The Attitude Era Thread Vol 1

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Vale hates public flatulence.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I don't know what you're talking about, and please don't tell me!

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

You don’t remember her farting gimmick from the early 2010s?

 

[Valeyard]

TJ might be fine. He knew when to retire

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

TJ might be fine. He knew when to retire

And, by "knew when," you mean accepted his doctor's advice when his neck disintegrated?

 

[Valeyard]

Enough people get told similar things and keep going, so by wrestling logic that's extremely sane.

 

[BruiserBrody]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1707356978090049738

I didn't recall that the Zamboni angle was the night after Austin lost to Kane/Taker. So this RAW would also see the Dead men break Vince's angle. Busy night!

 

[Valeyard]

My memory of that is vivid but my anger at them teasing the winged eagle belt coming back is what I remember most. I love that belt.

 

[Tino Standard]

My memory of that is vivid but my anger at them teasing the winged eagle belt coming back is what I remember most. I love that belt.

Yeah, what was the deal with that? It looks like the winged eagle was fixed there (one side of the front plate had broken off when we last saw it at WM14), but then it never appeared again after this. Only thing I can think of is that they had several copies of each version of the belt made and someone in production grabbed the wrong one from storage, maybe?

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1707356978090049738

I didn't recall that the Zamboni angle was the night after Austin lost to Kane/Taker. So this RAW would also see the Dead men break Vince's angle. Busy night!

This went against the Nitro with the only televised Hulk Hogan/Bret Hart (which turned into a Hulk Hogan/Sting rematch). Monday Night Wars in second half of ‘98 were bonkers.

 

[Sex Machine Gun]

Still never seen a hotter crowd than when Austin jumps off that zamboni onto Vince. It's often announcer hyperbole but there's no way that arena wasn't damn near shaking.

 

[Valeyard]

Foley winning the title is my pick. Huge reactions already but then Austin destroys space and time with that pop.

Bryan turning on Bray is way up there too. Made me feel like the kid watching Austin again.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Random one I remember is from the go home RAW for SummerSlam 2010 is when Jericho and Edge stood side by side with the babyfaces on Team WWE to fight back The Nexus. Crowd went banana.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I envy you guys sometimes: I've been watching wrestling for over forty years, and I've never had that kind of emotional reaction watching a wrestling match. Definitely not as a kid. The closest thing that I have to that was when Ron Simmons won the WCW Championship off of Vader. And even then, I wasn't a kid kid: I was sixteen when Simmons won the belt.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Last time I can recall a non nostalgia based major pop from myself was at WM XX when Beniot had HHH in the crossfire and I was screaming "TAP YOU FUCKER!" or whatever.

Coincidentally the Benoit murders also marked the end of my true "fandom" of the pseudo sport. I went into hibernation after that.

 

[Sex Machine Gun]

Last time I went absolutely banana for something as it happened was Dean Ambrose cashing in MitB in 2016. I wanted to go run through the streets cheering. Punk's 2021 return was emotional but not "OH FUCK YEAHHHHHH" kind of emotional. Sami Zayn whacking Roman with the chair at the Rumble this year was huge but telegraphed too much to reach the pop I had when Dean won the big one.

 

[Zetterberg is God]

My only detraction from the Foley title win pop is that it was a taped show so it sounds much more muted/canned than it would have been if it was live.

 

[One Epic Winter (OEW)]

Austin coming out to help Foley win the title is probably the biggest pop in history. You can barely hear Stone Cold's music as he's coming out.

When Okada came out on Dynamite for the first time in the build to last year's Forbidden Door was the biggest one I recall from recent memory. Well other than Punk returning.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1709290759705227605

Last image of this era being Hulk Hogan celebrating with his title does feel like a "Time is a flat circle" moment. Attitude Era did everything it could to defy the Hulkamania era conventions and the last show before the name change ends with Hogan on top!

 

[Valeyard]

If they'd used "Real American" it would've been perfect.

That was one of those times where the internet told me to hate something and I couldn't do it all the way. It was the right call in the moment and it just made my inner child happy. One of the only times HHH got a raw deal too.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Hotshotting the belt onto onto Hogan for a minute in '02 wouldn't have been as bad if they did something better with it than putting over The Undertaker. He was willing to put guys over during that run and best thing you think of is just having him put over Taker at next PPV? Lame.

All of the hotshotting of the big belt in '02 just made WWE feel like '99-'00 WCW. Thing is I don't think the World Title changed much more than when WWF was its hottest in the Attitude Era but all of the title changes reeked of panic. You can justify the title changes in '99 cause the main event was super loaded but in '02, the title changes just seemed like WWE didn't know what to do. Maybe cause their main event was now way too loaded?

And of course, the ultimate resolution is to just build around Triple H lol

 

[Big Papa Paegan]

Well, who else was there? Austin walked out, HHH was bombing as top face, Rock was gone for Scorpion King stuff for most of the late spring/early summer...

You could argue Angle, of course, but he was shunted down the card for a bit after the end of the Invasion arc hurt him a bit. Jericho was damaged goods due to the stupid HHH feud over the dog (oh, and the belts, too). Edge...maybe?

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Honestly, I'd probably just hot potato the title back to Triple H, have Triple H Vs Chris Jericho HiaC at King of the Ring '02, then just have Triple H in Taker's place at Vengeance '02.

Thinking about it more, Angle would probably be best and least stale. Have him get a cheap win at Judgment Day then do the same match that they did at KOTR '02 and same triple threat at Vengeance '02 except Angle as champion.

Undertaker's '02 World Title run gave us the amazing match with Angle on the 4th of July Smackdown! and the Jeff Hardy ladder match though.

 

[Valeyard]

Hogan was huge that month and it made total sense. It also made sense to panic when that bubble burst and hotshot it elsewhere. Your options are pretty much Taker, Angle, or Show. Taker was super protected, Angle was midcard, and so was Show but Show is always in play. Or you pull the trigger on Brock a few months early and let him kill Hogan and Edge before killing Rock and Taker.

HHH would've backfired because it would make the whole thing useless and frankly, unless Shawn was involved, HHH was worse than Hogan in 2002.

If you wanna get fantasy, Eddie or Benoit because what the hell no one else worked.

 

[Valeyard]

Too bad Nash was worthless then. Kane was over big, though.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

I feel like Brock winning the World Championship three months earlier backfires huge. I think him winning at SummerSlam ‘02 really only worked cause it was done in front of the super smarky, boisterous Nassau Coliseum crowd.

That brings up low key one of the dumbest things about ‘02 WWE, they spend months building Brock up as “The Next Big Thing” and have him slaughter all of their sacred cows only to have him drop the World Title in three months to THE BIG SHOW!

 

[Valeyard]

It isn't that it was Show, it was that it was an out of shape Show who had spent the last year being a midcarder. Like I think he went from jobbing to shitty 2002 Jeff Hardy to beating Brock in a month. If Show is a monster, then I can see justifying it, but he was nothing. Only comparison I can think of is Sheamus beating Cena out of nowhere.

 

[One Epic Winter (OEW)]

They were in a weird spot with Big Show. Brock was injured and they wanted the world title defended on house shows so they hotshotted it onto Show then Angle to build to the end game of Brock/Kurt.

I remember they tried making Show look like a beast during his last night on Raw by squashing 3-Minute Warning when they were still fairly protected.

I often forget they reignited the Brock/Show feud in 2003 with that stretcher match.

 

[Cackling Co Pilot Kamala]

Only comparison I can think of is Sheamus beating Cena out of nowhere.

I’d say JBL or Jinder would be better comparisons. Sheamus winning felt so unexpected. He had a WWECW midcard push that no one cared about then got promoted to the A show and beat Cena a few weeks later.

Big Show beating Brock seemed like it was in the realm of possibility (like JBL beating Eddie or Jinder beating…uh, he beat Orton for the title, yeah?) even if it was a “Wouldn’t be stupid if they actually did this?” Sense. Sheamus seemed destined to be one of the most forgettable PPV World Title challengers until he wasn’t.


No, @BruiserBrody, I will not start a WWE TV PG Era Bullshit thread.

 

[Valeyard]

JBL is a totally different beast for me. Show at least had main evented, and drew, and was an established guy for years. JBL was a lifelong midcarder, his peak was a tag guy, and suddenly he gets the big belt. Sheamus was a nobody whose best work was ECW matches with Goldust during his Aksana phase, and no one had any notion of him getting higher than the midcard if they remembered he was there. Jinder is kind of a lesser version of both because he was either paired with people as a job guy or being a singles job guy, and frankly going over Orton in that era isn't close to going over Brock in his or Cena in his.

There was no winning with the undisputed title, though. It's funny because that period had some of the biggest star power a world title can have, but it isn't like it mattered. Jericho had a few good matches but got buried so hard it took six years to come out of it, Hogan was game but broken down and immediately peaked, Taker and HHH were doing the worst work of their careers, Rock was the best but was a hail mary, and Brock wasn't Brock yet but was still good.