Attitude Era Start Date / Event?

Experimental Period

Phase I: October 1990 - April 1992

Experimentally? Fall of 1990 when Warrior didn't pan out the way WWF hoped...

Way too much is made of the Sgt. Slaughter storyline, but it was very controversial within the intelligentsia. A lot of this was deliberate IMO, and it had to do with a Satanic Panic within the yuppie crust of America where they feared their kids getting on steroids because of Hulk Hogan. Though the public didn't know about Hogan's connection to Zahorian by that point, it was known that Zahorian was selling steroids to WWF superstars on the basis of testimony from William Dunn. The investigation was underway by late 1989. The idea that country club WASPs don't talk to one another is naive. DeFord employed Meltzer to do a hatchet job in the press.

What happens after that? Undertaker locks Warrior in a casket, McMahon gets knocked out by Piper with a chair in a scuffle with Flair, Roberts has Savage be biten by a COBRA on TV (!), Roberts smacks Elizabeth. Let's not forget that Warrior would spank Sherri's butt at live events, leading to Karen's walking out, then feminists protesting, as well as Berzerker trying to stab the Undertaker. WWF looked for racier, more controversial storylines, except the box office only saw marginal growth. They chose their advertisers over going further. Whole thing was abandoned

Phase II: January 1993 - 1994?
Manhattan Center Raw. Audience was much more diverse than you'd find at a standard TV taping. WWF used constitutional appeals to seemingly laugh with the SMARK audience who'd boo the faces and cheer the heels. That was a radical departure from what they used to do. It was kind of a mix of Memphis, smark heat, and a one-off form of crash TV without the meticulous telos seen in their normal syndicated packages.

Attitude Era

Phase I: October 1995 - March 1997

Goldust was the real start of the Attitude Era: homosexual, dropped lines about his "golden showers" right on syndicated TV, explicit homosexual overtures to his opponents, including simulated sexual intercourse (dry humping and pretending to blow the Undertaker). McMahon had an art for subtlety by claiming he was "androgynous" (nonbinary) and giving him a beard (Marlena). Lawler even called him a f* on live TV.

Diesel is the first main event to transition to the Attitude Era. Having started as a bodyguard trucker, he morphs into a relatable bar bro, even flipping off the Undertaker. Those were radical departures

First match to move into this era? Diesel v Bret Hart. It was the first table spot seen since 1990, when the table didn't even break. Like the rest, radical departure


Phase II: March 1997 - November 1998

Characteristics:
A) March 1997. Bonnie Hammer explicitly calls for a racier product. That was a USA Network call, not McMahon's. Raw is to be two hours, more adult-oriented, and is to merge more with the broader USA package.

B) October 1997. Cornette breaks kayfabe, McMahon declares a new direction publicly. (Hart being ousted wasn't significant to the general product direction since he was second fiddle by that point.)

C) January/March 1998. Mike Tyson is brought back in public after his controversial bite of Evander Holyfield's ear. Tyson was huge. WWF is ready to pull the gun on Austin in ways that Lauper, Ali, and Mr. T declared Hogan the cool thing in 1985. Wrestlemania does the best number since 1989. Huge success


Phase III: Corporatization: November 1998 - October 1999

A) Rock gets the title in the least convincing way possible after a year of getting beat all the time. Why?

B) Foley's draft to "Have a Nice Day" is ended. WWF banks that it's going to be a hit. Book is long, funny, very human. He's to be the corporate face of the company, open a new book market (publisher stereotype used to be that wrestling fans can't read), and they're going to put the title on him for publicity.

C) Foley wins in the least convincing way possible

D) Titles switch to and fro

E) Foley wasn't a real world champion in any sense. It was a stunt. He was clearly inferior to the pecking order and even got beat by the Outlaws. (When would a budding ace face get beat by a tag team?) But the book deal was a golden opportunity. Note that the post-script to "Have a Nice Day" was written seemingly fast, finishing with his title win.

F) This is important since it's clear that WWF made a conscious, unprecedented decision to make Rock look like a joke to Austin, so as to bolster Foley later into the year for his book tour

G) Why? Foley is well spoken, a feminist liberal, has a college degree, and was clearly close to done by that point anyway. He would be used to break the stereotype of pro wrestling being one step below a porno industry stained by accusations of drug trafficking. He was good for the company's corporate image

H) WWF magazine starts to feature myths that wrestlers play video games after shows rather than go to bars to drink "like in the Wild West days" of the industry. Stephanie McMahon is passed off as a creative writing major, which I'm sure the McMahon's confused that with majoring in literature 🤣

I) WWFE goes corporate the about a week before Foley's book is to be released

J) Most significant in all of this is WWF running the Superbowl commercial, targeting a potential pool of 100,000,000 viewers. Ratings spike. They're drawing in football fans on the basis of sex, stunts, grittier aesthetics, and ever-present campy humor. Ratings start to explode. I'm sure Superbowl regretted that decision since Fall 1999 ratings remained strong. This risky decision by WWF, given the cost, killed WCW as a brand.

K) Writers start to replace the Old Guard once Russo defects



Phase IV: Normalization: January 2000 - March 2001

A) Main hallmark of the Attitude Era is to use fillers and crash TV with expendable talents, keeping the segments short, pushing the boundaries of taste that characterized post-1992 pop culture, and to keep the budget low

With newly found success came a huge talent budget surplus. Jericho, Angle, Tazz, Radicalz start to move in, the less talented ones start to get cut

B) Though the product stayed relevant, it would also start to lose ratings. Such a style required a greater attention span. The result was arguably a much better form of television, but it meant that the more zany aspects of the Attitude Era started to be less emphasized

C) McMahon won a clause in his lawsuit against copyright infringement as it pertained to Razor Ramon and Diesel being used by Scott Hall and Kevin Nash respectively on WCW television. Turner settled. McMahon won a no-bid contract to buy WCW should the company ever be up for sale. Two points

* Goes to show that Turner executives were looking for a way out even in 1996

* Of course that striver liar Bischoff is blowing hot air about Fusient

D) Buyout happens


Phase V: Transition: March 2001/June 2001

A) Austin went heel. Fans were upset.

B) WCW and ECW were purchased

C) WWF fans didn't want to see WCW acts. WWF fans didn't know ECW acts. (Do the math. WCW was only watched by 2 million people compared to 5-6 million WWF fans. Years fly fast in wrestling. 3 years is a lot of time. Only nerds think this would have worked. ECW never had more than a million viewers on its best week. It barely ran a profit before that. It's safe to say that 70% of the audience had never heard of Rob Van Dam.)

D) WCW talent was lazy, undisciplined, entitled, unwilling to be socialized. They barely even did production. Undercard guys like Jericho remarked going home for themselves in 1998 at house shows. WWF worked from an obscene fantasy that WCW fans + WWF fans = larger WWF audience. It's a stupid form of politics. WWF fans had preferences that were mutually exclusive to WCW fans, and vice versa. Once the Invasion happened, the fans tuned out, introduced or reintroduced to new acts WWF fans didn't pay to see.

Even for someone popular like Diamond Dallas Page, who was only pushed because Bischoff was banging his wife since they're cucks, he last meant something in 1998. 3 years is a long time in wrestling. He was not hot anymore.

All of the characters bought should have been reintroduced on WWF terms

E) My view is that McMahon stopped caring. Fact is that he bought his rivals, he was corporate, they were richer than ever, and he fell into his vices unrestrained, enough so that he would be sacked from his own company for it decades later. You start to see how weird and lacking in telos WWF would become after this point. People tuned out. The product never recovered. McMahon served only to confuse himself about why WWF was successful in the first place: it's silly, campy, easy to follow, wrestling is light, bodies are huge like Roman gladiators, and it was family entertainment. Had he taken more time to reflect on the obvious, he would have readjusted instead of pandering to mentally crippled smarks obsessed with dream matches. But why would he care? He was richer than God. He was untouchable. He became part of the WASP country club for once in his life



Simply put, the Attitude Era was October 1995 to June 2001.