The Secret History Behind WWE's Attitude Era

Before examining the secret history of the WWE Attitude Era, we need to briefly assess the over-shared and highly publicised one. The stories the organisation have had no problem sharing as a way to simplify years of change through the prism of a snackable collection of highlights. To this end, there are generally considered to be three landmark moments credited with kicking off WWE's Attitude Era as we'd all come to know it.

At WrestleMania 13, Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin contested what many still believe to be the company's greatest ever match, and while such a claim will forever remain subjective, there's plenty of objective metrics to suggest that the making of 'The Rattlesnake' in that bout was the making of the period he spearheaded. You know the short and easy version of the story - Austin walks in as a hated heel with Hart as the beloved babyface, only for that to switch by the end. That's the slick way WWE have described how both men and some fabulously intricate booking got the company out of a sticky situation ahead of 1997's 'Show Of Shows', but it doesn't credit the subtle work both men were doing for months in order to make the pivots look instantaneous even if they weren't. And more on that a little later on.

Bret Hart in particular was tweaking his persona from the moment he returned from a self-imposed post-WrestleMania XII sabbatical at the 1996 Survivor Series. Exactly one year on from his celebrated comeback and he was front and centre for something else that makes a good case for being the Attitude Era's ground zero. The events that occurred in Montreal had a seismic impact on the entire industry forever, not least because they inadvertently thrust Vince McMahon into two new spotlights. In the aftermath of screwing his loyal Champion out of the belt itself, McMahon became both unimpeachable real life authority figure and a loathed heel approximation of the role. Yet, mere minutes before McMahon called time on 'The Hitman's WWE career, he was using the credibility of his top guy to spur a new movement into life. The first ever Attitude commercial aired right before the Hart/Michaels main event, with Bret even given the killer "try lacing my boots" over the brand new 'scratch' logo as the reigning WWE Champion at the time. In absolutes, this was the moment "Attitude" as we'd come to know it was born, logo-and-all. But branding alone wasn't enough. It never is.

Finally, there's Vince McMahon's "Cure For The Common Show" speech on the December 15th 1997 edition of Monday Night Raw. A depressingly familiar and well-trodden path in the modern era, the state-of-the-union industry address hadn't really been attempted so flagrantly by WWE before. There'd been plenty of taglines, rebrands and transparent marketing strategies dressed as wholesale refreshes, but never a leading line that openly acknowledged the work as a work. Whereas McMahon the commentator once simply implied that his old product needed a facelift as a way to encourage you to mark out for the new one, here he was outright burying how things used to be in a bold attempt to make his show look lightyears beyond WCW and honestly anything else that had aired before it. If McMahon had coined "sports entertainment" out of a self-hatred for the business he inherited and/or to dodge paying certain taxes, he utilised his own terminology here to do away with any remaining pretence that the bell-to-bell contests were remotely on the up-and-up.

In his own words from the historic night;

"This is a conscious effort on our part to open the creative envelope, so to speak, in order to entertain you in a more contemporary manner. Even though we call ourselves "Sports Entertainment" because of the athleticism involved, the keyword in that phrase is "Entertainment". The WWF extends far beyond the strict confines of sports presentation into the wide open environment of broad based entertainment...We in the WWF think that you, the audience, are quite frankly tired of having your intelligence insulted. We also think that you're tired of the same old simplistic theory of "Good Guys vs. Bad Guys". Surely the era of the super-hero urge you to say your prayers and take your vitamins is definitely passé. Therefore, we've embarked on a far more innovative and contemporary creative campaign, that is far more invigorating and extemporaneous than ever before."

Naturally McMahon - or whomever was responsible for feeding him the line - couldn't resist taking a shot at Hulk Hogan as the Hollywood heel leader of the New World Order continued to do strong business for WCW (and at an age that would be considered the half-way point of a wrestling career in today's money), but the messaging was substantially more sophisticated than it had been in the past.

It was nonsense, too, undermining why it supposedly belongs as a pivotal turning point. McMahon was trying to sign Ultimate Warrior at this exact period; a character that proved even more inflexible and behind-the-times than Hogan's dated babyface act. Beyond the hypocrisy and word soup, the line in the sand had been drawn not with a stick, but with the same pen Vince Russo would use to illustrate his "everything you're watching is fake, apart from this right now which is real" philosophy constantly in the years to come. It was one thing to talk a good game in real life but quite another to express that through the fiction on your television show. This would become a familiar problem in Russo creative circles soon enough, but he was nailing his first try at this, as we'll explore presently.

Landmark moments then; the type that fit the bill when the company are trying to quickly move the timeline along before showing clips of the first Stone Cold Steve Austin beer bath or DX invading WCW Nitro on a van with a cannon attached. But in WWE as in life, things simply just don't happen like that. McMahon was the self-styled "genius" and you weren't to question otherwise, even though he'll now never take any legacy forward with him other than the one he deserves. As a ludicrous autocrat and bully, McMahon put himself in the position to take all of the credit and the blame for everything major that happened on television, with the exception of the wrestling itself. It didn't stop him being known to yell at staff with reckless abandon, but ultimately the company was categorically shaped in his image no matter who got on with the day-to-day in front of and behind the camera.

But the secret history of the Attitude Era begins with people he was happier keeping secret about.

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