loved The DX Band's Performance
Chris Warren and The DX Band probably performed the least auspicious rendition of an opening WrestleMania anthem since Mean Gene rushed through the Star Spangled Banner in 1985. The fans in Boston's Fleet Center coolly booed Warren's choppy vocals, which were not at all dissimilar to Zach de la Rocha's alternation between whispery charge and screeching invective.
Warren, who passed away last June at the age of 49, recalled in a 2007 interview that McMahon himself praised the unorthodox performance, even though many others in the locker room were appalled by it. There was a suggestion that because the DX Band would be playing out Triple H and Shawn Michaels live, they wanted the band to get heel heat early on by butchering America the Beautiful, ensuring that their subsequent performances (for two heel wrestlers) would be booed as well.