The Attitude Era(1997-2002):
Stone Cold Steve Austin, having won the King of the Ring,1996, delivers the thrilling and now iconic ‘3:16’ speech.
Mr. McMahon cuts a backstage promo explaining the course WWF is going to take and officially initiates the Attitude Era on live television.
Rising from the dregs of Jim Crockett Promotions, World Championship Wrestling (WCW), helmed by the brilliant Eric Bischoff, began outclassing WWF in a ratings war. With a host of successful creative decisions such as the introduction of Monday Nitro to cable television, hiring of former WWF main eventers and the game-changing formation of the NWO, WCW made WWF sit up and take notice of its antiquated programming policies. This led to an event dubbed the “Monday Night Wars”, as Vince McMohan, in a bid to stay afloat, began to drift from WWF’s family oriented mainstream content and adopt an edgier outlook towards packaging the product. In a booking style called Crash-TV, WWF assumed a violent, grittier and more dramatic character which began to appeal to the young adult demographic. After a lengthy tussle, the odds turned in Vince’s favour particularly with the rise of Stone Cold’s anti-hero, anti-authority gimmick which spiked television ratings and resuscitated the fading WWF from television squalor.
Stone Cold Steve Austin, a former WCW and ECW wrestler, had broken onto the scene as Ted DiBiase’s Million Dollar Champion, “The Ringmaster”. Sporting a buzz cut and clean shaven face, Austin cut a promo where his thick, intimidating voice seemed to sit in the wrong physical form. Austin went on to shave his head and grow a goatee, thus laying stones for the Stone Cold character, which was to take full flight at King of the Ring 1996. Having gotten rid of DiBiase, Austin began to chart out on his own. His opponent in the final round of the King of the Ring tournament, Jake the Snake, had sustained an injury during the previous round at the hands of Vader. This led to the initially well-booked match to be cut short and Austin was handed the win. When led to the literal throne in the middle of the ring, Austin cut a blistering promo deriding the Bible preacher gimmick of Jake the Snake and shooting one of the Attitude Era’s most iconic catchphrases in “Austin 3:16”.
There were many things done right with Austin’s brilliant promo. The brashness coming from a relative newcomer had animated the arena. Built into his brawler character, the promo ridiculed Jake the Snake as a has-been whose religious invocations and “Bible thumping” fell short of seeing him through. Blatantly proclaiming his dominance, Austin overturned the biblical trope of a prophet into his stead, declaiming that “Austin 3:16 says I just whooped your ass”. The humour and crudeness stuck well with the fans and Austin’s catchphrase became the most marketable element in WWF’s stable.
The character had evolved into deadlier proportions by the next few months. Most of Stone Cold’s 1997-1998 run saw him engage in a feud with Bret Hart, culminating in a major face turn for the Rattlesnake at Wrestlemania 13 after passing out from a sharpshooter by not submitting to it. His first major face turn, this would go on to have audiences root for him especially when he took on the malicious character of Mr. McMahon post the Montreal Screwjob. A characteristic of the Attitude Era was the thin line between traditionally accepted notions of good and bad. No one embodied it more than Stone Cold whose disdain for authority and rules, particularly those helmed by Mr. McMahon, elicited some of the most resounding support from fans.
Replete with engaging storylines told more through backstage segments than in ring action, the Attitude Era saw its official inauguration on an episode of Monday Night Raw on March 10, 1997. Believing that a product capable of dismantling WCW has been created, Vince cut a backstage promo on the December 15, 1997 edition of Raw, officially declaring the onset of the Attitude Era and delineating everything that fans can expect from such a creative decision. He talked about a need to escape the confines of a wrestling ring and present viewers with a product hinging on entertainment more and sports less. There were radical changes in every facet of WWF production, from the vignettes to the storylines to the expected audience demographic.
In a decade whose cultural ethos promulgated action as the most convincing element of storytelling, particularly with the rise of the short video format and an exploration of previously untouched moral conditions to bring novelty to the entertainment industry, the WWF could not be far behind. Seeing both WCW and ECW incorporate these in their matches and characters, the company appropriated it, only to be backed with better finances and more breakout stars. The Attitude Era was a byproduct of the MTV Generation as much as it was the WCW-WWF rivalry. Eventually, Vince would bring to fruition the “cure for a common show” and “sports entertainment” became a pop-cultural extravaganza.
A WWE Hall of Famer called out AEW fans HERE
