10 Reasons WWE's Best Era Is Secretly Its WORST Era
8. There Was A Worse Era WITHIN The Era
You know what's a thoroughly bizarre wrestling phenomenon?
Within a medium that never ever ends, it's not advisable to be consistently good and present. Fans will become normalised, even spoiled. In a warped way, it's almost better to be bad, boring, or past your prime; that way, when you do something great, the surprise factor is so potent that it erases years of middling work. Using a recent example, AJ Styles did next to nothing of note between a sublime 2020 Performance Center match against Daniel Bryan and his recent, unforgettable challenge of Cody Rhodes' Undisputed WWE title at Backlash France. You can't say he's washed now!
...even though he sort of was for four full years.
To use an Attitude Era example: the McMahon-Helmsley Era was dreadful television. The writers, via the Rock, even hung a lampshade over how boring and oppressive it was.
People ignore this. Time heals all wounds, and Triple H's droning about the regime was a dull blade thrust deep into a major artery. They forget the endless wittering because Triple H was admittedly great when selling the reveal that Mick Foley was set to dust off his Cactus Jack alter-ego at Royal Rumble 2000.
One of the few times the Attitude Era was actually better in retrospect.
The endless McMahon tedium was worse than even that...