10 Reasons 1997 Was The Weirdest Year In Wrestling History
1. The Cure For The Common Show
Many point to this moment as the official “start” of the Attitude Era.
In December of 1997, Vince came out on RAW to tell his viewers that the WWF was undergoing a new creative campaign. That meant that the old ways of “good guys vs. bad guys” and “superheroes” were being tossed aside in favor of entertainment similar to adult cartoons, daytime soap operas, and MTV music videos.
Most tellingly, early in his speech, Vince offers this idea: “even though we call ourselves sports entertainment because of the athleticism involved, the key word in that is entertainment.”
It’s one thing to tell your audience that wrestling is fake, but it’s another to essentially tell your audience “we aren’t even wrestling.”
This was the moment, above all others, where sports entertainment took over. With this one promo, Vince McMahon tossed aside any notion that he was trying to put on a wrestling product, and he never looked back. Through all the changes in management and talent that 1997 brought, it was this one promo at the end of the year that signified everything you the viewer had thought about wrestling would never be the same again. Wrestling is dead; long live sports entertainment.
It’s a weird capstone to the weirdest year in wrestling history.