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#4 No Attitude Era? (1998)
While in 1997 there was the birth of D-Generation X, the Montreal Screwjob and more middle fingers from Stone Cold Steve Austin than you can shake a stick at, there’s little doubt that the Attitude Era really blossomed in 1998.
What if, though, it never did? What if the boom period that had so steadily been building and threatening to explode during 1997, actually dissipated into nothing more than a memory? Well, all that might well have been reality had Austin not been successful in the 1998 Royal Rumble match.
In what was his second successive victory in the marathon, mass brawl of a contest, the Texas Rattlesnake punched his ticket to Wrestlemania where he went on to beat Shawn Michaels for the then WWF title, and well and truly get the Austin era underway. But what if he had fallen at the Rumble? What if Mark Henry, The Rock or Mick Foley – who wrestled as Cactus Jack, Dude Love and Mankind at different stages of the match – had gone on to taste victory in San Jose?
The landscape of professional wrestling would have looked very, very different indeed.
