9 Times WWE's Attitude Era Broke The Rules Of Professional Wrestling

by John Bills

1. The Cure For The Common Show

Vince McMahon The Cure For The Common Show Attitude Era
WWE.com

It is generally considered the speech that truly opened the Attitude Era, despite it arguably already being underway at this point. The date was December 15th 1997, and in a pre-taped promo Vince McMahon explained that the World Wrestling Federation (and more to the point Raw is War) was the 'cure for the common show'.

Pro wrestling needed to change, and the only way this was going to happen was if one of the two biggest companies in the world took a sledgehammer to the old rules of the sport. In this two-minute video the Genetic Jackhammer takes a giant dump on the proud history of pro wrestling and drags it kicking and screaming into the modern age.

Gone is the idea of it being competition, gone is the concept of a sporting contest, replaced instead by references to 'Days Of Our Lives', MTV and The Jerry Springer Show. Vince openly states that the days of good vs. bad are over, complete with a passive aggressive nod to Hulk Hogan.

Ric Flair once said that nothing had ever made him angrier than this promo. Before it if a fan told him he'd put on a good show he'd punch them in the mouth, from this moment on all he could do was say 'thanks'.

Kayfabe had been dead a long time, but in breaking all of its rules in two-minutes Vince McMahon made sure it wasn't coming back.

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Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.