10 Things You Hate About Modern Wrestling (Thanks To The Attitude Era)
8. WWE's Lack Of In-Ring Focus
A lack of focus on in-ring action is often held up as the biggest problems with the current WWE product.
The company tend to emphasise dramatics and theatrics above all else, and while great matches are inevitable with a roster as talented as theirs, their tendency to ruin exciting bouts with overbooked, screwy finishes is a huge bugbear. Generally speaking, Vince McMahon is in the storytelling business, and the matches just provide the framework.
Vince has spent most of his tenure trying to promote WWE as a multi-faceted entertainment company. This began in the 1980s, but the shift away from in-ring action was accelerated during the Attitude Era. Unless a 'no run-ins' stipulation was attached, you could bet your bank balance on each main event being blighted by an interference or other shenanigans, and the midcard scene was mostly garbage, with lowly acts like The Godfather passing the Intercontinental Title around at will.
That's not to say that Attitude didn't feature great matches, but it definitely de-emphasised their importance. This element of WWE's modern product that everyone claims to hate really kicked in during wrestling's most successful era, when lengthy, interrupted matches were a rarity, particularly when the big stars were in the ring.