7. Taboo; Sex, Blood and Violence
This is one area of Attitude where you have to tread very lightly. There is no mistaking that this era in wrestling was one of the most violent times in regards to the sort of action you saw in the ring, ECW on a daily basis would use weapons in the ring and I'm sure the crowd would have booed if blood wasn't spilt in the show. This was also the era which gave birth to the Diva; a sexy female wrestler (and yes they could wrestle too kids!) wearing next to nothing, strutting her stuff to get her way and occasionally being involved in questionable TV or Playboy photo shoots. Needless to say this cocktail of arousal and blood lust gave something to the fans that they wanted; I remember a couple of years ago back home showing a friend a video of the infamous Hell in a Cell match between Mankind and Undertaker, if you haven't seen it stop reading now and go find a video of it somewhere! If you have then you know what kind of match it was, he said to me "See now I would watch this because it is a brawl not something which feels orchestrated", I don't think he put it quite like that, in fact I don't think he even had the word orchestrated in his vocab but you get my drift. That level of violence grabs the attention of the casual fan who want to see what all the fuss is about and get that primal blood lust kick, the sexual content the Divas offered drew in the rest of the sexually starved adults or sexually developing teenagers that were still humming and haa-ing. Is this truly something that made the attitude era great though? Well in hindsight probably not, WWE certainly has become a lot more zero tolerance on blood in matches in recent years due to blood born infections and such, and you only have to look at Mick Foley today to see how much of a toll years of chair shots and violence have taken on his body, as for sex? Well sex sells and they still have the Divas, but I guess if you had to choose one or the other, Divas in next to nothing was the less of the two evils. However from this fan's perspective I will always respect the like's of Mick Foley, for what it is worth anyway, for doing so much to entertain his fans, and whilst that level of violence may not have a place in modern wrestling, it does make the Attitude era unique, and we all have to admit it was one of the reasons we watched...