WWEis in the middle of a hot streak. Fromshattering attendance recordson a consistent basis to putting on jaw-dropping matches nearly every week, the company can’t seem to lose right now. And as the “Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque Era” (or “Netflix Era,“if you ask the man himself) turns one-year-old atWrestleMania 41, the company’s current wave of momentum has started earning comparisons to the promotion’s previous golden years. The most common argument has been to compare today’s WWE to the last time it stood atop the entertainment industry inthe wild age known as the Attitude Era.
Are Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns as big as “Stone Cold” Steve Austin andThe Rockin terms of star power? Does “Yeet!” hold a candle to “Suck It!” in the pantheon of great wrestling taunts? Can we even mention TV ratings comparisons now that WWE has been paid literal billions of dollars to take its flagship show off of cable? These are the kind of debates that will rage on years from now.
But there’s one area where modern WWE can definitively pull ahead of the Attitude Era as early asWrestleMania 41,simply by targeting one of the Attitude Era’s greatest weak spots. Because, as even the most die-hard Attitude Era will admit,if there’s one thing WWE couldn’t get right during that time period,it was consistently booking WrestleMania.
All But One Of The WrestleManias From The Attitude Era Were Disappointments
For All The WWE Did Right At The Time, It Often Stumbled When Trying To Book “The Showcase of The Immortals”
For the sake of argument, let’s say the Attitude Era officially began with the “Montreal Screwjob” atSurvivor Series1997 and ended in mid-2002. Let’s look at the fiveWrestleManiasin that window of time:
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The current WWE product already has one solidWrestleManiain the bag.WrestleMania XLnot only delivered the fist-pumpingclimactic finale of Cody Rhodes finally dethroning Roman Reignsin anAvengers: Endgame-esque main event, but it managed to fill the rest of the two-night card with solid action. Of the 14 matches on the show, the only true disappointment was Jey Uso vs. Jimmy Uso. A strong follow-up atWrestleMania 41would give the “Triple H Era” two strongWrestleManiasin back-to-back years compared to the Attitude Era’s one in half a decade.
Why Is It Hard to Book A WrestleMania When The WWE Is Succeeding?
It’s Hard To Get Wrong, But Even Harder To Get Right
But let’s not be too hard on WWE’s booking from the Attitude Era. As WWE’s creative team is currently learning, trying to book the biggest show of the year when your company is on a hot streakisn’t as easy as it looks. When a wrestling promotion has a roster full of stars all generating strong emotional reactions from fans, it’s hard to book a big show poorly. Fans will be invested on some level no matter what you do. But at the same time, it’s also hard to book a big show correctly becauseyou’ll inevitably have major names left out of marquee matches.
Just look atWrestleMania 41’s current storylines. If the plan really is Cody Rhodes vs. John Cena (as rumored) and Gunther vs. Jey Uso in the main events, what’s left for Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, CM Punk, the remaining members of The Bloodline and Drew McIntyre? Even the rumor of slotting in McIntyre vs. Damian Priest was met with frustration online because it meant “The Scottish Warrior” would be nowhere near the main event scene after just completing the best year of his career.
Having bona fide stars up and down the roster was one of the reasons why the Attitude Era was so successful and why every episode ofWWE Rawfelt like a must-see event. But when it came time to book the biggest show of the year, it often felt like WWE was trying to throw as many people onto the card as possible, regardless of how much (or little) thought was put into their matches or storylines. WWE tends to be much more selective with its booking these days. Pay-per-views are shorter with fewer matches, and while championships aren’t changing hands every month, there’s at least the promise of storyline progression every time. These shows never feel obligatory, and even at their worst they never feel like a waste of time.
Barring some sort of disaster,WrestleMania 41will not make or break the “Triple H Era.” But to have a definitive victory over the era that every incarnation ofWWEhas since been compared to could be a louder statement than any broken attendance record. Let’s see if they can pull it off.
