10 Things That Would Happen If Today’s WWE Wrote The Attitude Era

The cure for the actually good show!

stone cold steve austin stephanie mcmahon
WWE.com

On the December 15, 1997 RAW, Vince McMahon formally ushered in the Attitude Era.

"This is a conscious effort on our part to open the creative envelope, so to speak," he began, and it's very different now. WWE has sealed the creative envelope. Inside that envelope, the names of two WWE Superstars (™) are found. Vince opens it back up, picks one out at random, and this process determines which WWE Superstar (™) "builds momentum" on that given night.

"We borrow from such programme niches like soap operas, like 'The Days Of Our Lives' or music videos, such as those on MTV, daytime talk shows like Jerry Spring and others, cartoons like 'The King Of The Hill' on Fox, sitcoms like 'Seinfeld', and other widely-accepted forms of television entertainment," McMahon continued.

In 2019, WWE borrows from such programme niches like rotten wrestling shows, like WCW 2000 on TNT or TNA 2010 on Spike.

"We in the WWF think that you, the audience, are quite frankly sick of having your intelligence insulted," McMahon said, in 1997, while in 2019, he makes sure to recap every last f*cking segment because we are too thick to remember what just happened in our lives two minutes ago.

The Attitude Era is forever vaunted for its for-better-or-worse undiluted creativity - but this WWE can never, ever reboot it...

10. Stone Cold Steve Austin Vs. Tiger Ali Singh On Pay-Per-View

stone cold steve austin stephanie mcmahon
WWE

Tiger Ali Singh was - at best - unremarkable. His trainer, Dr. Tom Prichard, was less kind in his assessment of the second-generation superstar.

"He came in thinking he was a f*cking hotshot who knew it all, but he was terrible! He couldn't even grab a headlock, he was the sh*ts."

Lacey Evans can grab a headlock, but isn't too dissimilar to the failed Singh experiment; both were entitled, moneyed heel characters who treated the common folk with disdain, and both were parachuted onto national television prematurely. Evans is improving, granted, but isn't remotely capable of levelling up to the demands and standards of a headline programme.

And yet, in 2019, she has tainted Becky Lynch's aura as the hottest star in all of wrestling throughout an average and nonsensical storyline development. Lynch, once referred to as Stone Cold Steve Austin's spiritual descendent, has cooled off significantly, and all because Lacey compels Vince and Kevin to reach for her handkerchief.

In this alternate 1998 timeline, Steve Austin doesn't draft the in-ring sports entertainment bible in his violent hoots opposite Dude Love. Steve Austin endures a five-minute Singh chinlock because that's the heat. The heat is on guys who piss you off by being boring. That's the only remote possibility, anyway.

But how to build that programme, and how to develop Steve Austin's character...?

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and surefire Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!