WWE Hall of Famer criticizes the Attitude Era in interview
In a recent interview with AlternativeNation.net, WWE Hall of Famer Edge, who made his debut for WWF during the Attitude Era in 1998, criticized certain aspects of the Attitude Era. He also gave his thoughts on his best friend Christian's WWE Future - whether he should retire or not, discussed the effects of Chair shots in pro-wrestling and the concussions suffered & more.
Here are the key points that were discussed:
On Christian possibly retiring:
Well he’s my best friend, so I know what’s going on with him more than anybody else. But he’s at that kind of point where you sit back and look and go, okay I’m definitely closer to the end of my career than the beginning. After awhile your body just starts telling you, this is a difficult job to do. When you’re in your 20’s and you think you’re indestructible, you can bounce back, but it gets harder when you start climbing into your 40’s.
On the Attitude Era:
I do think what’s been good, people are always talking about the Attitude Era, and all of this and all of that, but if you watch back, sometimes the matches weren’t that great because we had 2 minutes. It’s not possible to have a good wrestling match in 2 minutes, you can’t tell a story, you can tell a haiku.
Since the PG era, I know when I was in matches, I had half an hour sometimes, 20 minutes, there I can tell a story. To me that’s the meat and potatoes of the whole thing, it all boils down to the wrestling at the end of the day. The Attitude Era was a lot about the hijinks backstage, and the matches kind of got forgotten about.
It’s looked at with rose colored glasses because the ratings were good, and it was working for obvious reasons, but to me those obvious reasons were characters like Stone Cold, who would then get in and have a long match at a PPV. Characters like The Rock who would be entertaining, but still at the end of the day, they could go. I think now, you need a little bit of both.
On Chair Shots to the head:
Well, I think the chair shots being gone is definitely a good thing. Especially as we learn more and more about concussions thanks to guys like Chris Nowinski kind of spearheading it. There can’t be that any more, there just can’t. When you have football players shooting themselves in the chest, and the brain can be examined, because they’re acting erratically, and they know it’s because of CTE, you have to erase those things, whether people like it or not.
If people complain about that, then they need to take one, because it just doesn’t make sense. So in that aspect, I don’t think you need to go back to that, because it’s just stupid, especially with the knowledge we have now.