Attitude Era

My favorite, most memorable pro wrestling moments from when I was a kid are the one where I was shocked and awed by what I was seeing. I don’t remember any singular thing about the Ultimate Warrior, other than he seemed to run around alot and never really made much sense, but I can name you 20 things I recall seeing Jake “The Snake” Roberts or the Fabulous Freebirds do. Reason being, they walked along the edge, and it entertained me to no end. I vividly remember the Four Horsemen breaking Dusty Rhodes’ arm. I remember Barry Windham’s heel turn on Lex Luger during an awesome tag match against Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard in 1988, and I will never forget one of Jake Roberts’ snakes latching on to the arm of Randy Savage and not letting go.

Competition breeds growth. This has certainly been the case with the National Football League and Major League Baseball, as their respective sports have never been bigger. The same idea holds true with Professional Wrestling, but ever since Vinnie Mac delivered the deathblow to WCW, WWE has been essentially the only game in town. Zero disrespect is intended towards TNA, as I regularly find their programming to be superior to that of WWE’s, and much respect to Ring of Honor for becoming the de facto #3 promotion in the United States, but they’re nothing even close to competition for WWE, not in terms of dollars and cents at least. Because of this, I fully believe WWE rests on their laurels, play it safe, and while they hit plenty of singles and doubles, they rarely hit the big home run.

How much different would the history of WWE look had there never been “Stone Cold” Steve Austin?