Attitude Era WWE

Professional wrestling soared to an all time high in terms of popularity across the world in the mid 90s as the business was totally revolutionized to what was to be known as the greatest time period in the whole of Pro wrestling, the Attitude Era.

Any wrestling fan will know that the attitude era was most prominent in the World Wrestling Federation however what most people do not know is it was not created in the WWF. Extreme Championship Wrestling was the third biggest company at the time and it was this company which gave birth to attitude in wrestling. Paul Heyman, the mind behind ECW, wanted to get away from traditional wrestling and really change everyone’s view on how wrestling should be so he built a company which anything goes, it was up in your face and wrestlers were very creative.

I am not saying by any means that Vince McMahon attempted to steal this from Paul Heyman but what I am saying is Heyman made such a huge noise with how he was running ECW that the biggest wrestling company in the world went for the same concept, the only difference being the WWF could do it on a national level. ECW also brought in some of the best wrestlers and brought Lucha libre to the USA as well as having such a hardcore base.

By 1995 a Monday Night war was ongoing in the wrestling world between the two biggest companies at the time, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and World Wrestling Federation (WWF). A ratings war meant both organisations were doing everything possible to attract viewers inevitably resulting in “The Attitude Era”. Soon WCW were on top and won the ratings war for 83 consecutive weeks. Both companies hit hard with attitude bringing some of the most entertaining television in history, in the WWF we saw the formation of DX as well as the rise of stars such as Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock.

Stone Cold Steve Austin is everything the attitude era stood for in your face, hard action and the kind of mic skills very few could ever possess. With his middle fingers in the face of his own boss Vince McMahon, Steve Austin was an anti-hero everyone loved, a total disregard for tradition made him the main attraction of the WWF. A beer drinking, bald-headed, tough SOB made history by being one of the most popular wrestlers ever to grace this earth and anytime we here that shattering glass it is sure to send shivers up the spine of us all as we think of “The Rattlesnake”

The relevance of all this is that WWE is lacking attitude these days one of the main reasons being they went without any competition for such a long time they got lazy and don’t produce they same quality they did then. A PG rating on WWE also means it is being pointed towards little kids and has became somewhat bring. With the exception of CM Punk lat year, no real attitude has been shown by WWE for a long time. Wrestling is becoming less popular as well due to this and numbers are getting lower. WWE has even lost a huge amount of money as at the 3rd Quarter of 2011 they had lost over 100 million dollars. If there is not a change in WWE business is going to get worse, they have no cruiserweight title which is a big loss, no hardcore style another big loss and much more simple things that could turn the company around but sadly none of this seems to be and it won’t take long to go out of business if they are losing over 100 million dollars each quarter without a change could this be the end of WWE?