WWE In 1997 | Wrestling Timelines

1997, which many argue is the greatest year artistically in WWE history, is considered the very rough demo of the Attitude Era. 

1996 is actually that. 1996 is the year that the WWF first ventures backstage to bring you an actual match with the SummerSlam Boiler Room Brawl between Mankind and the Undertaker. It is the year of the wildly ill-advised but thrilling ‘Austin’s got a gun’ angle. It is the year in which Austin terrorises the entire WWF, in which the Nation of Domination is cast as a reaction to racism in wrestling and not a grotesque illustration of it, in which of all people Jim Ross breaks the fourth wall with a (vastly underrated) worked shoot promo. 

1997 meanwhile is the second year of the new creative frontier - and the best. In comparison, 1998 is the major label debut: it’s louder and broader and dumbed-down, in a bid to win over the knucklehead nu-metal youth. 1997 is the sweet spot. It is the year in which WWE sheds its lame family-friendly patina and is reborn as an intense, personal, believable creative powerhouse. It is the year that the WWF begins to feel cool, but unlike 1998, is grounded by a box cutter-sharp pro wrestling sensibility. The finishes are among the greatest ever conceived, the execution somehow better. 

1997 begins with the familiar sight of red, white, and blue ropes, inside which Shawn Michaels plays a do-gooding dude trying to succeed in honour of his mentor Jose Lothario. It ends with a blood red and pitch-black colour aesthetic as Shawn Michaels tells dick jokes, instructs you to fellate him, and tries to rip Michael Cole’s gooch in two.  

This is the story of it, chronologically.

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This is the second episode of Shotgun Saturday Night: the late-night experimental wrestling show which, to be reductive about it, is the WWF’s attempt to be ECW. 

Vince McMahon knows that his product is mostly lame, but lacks the ability to make it cool. Shotgun Saturday Night sits awkwardly between those two states. Held in various nightlife spots, it’s a WWF show with added brawling; the backdrop is simple and ultimately unconvincing window dressing. The WWF is basically posing here - but one early experiment will become a weekly Attitude Era staple. 

The 1990s love a celebrity sex tape. The three words in succession are surgically precise in their ability to literally arouse interest, in that you get to see the already private life of a celebrity doing the most private, alluring thing. The WWF tries to capitalise. Vince McMahon promises a glimpse of Sunny’s homemade sex tape as burgeoning gooners don’t know what to do with themselves for a week. It is revealed that she has a thing for a certain plush toy, leading to an apparent sex scene with a human-sized Tickle Me Elmo. The screen blacks out. All you hear are helium-voiced sex noises. It’s a dumb bait-and-switch, but then, so is the Attitude Era. 

The WWF later breaks the 83-week WCW Nitro winning streak by pretending that Steve Austin is going to wrestle Mr. McMahon in the main event. Huge things are meant to happen every week, and never do, but the fans are so entertained and titillated that they are happy to fall for the ruse. This false advertising method is almost as effective as Vince Russo himself in cheaply retaining and attracting viewers. In January 1997, though, the WWF lacks the star power to get away with it.