10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE In 2002
7. Everybody Within WWE Knew The Good Times Were Over
Vince McMahon entered the ring on the June 24, 2002 Monday Night Raw.
The worker bees on the roster were reduced by design, standing outside of the ring - which Vince McMahon made sure to refer to as "my ring", pointedly - as Vince demanded they show him "ruthless aggression" and get over, basically. He had gone mad with power, bragging about beating WCW again months after botching both the Invasion storyline and nWo reboot. This wasn't his fault - naturally! - but this was something of a self-own. He knew the good times of the Attitude Era boom were dead, and he all but acknowledged it.
So, too, did Steve Austin, who in a scathing rant buried the direction of the company.
Appearing on the Byte This! webcast show that covered the backstage goings-on in WWE, Austin, pissed to high heaven by the end of May, threw a molotov cocktail at creative, saying that "the bottom line is that everything sucks". He said the writing was "piss poor" and could be "a hell of a lot better".
It must have been bad, since Bruce Prichard, who isn't the most sophisticated of creative types, told Kevin Dunn that he, Vince McMahon and Triple had "crossed the line" when delivering the tape of the mock-necrophilia angle in the infamous Katie Vick storyline.