The Secret History Behind WWE's Attitude Era

Vince McMahon was peddled as self-styled creative genius not once but twice, but WWE's 1980s and 1990s booms rely as much on the people he surrounded himself with as any of the deep-rooted visions of a wannabe billionaire. That's not a complete slight if McMahon wasn't such a complete prick. Some of the best leaders are good at leading rather than actually getting in the trenches and fighting the daily battles, but just as Dick Ebersol's NBC wisdom helped make real the McMahon vision of WWE's big arena presentation with Saturday Night's Main Event, Kevin Dunn and Jim Ross were vital in helping him reshape and redefine his product when the water coolers weren't safe in Titan Tower. They were marginal figures in his shadow for the bulk of their durations with the organisation, and JR was a figure of such torment that he lives out some of those memories in split-second outbursts at himself to this day. But they were key. So key. More than that.

Ross said it himself after Dunn's surprising resignation in 2023. As he put it on his Grillin' JR podcast (h/t POST Wrestling);

"...yeah, he [Kevin Dunn] was one of Vince’s right-hand guys. Vince (McMahon) used to tell Kevin Dunn and I in our little management meetings, between the three of us that, ‘I got my two key guys here. Talent and television.’ Pro wrestling is about talent and television. So I was handling the talent side and Kevin was handling the TV side…"

"Handling the talent side" is typically understated from the stoic Oklahoman. Ross was instrumental in a raft of new talent arriving in the company between 1995 and 1996 while the business was still in the bin. They didn't all transform the industry and break all box office records, but two of them actually did, and several others were massive in contributing to a visual and stylistic change some of the elite tier of New Generation wrestlers had attempted to pull off during the company's cartoonish nadir.

It was one thing pitching a rampaging World Wrestling Federation to any available or unsettled talent in 1999 when the pendulum had swung back in favour of the perennial market leader, but Ross' ability to coax the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Mick Foley, Vader, Mark Mero and others through the door when the company itself didn't know it needed them was vital in transforming the landscape. Dunn's production promised possibility as much as Vince McMahon himself promised opportunity, but the darkest days of the 1990s had proven that turd polishing was no longer going to be enough. Literally so - the SummerSlam 1996 pre-show featured plumber character TL Hopper finding a log at the bottom of a swimming pool and taking a bite out of it. This type of gross-out comedy was the preserve of McMahon, but the other reason on the show for a swimming pool catered to a difference Vince who was making inroads into the notoriously tight inner circle. Vince Russo pushed for Sunny and Sable to model their best bikinis, taking a golden opportunity to peddle female flesh as titillation alongside contributing more engaging midcard stories via his editorial position in Raw Magazine and increasing influence backstage.

McMahon was soon to be enchanted by Russo's edgy publication, and - never one to read between the lines when the lines themselves were right in front of him - had presumably noticed that the editorial tone was one that basically talked about a different type of WWE as well as reporting on the existing one. Russo had a history with this, going right the way back to when he introduced his own heel persona as WWE Magazine's most controversial columnist in 1994. Before Vince Russo's Attitude Era, there was Vic Venom's Bite. When staff writer Russo became Editor-In-Chief in 1994, the magazine started to reflect the television's shift to the New Generation marketing slogan launched at that year's King Of The Ring in June. Or was that the other way around?

Russo was in his early 30s at the time - a relative spring chicken compared to many of his peers - and was much closer to whatever pop culture pulse Vince McMahon was trying to put his finger on. The New Generation was on the page before it made it to the screen. To read WWE's in-house magazine back then was to think that the company had never been cooler. The publication appeared to be youth-focussed without being terribly patronising, focusing as little attention as possible on the wrestlers who contributed to the "Land Of The Giants" era while celebrating how 1994/95 could boast its best ever bell-to-bell output. The likes of Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Diesel and Razor Ramon holding titles on television really helped too - the four were all exceptional in-ring talents (or in Diesel's case, exceptional at working with exceptional talents and big enough to strap the rocket to by the old metrics) and had all been in the main event scene less than two full years. Complimenting a vibe that made the magazine must-buy even if the television product wasn't particularly must-see, a hot new scribe by the name of Vic Venom presented the most captivating monthly prose despite his copy being heel-leaning. The magazine had previously platformed Jesse Ventura and Bobby Heenan as columnists that vilified the villains, but Venom was altogether more discerning if you discounted replacing S for Z and overindulging in exclamation marks. He liked the baddies, but really worked to put over the good ones. Owen Hart and Jeff Jarrett (and later Hakushi and Hunter Hearst Helmsley) did well on his pages, as opposed to some of the trash being peddled via The Million Dollar Corporation. Of-the-time when little else was, Venom was acerbic, got as close to cursing as could have been permitted in a magazine with an all-ages demographic, and skewed substantially sharper than anybody else putting pen to paper.

Venom was the fittingly alliterative introduction into the creative space for one Vince Russo. Stop and re-read any edition of The Bite and his transformational editorial policy becomes clear. Magazine and article produced by one man wearing two hats, while using a third one to make yet another pseudonym look like an old-timey detective had penetrated Titan Tower and was ready and raring to go with all the scoopz. The "Informer" was a voice away from Editor-In-Chief Russo and spiky staff writer Venom that made bold predictions and/or revealed gossipy nuggets of information that, in some cases, were eventually manifested on screen. The writer was "barred from the back" (which took suspension of disbelief considering the very publication you held in your hands) but wrestling is wrestling and this was a more convincing work than babyface Doink existing on the same payroll as Bret Hart. It was intriguing and unique and sometimes way off the mark but was absolutely the company's first attempt at mimicking the content popularised by the likes of The Wrestling Observer and Pro Wrestling Torch. These drove the editorial tone of monthlies such as Power Slam and - to an admittedly much lesser extent - the 90s Apter mags, and was yet another quiet new frontier for WWE. The organisation ostensibly had no reason to let viewers peer through the blinds, but Russo understood the keenness of his readers to get an insight into that side of things.

As with all innovations though, it was destined to hit a glass ceiling that required muscle to break it. The fundamental problems in continuing on with The Informer as a monthly article by the 1995 nadir of the New Generation were twofold; 1) the stories Russo was effectively fantasy booking in the article were often way more interesting than anything real he could have leaked and 2) the very vibe of the piece was overwhelmingly more engaging that the kayfabe puff pieces and superstar profiles that made up the rest of the magazine. Eventually, Russo figured out a solution to his immediate problems, used his breakthrough to craft some answers to WWE's biggest ones and opened up a world of opportunity that even he couldn't have fantasy booked.

Raw Magazine launched in early 1996 with a May/June bimonthly and changed everything. Russo, albeit for a good time rather than a long one, was set to join Ebersol, Ross, Dunn and others at the top table of figures that transformed the notoriously stubborn Vince McMahon's way of promoting his professional wrestling show. It’s disputed which particularly awful (and/or awfully received) edition of Raw during the leanest years triggered a scene that changed the shape of 90s wrestling forever, but many attribute it to the April 14th South Africa special. Shot by the company's travelling crew, a series of mostly-bad matches play out in front of a mostly-quiet crowd to mostly no interest from the taped commentators. It's slaughtered by the evening's Nitro (not that that was anything new by then), but it's yet another case of the supposed market leader or "recognised symbol of excellence" being nowhere near the bluster. So the apocryphal story goes, in the aftermath, a frustrated McMahon hurled Russo’s Raw Magazine on the table of his inner circle alongside a simple order - make the television more like this. A year into publishing the magazine, and it had already taken on a life of its own, borrowing and enhancing all the things that had ruled about Russo's WWE Magazine rebirth. The Informer was offering longer-form stories rather than tidbits, or just outright spoiling stuff that you only knew about if you had access to the internet. The vast majority didn't, and Russo knew how credible that made the reporting. Speaking of which, Venom's cartoonish heel persona was dialled back for a "Raw" version of his column that aimed more to inform and entertain an older readership that hadn't yet given up on a kid-centric television product.

The Attitude Era became obsessed with the supposedly massive age gap between WWE and WCW wrestlers, and this was something Vince McMahon clumsily attempted to lean on twice during the New Generation years - once with the mere launch of it and the other with the infamous billionaire Ted skits. What this failed to acknowledge was that audiences simply didn't care that Roddy Piper, Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage's birth certificates pre-dated those of Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels or Diesel. The ratings showed this time and time again, and it took a combination of Jim Ross' hires and Vince Russo's quiet creative influence instead of McMahon's potshots to reverse the trends. Hulk Hogan might have been north of 40 but as a heel he was brand spanking new, so who cared if he'd wince a little more dropping the big leg? Roddy Piper's artificial hip wasn't an obstacle to him getting one of the biggest pops of the year when he submitted Hulk in their Starrcade 1996 main event either. Of course, the older men had shorter shelf lives with their updated personas, but WWE had repeatedly sandbagged using its own past with an over-correction of a youth movement. New emotional connections and ideally even more newer faces on screen were needed to affect real change. This, in a nutshell, was the not-so-secret history of the Attitude Era. The secrets themselves lay buried within three pivotal episodes of WWE television you'd be served to watch again when you've finished this article. They're history being made by people who don't know they're making it, and the energy is legitimately intoxicating as a result.

There were three specific episodes of WWE television during 1995, 1996 and 1997 that all aired before even the earliest incarnation that an attitudinal shift was occurring, such is the way of things in an industry familiar with cyclical booms and busts. Often, the magic happening on screen isn't reflected by old metrics - box office receipts, television ratings, merchandise surges - until whatever's working has just about reached its peak. Or maybe even passed it. It's a reminder that pro wrestling will always be fringe even if it appears mainstream. Like all forms of pop culture, the real money only gets made when everybody's on the bandwagon, but the subjective experience of the art itself arrives way before the water cooler conversations.

All three episodes fall in this specific time period. Doldrum years for a fallen empire that suggested there was barely space in the market for a leader let alone a challenger brand. The very value of pro wrestling as a form of entertainment was under threat until WCW resuscitated heartbeats with the New World Order in 1996. The World Wrestling Federation, for all the growing influence of new voices with new ideas, new ideals and new methods, seemed determined to remain in a "New" Generation that had ultimately failed to capture the imagination of enough fans to fill more than high school gyms and civic centres that were now familiar sights on Monday Nights. But three episodes across three years reflected the ways in which everything would change in a way nobody thought they could.

One thing links them all; the unstoppable megastar power of Stone Cold Steve Austin.

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