1999 was a magical time for the WWF. Steve Austin was the top star and his feud with Vince McMahon and his cronies sparked a boom period that helped the company rise to the top of its popularity. With WCW faltering, WWF enjoyed the leg room of being alone at the top. With dynamic characters such as Austin, The Rock, Undertaker, Mankind plus the advent of competitive matches on free TV, it seemed like the company could do no wrong. However, creatively the company was starting to falter under head writers Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara. With Vince inter-twined in the main story line, Russo and Ferrara were left to a heavy reliance on sex, swerves, lewd behavior and MTV-style television to reach viewers. The strategy had worked in late 1997 and 1998, but as a result of burnout and growing pressure to deliver, creative suffered in 1999. From mid-card acts such as "Sexual Chocolate" Mark Henry to main event angle payoffs such as the Undertaker/McMahon feud, the product was starting to falter. After Russo and Ferrara left for WCW in October 1999, WWF got a new breath of fresh air creatively as Chris Kreski took over. Kreski would lead the company through a year-plus period of widely-acclaimed television that more than made up for the early part of 1999. What remained in Russo and Ferrara's last few months in WWF were a series of angles, both mid-card and main-event, that failed to capitalize on the product's growth. To many, the entire Attitude Era of WWF was a magical time, but on closer examination, the company went through a down-swing in creative in early 1999 that has to be revisited to be believed.
