10 Things You Learn Binge Watching Every WWE Attitude Era Raw

SmackDown debuted as a pilot in April 1999 before becoming a full-blown accompaniment to Raw starting with the 26 August episode. It was great for fans (more content in an era when people couldn't get enough), but the company had to stretch angles out across multiple shows rather than saving everything for Mondays.

That posed problems.

Vince Russo, who was still the head writer, experienced some well-known burn out around this time, and he was infamously horrified when McMahon told him to hire a nanny to take care of his kids. His apathy towards the new Thursday night show was evident on screen too; from late-August onwards, Raw took a bit of a nose dive in sustained quality before Russo left for WCW.

It's obvious when watching each episode back-to-back today. '99 marked the first time Raw's stronghold on weekly WWF output had been threatened, and nobody seemed quite sure how to make it work.