10 Times TNA Went Further Than The WWE Attitude Era
1. Ugly Homophobia
Technically, the Billy and Chuck tag team debuted in the "Ruthless Aggression" "Era", but as mentioned, there is no fundamental difference between that and 'Attitude'. If anything, "Ruthless Aggression" was equally awful in its grim pursuit of shock value.
Billy and Chuck were heavily insinuated to be gay lovers and indeed were set to wed in an infamous 2002 angle endorsed by a naive and optimistic GLAAD. It was all revealed to be a "publicity stunt", and it proved wrong the adage that all publicity is good publicity because business didn't remotely improve.
And if any pedants insist that this example of homophobia was plucked from post-2001, there are several instances between 1997 and 2001: in just one of countless examples, Pat Patterson attacked Gerald Brisco with a banana penis proxy in their King Of The Ring '01 match. The implication, of course, was that a simulated homosexual act was the ultimate taunt. "That means you are gay, Gerry, eurgh!" one can imagine was uttered somewhere in the production truck.
The Rainbow Express were a "gay" team introduced by TNA in - when else? - 2002; they disgusted the broadcast team and indeed their fellow competitors, two of whom, the Dupp Brothers, outright refused to wrestle them. This was received by the southern crowd as a noble babyface gesture.
Wrestling has an awful history of pretending not to be homophobic or slyly sniggering at its homophobia, but this was something else: the disdain was overt.