12 Times WWE Buried Itself
6. The Ruthless Aggression Speech
The speech, not the era, because it wasn't an era.
"Ruthless Aggression" wasn't an era. Ruthless Aggression was the subject of a promo, some filler nonsense parroted by browbeaten commentators for a few weeks, the first hammy line John Cena ever delivered and finally the adopted term for the period where WWE got the F out. Unfortunately, they left every other gross Attitude Era shortcut in, and business circled the drain until PG saved the day.
The aforementioned promo itself was classic Vince McMahon disaster deflection, and all at the expense of the remaining talent that hadn't yet been completely buried by a catastrophic Invasion storyline and botched first attempt at a brand split. A middling attempt at tough love, this was McMahon outright screaming about how much his product sucked now, but that it wasn't his fault. No, rather than looking in the mirror at the only person in the entire company with any autonomy, he instead looked and Chris Nowinski and wondered aloud why he wasn't Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock.
Useless garbage that foreshadowed the many, many years to come, McMahon's meaningless drivel was one of the only times his obvious nostalgia for the late-1990s came out of his own mouth. Typically, he'd just force the talent to express it instead...