What was it like watching the attitude era as it was it happening?

[Take It In Blood]

Owen dying was bigger than Princess Diana to us

 

[Bob Loblaw]

It was the opposite of Nia Jax nudes. Watching on the network now is like Nia Jax nudes

 

[Worthless Loser]

Going to school every Tuesday morning to talk about Nitro & Raw with kids in the class was the highlight of the day.

"Did ya'll see what Stone Cold did"
"Yo the Wolfpac is so dope"

"Jericho just showed up on Raw he's in WWE now

"Yo the Rock said that Jericho thinks he's somebody special because he beat up some jabroni named Juventud."

"Who is the real people's champ DDP or The Rock?"


"Who would win a match between Goldberg and Austin"

"Triple H turned on DX HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN"

"Nash won the World title and ended the streak"

"Nash laying down for Hogan and giving him the World title? They together again? This is lame. Nitro sucks now."


Kids getting kicked out of class for giving the teacher a DX crotch chop

Another kid getting kicked out for telling the teacher to know her role and shut her mouth


I was in a youth bowling league and our bowling team was legit called D-Generation X.

 

[Playaz Eyez]

it's funny when i see dudes in their young to mid 20s hype up ruthless aggression era and eras after that as like gold standard of wrestling. makes me feel old as shyt

A LOT of the WWE's current base were legit not around for the Attitude era.

And some people on here will say “you’re just being nostalgic” and “every generation feels that way about their era”, but interesting characters and engaging storylines supersedes any of that nonsense. The WWE has had flat out bad TV for a very long time and there’s a reason fukkery and previous eras stars still strike a chord with people. The talk of this recent CoronaMania was the Boneyard and Firefly Funhouse matches, not any other matches. You give people a reason to care about stuff, they’ll be more interested, and that’s one thing no one can take away from AE when talking about it. People cared about Rock, Austin, Angle, Kane, and Taker, as well as Crash Holly, APA, Too Cool, and Lita. You can not at all say that about the current era, and I’d say that’s easily been the case for more the 10 years.

 

[Carlton Banks]

What years are considered the ruthless aggression era? I always considered attitude era to be up until stone cold and the rock both retired. I stopped watching around 2005 when I didn't have cable and could only watch SmackDown and they were pushing JBL down our throats. These kids don't even know at one point SmackDown was better than Raw. Raw actually became the 'B' show once the draft happened and The Rock was number one draft pick to SmackDown.

 

[Striving For Greatness]

Incredible

 

[King Kai]

the craziest thing about that time was the cultural relevance.

news, radio, school or wherever everybody would talkin about wwf

i remember my grade school teachers making wrestling references. like it was fully ingrained in society. shyt was wild

 

[The Villain]

It was the best. People can try to revise history all they want to and say it was cringey, and a lot of the stuff didnt age well, and we overrated the midcarders and blah blah blah, a bunch of bullshyt.

But if you lived through it you know it was never more lit before, and it never will be as lit again. It never crossed my mind that this was as good as it was going to get.
It was a cornerstone of culture at the time

 

[NOSaintsFan02]

And some people on here will say “you’re just being nostalgic” and “every generation feels that way about their era”, but interesting characters and engaging storylines supersedes any of that nonsense. The WWE has had flat out bad TV for a very long time and there’s a reason fukkery and previous eras stars still strike a chord with people. The talk of this recent CoronaMania was the Boneyard and Firefly Funhouse matches, not any other matches. You give people a reason to care about stuff, they’ll be more interested, and that’s one thing no one can take away from AE when talking about it. People cared about Rock, Austin, Angle, Kane, and Taker, as well as Crash Holly, APA, Too Cool, and Lita. You can not at all say that about the current era, and I’d say that’s easily been the case for more the 10 years.

Only thing I'll give the subsequent eras is the wrestling has been vastly better.

But from a character and entertainment standpoint, as much fukkery as there was with the Attitude Era, no prior or subsequent era compares.

 

[puppetmaster]

Playoff NFL or Basketball like atmosphere. Especially if you were lucky enough to attend a live show.

 

[8WON6]

people just enjoyed it. Nobody was sitting around talking about ratings or picking a side.

 

[FTBS]

I was in high school. I had kinda gotten to the point where I was growing out of it. It didn't have the same appeal. Then all of a sudden you had profanity, sex, and more extreme violence, and I was back on board . For people in my age group it was kinda like wrestling grew up with you.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

I wish every wrestling fan got to experience the Monday night war era. It’ll never be anything like it again. It was the peak of wrestling. I stopped watching once that era was over.

 

[THE 101]

The thing I particularly remember was how it always felt like anything could happen, particularly on PPV. There was just a sense of total unpredictablility.

Especially on PPV main events. There was pretty much an expectation that something major would happen.

Now it wasn't always great but you always felt like something might happen which gave the big matches real tension.

Now in WWE you'd be lucky to two or three memorable things a year. The expectation is that nothing will happen. You have to go through 3, 4, 5 PPVs with the same programme.

The attitude era had an energy that made me at least think I wasn't wasting my time. Yeah there might be trash bullshyt like Moolah and Mae Young and Meat and all that nonsense but I would know at some point in the night some fukkery would go down with Austin, Rock, McMahon, Foley etc

 

[Ill-Yaz]

It was just a great era

The only era where literally everyone was involved in some sort of storylines

Loudest pops in history

The organic rise of HHH as a mainevent player

Unpredictable, must watch TV

The only era challenging it is probably the Ruthless Aggression Era