I can only paritally agree to it being the golden era, I'm a long time fan and I must say what it was missing was good matches and meaningful fueds in the mid to undercard, so what I would add would be the talent misused during that time, examples include first and foremost:
Owen Hart that sole survivor angle was his shot at a main event role, and he should have had a title run, the crowd was behind him and he had BEEN over, but also he didn't even get a PPV match with HBK, now alot of that is timing, but I would have rather seen him vs HBK at the '98 Rumble rather than the casket match, don't get me wrong HIAC was a classic but they just saw dollar signs in that rematch and used it to escalate the kane fued but in retrospect HBK vs Owen would've been more meaningful, instead they had a pretty good Raw match in I think December 97, what would be Shawn's last Raw match until his return in 2002, the first one back being vs RVD the only time they ever met BTW, but anyway after that shawn dropped the title to austin at wrestlemania which was the best move and Owen lost to HHH in a bs lowblow loss, that fued was meant to elevate HHH and I guess it did but Owen lost his momentum and never regained it and HHH fucked the bosses daughter and is a 12 time champion more proof that life isn't fair.
Austin -vs- Ken Shamrock, that would've been a nice PPV match, I think they had a tv match but again we real fans like to be thrown a bone every once in a while and yeah austin/mchmahon was entertaining and it drew but austin's reigns are lacking in just good defenses without the damn shenanigans, I mean seriously first reign -vs-:, foley twice, good good, loses to kane in a first blood good idea, fucking awesome matchup for that time as kane had pinned the undertaker, wins it back the next night on raw and the fans were fucking feeling it for that one!, defends against taker at summerslam, loses to taker and kane at breakdown, those first two reigns had plenty of shenanigans but plenty of logical good matchups with good results, he didn't get the title back until WM15 there's a big gap there and alot of shenanigans and everything centered around mchmahon and godamn it, it gets stale but the ratings are up look I'm just saying more opponents would have been nice such as ken shamrock, this is why wrestlers at the end of their careers say Man I would've liked to have worked a program with..... we need more matches you can still keep the shenanigans but damn it we need more classic matches.
a better push for D-lo or X-pac: these two had great matches with each other and others and were over, D-lo was never the same after he injured droz and X-pac was always seen as a faction guy or a tag guy which he did well most of the time as a tag guy, particularly with kane, but I think that in this attitude era where the devaluing of titles REALLY began(I am eluding to mark madden's column look at the WWF and Ic title history from '97-'99) Xpac would have been an obvious choice for an IC title run, rather than the godfather, goldust('99 run '96 was good), and even jeff jarrett's 99 runs, that time period ended the golden age of the intercontental title(tito, valentine, rude, henning, hart, bulldog, hbk, razor), but a guy like X-pac or hell even a longer than 1 day run at that time would've done wonders for the mid to undercard just that alone would've justified the ridiculous storylines going on for the lower guys at the time, well maybe not val venis and his choppy choppy incident...
Jeff Jarrett, returns to the wwf in late '97, does some worked shoot interviews, which were always cool during that era, I mean the roots of Stone cold were in those types of interviews not only in ecw but in late '97 in the wwf if anyone has any of those they would be cool to see, but anywho back to JJ, then he started doing this "the NWA is the oldest title, and it's actually not the WCW's title" thing with cornette and they make a faction, just what the company needed at the time, calling themselves the NWA(almost like TNA foreshadowing eh?), ya know before that I think JJ had his one shot at the WWF's upper tier much like Owen, and after that he wained around for a while before teaming with Owen and having a boring IC title run and a boring fued with Chyna, double J I'm just saying, I'm just saying
AL Muthufuckin' snow, man he was over like rover, and he just got lost in bad angles and what have you, godamn it if foley could be an intellegent misfit who had good matches and got a good push, why the hell couldn't Al? He lost his steam with the bs walmart action figure controversy, and I don't know why anyone thought turning him heel was the answer.
Now for a hypothetical addition, the return of Hall and Nash, the NWO got stale with so many members etc. had Hall and Nash jumped back the possibilities are endless, either one or both of them fueding with and/or wrestling, austin, rock, HHH/DX, Taker and/or Kane... ooh I like that one, Foley, yeah I would've love to have seen that in '99 rather than the bullshit WCW was doing with them at the time
the big show's '99 debut, cool fucking debut, good match with austin on raw, alot of lost momentum for a while after WM15, face turn joined the union another stupid faction another stupid mchmahon "sports entertainment" waste of time a fucking shenanigans match with the undertaker, talk about anticlimactic, c'mon russo! you talk about entertainment, a baseball bat, then the revenge is a chokeslam, why do you need fucking gimmicks for a giant and the prince of fucking darkness?! at that time that match was a dream match, what a waste
I could go on and on but in summary what was missing was any long term planning for anyone in this new "sports entertainment" attitude era, it's been said many times russos contribution to the business were a double edged sword the backstage camera, and storylines for everyone, including the lower and mid card, good, no continuity and too many twists etc. bad, you see to me the attitude era ended somewhere in the year 2000, in the attitude era the main event fueds were combinations of austin/ mchmahon, and the Rock, HHH, Taker, and Foley, they just took turns, I'm still glad foley got one, but that's not the poin the point is, austin eventually had to retire, foley did too, Rock went to hollywood, and none of those mid card guys made it to the next level what moved the wwe into the future was what happened in 2000-2004 a return to good wrestling from the bottom up and I think Heyman had alot to do with the bookings,creative etc no commercials during matches, longer main events, I mean just really doing what was right about ECW toward the end of it's run and WCW in the early to mid 90's making it exciting, actually being more about competition and good matches and matchups , the hardyz, edge and christian, the dudleyz, Benoit, Jericho, Guerrero, Angle, Mysterio jumping over, Rob-Van-Dam, etc., as well as newcomers Lesnar, Cena, Batista, and Orton arriving, before during and after WWE got the WCW and ECW's talent and expanded to 2 and three brands, now the upper and upper mid card got some badass opponents and programs, HHH, Taker, Kane, the Big Show left over from the attitude era could attest to that,and now we still saw the good from the attitude era with this new surge of good workrate i.e. backstage camera, storylines for everyone, but they were building fueds for badass angle-vs-mysterio matches and angle still got to act like an idiot while being a stellar in ring performer, but to be fair to the attitude era you could say the same thing about stars not ever realizing their full potential in other eras like the hogan era here are some examples
Jake Roberts
Roddy Piper
the Junkyard Dog
Andre the Giant
Mr Perfect
The British Bulldog
Hacksaw Jim Duggan
all guys who never won the big one, the only difference however is that hogan was wearin a belt that meant something and was hard to win, but alot of if not all of these guys had good programs for that title or at least the IC title that were well executed and meant something, and the tag division was the same way and they didn't have backstage cameras but they built people up logically and effectively and damnit just about everyone was over, the lower card guys got a better pop then than alot of upper mid card guys do today, because the fans were at least invested in the characters, I mean the rougeaus were pretty damn good at what they did but I'd say are maybe not on the top 10 tag teams of the 80's, but damnit they were allowed to properly develop their personas and angles, and the wwe just used their template for la resistance to some degree and just tossed it back out, pretty damn soon after, when the attitude era ended and the next one began, only to be succeded by the ultra sports entertainment/ neo monster era, they could have actually just fired the entire under to mid card and replaced them with the afore mentioned new hires all at the same time, that is truly a testament to the massive waste of talent of that era.
and one last sidebar any given champion could have had a reign like Shawn Micheals' first reign and it would've been great:
-vs-diesel (in Your House Good Friends Better Enemies) pretty damn cool match cool spots nice ending
-vs-Bulldog (IYH beware of Dog) mostly a buildup for the next PPV
-vs-Bulldog(King of the Ring '96) man that is a solid match their best together, one of either of their best respectively massively underrated and forgotten
w/Sid and ahmed-vs-Vader, bulldog and Owen(IYH international inciden) eh... what can I say i never saw it how good could it be mostly next PPV buildup
-vs- Vader( Summerslam '96) pretty cool match nice offense good transitions good big man -vs- little man one botched spot, shenanigans and cornette, still good summerslam main event
-vs- mankind(IYH mind games) very nice pairing especially the timing, foley had beaten taker micheals was the unbeatable underdog champion, mankind was the unpredictable monsterish type, it's a match you don't think you're gonna get to see but here you are watching it, good mix of styles both offensively and psychology wise,cool worked shoot spot, very believable stiff looking offense, creative, surprising table spot, good timing and location(philidelphia 96' months after foley left ecw) the ONLY downside was the non finish shenanigans every title run, every year in wrestling no matter what era or organization needs a match like this, fuck the storylines or the politics of who should go over or who may end up getting cheered or outshining who, throw the fans a fucking bone, another example of a match we never saw that could have been like this in the day would have been Hulk Hogan -vs- Jake Roberts in I think '87 or '88 for the title, I would prefer '90 but either way that would have been very unique and memorable but they tested in a segment where jake ddt'd hogan but the crowd chanted ddt, it's talked about on the jake dvd, but ne who seriously is it only about money, damn it?! what a little bitch move to scrap that idea
-vs-Sid ( survivor series '96) even against Sid not too bad
any damn title reign like this would be nice, benoit having one like this would've been just super, hell cena had one but damn it the one time we get it and it has to be him, no offense I'm not alltogether a cena hater but he is what he is and he is coming along in this workrate fan's opinion, and has had some really good ones such as vs umaga at the royal rumble '07 for instance, but damnit he never dropped the damn belt because he got injured, after all of that damn time, 13 months and all steam lost nobody gets the big rub by ending the run and he's fucking gone for 4 months only to return and disrupt the rumbleby being the surprise entrant, 30 winning and in the process nullifying the mystique and legacy of the undertaker's win the year before having at that time been the only one who had done it, there's just no long term planning anymore, every since eddy guerrero's death the title picture has been a mess on both brands I'm not saying curse or any stupid shit like that I'm just saying for one, steroids, long term plans are scrapped when surprise! champion or potential champion is injures when a muscle rips off the bone or something(guerrero scheduled to win title from batisa? dies, batista injured, forfeits, angle/rey,/booker fill in, batista returns wins, taker wins, injured edge uses money in the bank he got after kennedy was injured(wtf?!), edge injured pec flies off of arm, Khali wins battle royal, and I'm like my god was it too much too ask for to ever see a significant taker reign?/batista dun de duh dun hero win/ fill in/ edge wins,oh but all of that was a fill in, undertaker gets it back finally,edge wins(taker's knee this time), cm punk use money in the bank(jeff was supposed to win failed a drug test) to win(orton ends punk with a punt fued never materializes wtf?!),jericho/batista/jericho fill in, cena and that's just that title they better hurry up and do something before cena gets injured but that's okay if that happens edge can just babysit the belt until cena gets better making edge a fucking 8 time champion... I'm serious, after all of these words I gotta say I'm just saying.......fuck! I miss matches and title matches
they are not the one person. and what do you mean by they? Racist.
