One MIND-BLOWING Secret From EVERY Month Of The WWE Attitude Era
WWE almost signed literally the worst wrestler ever. You’ll not believe who.
1997, considered by many the greatest year in WWE history, was the demo phase for the Attitude Era proper.
Darkly personal, very real stories bled into the onscreen narrative, visually reflected by the new black and blood-red colour scheme. The serious neck injury suffered by Steve Austin at SummerSlam forced the WWF into various creative workarounds - the dispute with Vince McMahon, vehicular stunts, police arrests - shaping the car-crash formula with which WCW Nitro was annihilated in the Monday Night Wars.
Vince formalised the era in a televised promo on December 15, 1997, which is where this list begins. In hindsight, it’s a very bizarre, over-articulate mission statement for his growing nu-metal-head audience, but regardless: it’s a neat starting point. Consensus has it that the party was over by WrestleMania 17, at which Austin turned heel and aligned with Mr. McMahon. A new era was encroaching, the unfathomable WCW Invasion, the big overarching story died with an awful twist, and business cratered. The Attitude Era was unforgettable in and of itself, and was so successful that WWE has bragged about and relied on it ever since. You’d think there’s nothing new or interesting to learn about it - but there is.
During the Attitude Era, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s Dave Meltzer was sourced to the gills, and there were very few popular outlets around at the time breaking down the paywall. A treasure trove of long-buried secret scoops exists within those archives, many of which follow with an editorial breakdown of where these dropped directions may have led…
41. December 1997 | Same Old, Same Old
December 1997, so defined by D-Generation X making dick jokes and treating pure wrestling like a farce that the In Your House pay-per-view was named after them, was the month everything changed. The WWF even said it out loud on their TV programme. Except, Vince was more resistant to it than you might remember.
This isn’t the “secret” entry here, since it’s widely-known at this point, but Vince scrambled post-Montreal. Not entirely confident that WCW would ruin Bret Hart, despite his later claims of prescience, Vince offered the Ultimate Warrior a lot of money to make a comeback. This is not the only typical move Vince had planned to make.
The New Generation Era was defined by many a thing, some of which was overlooked and brilliant, but the Undertaker feuding with goofy Monsters of the Week wasn’t one of them. ‘Taker’s role in the Attitude Era was divisive - the man himself was low on the run and petitioned to become the American Badass in order to get with the times - but his daft n’ demented soap opera storyline with Kane was at least something new for him. While this was long-planned, Vince had devised a diversion straight out of 1993 to keep ‘Taker busy ahead of WrestleMania 14: a feud with the Interrogator. Better remembered as Kurrgan of the Oddities, Robert Maillet was a Giant Gonzales-sized lump who fared significantly better in Hollywood than in the ring.
Meltzer reported in the December 8 edition of the Observer that, mercifully, this direction was abandoned. Was this because it was too much of a throwback, or because Interrogator was so useless?