10 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About WWE's Attitude Era
2. It Changed Wrestling For The Better
This one is true to a certain degree. Attitude helped drag WWE out of the woeful 'New Generation' era, during which the company's programming had never felt so cartoonish and outdated. If this period hadn't died, then WWE would've likely perished during the Monday Night Wars, so yes, Attitude did change wrestling for the better.
But only in the mid-to-late '90s.
Attitude often presented professional wrestling and its most visceral and exciting, but it pushed the sport's limits to levels that should've never been tested, and created expectations that can never be fulfilled by the modern product. How do you raise the stakes after Mick Foley crashes through a cell roof and Shane McMahon dives from the Titantron? You can't. There's nowhere also to go, and today's product has suffered greatly through these comparisons.
It's no wonder those who grew up with the Attitude Era are bored by current programming. The extremes became the norm, and while moving away from them was inevitable, doing so removed the things that made wrestling appeal to these fans in the first place. WWE chose unsustainable "shock" television to outlast WCW: they were successful, but cursed their future to unfulfillable expectations in the process.