Will the WWE Ever Have Another 2000?

[Emmet]

Currently re-watching all the RAW and Smackdown episodes from the year 2000 and god almighty the depth and strength to the roster is unbelievable.

Most of us know that the year 2000 was the pinnacle of the AE, were quite literally everything fell into place, even without Austin for most of the year and Undertaker for half of the year.

There was a returned focus to wrestling and with the arrival of the Radicalz the mid card was outrageously strong.

It's arguable to say that 2000 was the best year that Vince has ever had, my question is, can WWE even come close to being that good again, let alone topping it?

 

[Goldie]

To do this the WWE will need an absolute mega star.
From past WWE wrestlers I'd only put Hogan, Austin, Rock on this pedestal (Bruno to a lesser extent but that was the pre-expansion era).

In the Attitude era we were lucky to have 2 of these megastars on the roster at the same time, namely Austin and Rock.
Whilst Austin was injured for a large chunk of the year, he had been responsible for building the WWE product with a mainstream audience in 1998 and 1999. By 2000.... the WWE had already got there..... wrestling had become cool again.

The die hard wrestling fans tend to remain loyal..... when wrestling has a boom period, the casual audience (who might come and go) suddenly pay attention and watch the product... ratings hit the roof, merchandise is crazy and there is a real buzz with the product. As you say Emmet.... everything else seems to fall into place, where the midcarders seemed interesting.
Hogan, Austin, Rock all had that special charisma to connect with a mainstream audience and draw casual fans to product.

Whilst guys like Cena, Undertaker, Shawn, Bret are (or were) very popular wrestlers.... Hogan, Rock and Austin were on another level.
For another boom period, wrestling needs a new superstar to make wrestling cool to the masses again.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

2000 had the best business, but for me 1997 was the peak of the WWF. I liked the untamed Austin and Bret's heel character (their run together was astounding). Undertaker, Shawn, Foley and the Road Warriors were players, DX was born, Owen was still with us, Kane was never again as interesting. The only complaint is that The Rock was still at IC level and his character wasn't fully developed.

 

[MrTDG]

I think they can if they get out of their own way. You can never predict when a game changing character like The Rock or Stone Cold Steve Austin is going to come along, but it seems that when the WWE has the potential for one, they piss it away. It seems that after the Summer of Punk in 2011, they did everything they could they cool Punk off a bit. I'm not going into great detail with it, but I think most would agree that they dropped the ball after Summer Slam 2011.

Bray Wyatt and Roman Reigns are other guys they've dropped the ball with. They gave Reigns the super man push and Wyatt is just some rambling weirdo now. Wyatt needs to do something drastic, akin to Jake putting the cobra on the Macho Man. It has to be something that sends the message to the audience that this is a man that is to be feared. That hasn't happened yet.

They WWE has enough talent to pull it off. Nothing on the level of what they had in 2000, top to bottom, but there is plenty of talent at their disposal.

 

[yourdamnluck]

even with reigns & bryan out and jerico, lesner & orton as part timers the depth of roster is may be more than 2000 what we don't have is a couple of trash talkers only 3 people can talk currently lana, heyman & wyat.
may be even mizdow if he is allowed......back then all of the guys and even divas were good talkers and two awesome trash talkers we'll never see as full timers again..........
Plus they were allowed to go nuts out there.......

 

[THTRobtaylor]

While there was depth in the roster, 2000 wasn't a "perfect year" by any stretch, there was a lot of filler and guys who had no place on the roster filling space, it was also a period right before an "oil change" of talent when the WCW guys came in and the OVW class of 02... and a lot of those guys around in 2000 were jettisoned off. Same thing happened in 87-88. After Mania 3 a lot of the "banner year" talent were let go and replaced.

We've already seen the closest we will get in 2011, when you had a strong overall roster, The Rock returning and a lower card who were better than their position on the show. We've now had that "oil change" again with Wyatt, The Shield and the other NXT graduates, with a final infusion still to come akin to the OVW class that had Brock/Cena etc.

If the cycle holds true, you're not getting another Banner year for a good 3-5 years...