10 Times WWE Totally Changed Its In-Ring Style
3. The Two Extremes Of The Post-Attitude Era
This spiritual split happened literally across flagship programmes RAW and SmackDown.
The crazed arena-wide brawling of the Attitude Era settled down, after the WWF botched the Invasion, and a sort of civil war gathered pace in the company between the stalwarts and the technical studs. On RAW, the Undertaker and Triple H held down the fort - very tediously, on the "strength" of King Of The Ring 2002. Trips worked as more pupil than student of the game, misapplying the lessons of the past under the belief that an inverted Indian death lock made him 1986 Ric Flair.
On SmackDown, the talent, conditioning and diverse disciplines of its star "six" saw the WWF, at it most stagnant creatively in years, hark eerily back to the New Generation by drawing a similar level of critical acclaim. Edge honed his defensive counter-wrestling brilliance; Rey Mysterio adapted his gorgeous lucha libre flourishes into a total winner of an underdog babyface role; Eddie Guerrero infused the scene with lashings of technical expertise and yet more incorrigible personality; Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle brought an at-times disturbingly intense perfection of the mat game. The scene was electric at its peak, but clearly, tragically incompatible with the WWE grind.
The deaths of Guerrero and Benoit and the departure of Angle, combined with WWE's single-school developmental programme, homogenised its in-ring output before the doyens of the Independent scene brought a new change...