Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDon
Prior to the CM Punk storyline WWE has been stale for years.
The PG era has slowly strangled it, constantly declining viewing figures and PPV buys.
The Attitude era was amazing, the height of WWE, I really don't see anything WWE has done in the past few years that comes close to even the worst angles in the Attitude era.
There's a reason why the "lets go cena"/"cena sucks" chants have been changing in volume month by month, with more and more people leaving the first camp for the second. At this point he has only the women and kids left supporting him whilst the rest of the audience is completely turned off by his constant superman impressions and ****** "Cena must come out on top" booking.
(And don't get me started on smackdown where the super face Randy Orton just can't lose clean despite acting almost entirely like a heel, just goes to show face/heel is based on if you're winning or not rather than any underlying gimmick because there's no way in hell you can sell me Orton's gimmick as a face.)
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I admit to being a huge mark for the attitude era. Stone Cold, DX, all the different stables, the monday night wars, in my opinion it was the greatest 4 or 5-odd year period in the history of the business. Punk becoming almost SCSA-like in his anti-hero status, Orton still doing everything a heel would despite being a massive over face, white-meat faces (ie Cena) getting booed out of the building, it all looks like becoming more and more like those days again and you won't hear me complaining - as long as they do it right.
The original era was awesome because it was so new, so fresh, nobody had seen anything like DX before, nobody had ever assaulted Vinnce never mind give him a stunner. One thing which made it work was the boys had little or no restrictions in what they could do - it was adult orientated. They did stuff purely because they could. I remember one Raw where Ken Shamrock put HBK in an ankle-lock and Shawn was writhing about in agony but had a lolly-pop in his mouth at the time. Stuff like that was pure gold.
If we entered a similar era now unless they were allowed to go over their PG rating it'll look like they're doing stuff but 'within the rules' which kills off any credability. You could watch Raw in 1998 and think to yourself "I know this is all scripted but I'm sure THAT wasn't supposed to happen". Doing it all 'by the book' now would just look awful.
They had better push Punk to the moon given his current popularity at the moment otherwise they'll miss a huge opportunity. Let's hope HHH will try to 'control' Punk in the way Vince did with Austin.