The Attitude era, especially in retrospect, was such a catch-22 for the pro wrestling industry. On one hand, the competition within the business fueled the engine that propelled the genre into pop culture, a position that it hadn't been for almost a decade by that point, and a spot that didn't seem obtainable just a few years earlier when a laundry list of cartoonish gimmicks were featured in an attempt to reshape the image of the sport after the steroid scandal of the early-90s.
Yes, competition, as it is within any business, is the key. Eric Bischoff recruited former WWF stars to Nitro, and that along with the combination of a stellar under card of cruiser weight talent took Nitro to the position of the highest rated show on cable television in 1997. With Vince McMahon on the ropes for the first time in his life (certainly not the last as we've seen in the past few years), he refused to do the job for Uncle Sam, but media mogul, Ted Turner's "pro rasslin" took a firm lead ahead of the third generation promoter.
As a result, Vince pushed the envelope to keep pace with Turner's product, and ultimately, took the on-screen drama further than Time Warner's Standards and Practices department would allow so the tide turned in Raw's favor. When Mike Tyson was banned from boxing for legitimately biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear in 1997, the WWF had a scripted place for him on the USA network in 1998. Stone Cold and Iron Mike getting into a scuffle on live television was one of the most memorable moments in the history of the sport. You couldn't see Tyson on boxing pay-per-view for nearly two years, but he had a place at Wrestlemania in 1998. Vince ponying up the cash to land the controversial former heavyweight champion wouldn't have been on the table unless the New World Order put pressure on McMahon.
That's the upside of competition, it pushes each promotion to offer the best that they have or they get left in the dust.
On the other hand, when the WWF and WCW traded punches every week in an attempt to get the better of the ratings war, there was too much of a focus on a single week rather than the big picture. The hotshot approach burned the candle at both ends, and you can only do that for so long until it fizzles out. The competition of the late-90s produced some of the best pro wrestling television of all time. The flip side of that is that in hindsight, some of it was absolute drek that doesn't hold up today. More importantly, the opportunity cost for the moments of that era was that the hotshot approach always eventually leads to a down period just as long, if not longer than the initial hot streak. The casualties of the Monday night war saw WCW go from its previously mentioned spot at the top of the cable charts in 1997 to out of business three years later. ECW was too big to be small and too small to be big so it crumbled until the pressure of the industry. The WWF won the war, but eventually the WWE floundered through years of stale content and a state of complacency.
That's not to say that the hotshot approach can't be an effective booking tactic, it can, when done in a careful manner.
While the Attitude era overdid it with that philosophy, one of the trademarks of that era, because the office tried to prevent the audience from channel surfing, was that many of the narratives of a bigger picture played out within the context of a specific episode. By nature, that necessitates a faster pace to the program since all of the dots have to be connected for the payoff before the show goes off the air.
That's why the Jaida Parker angle from last week on Raw might be a segment that management should take note of going forward.
As we know, the Bloodline angle had a lot of steam to it a few years ago, but the storyline ran its course and got to the point of being very tedious. The fact that Jacob Fatu vs. Roman Reigns was a carbon copy of Jey Uso vs. Reigns from years earlier is proof that the writing team is trying to stretch out the storyline when there simply isn't anything left to be done. The majority of The Bloodline faction has a "been there, done that" atmosphere to the segments, mostly because they have been there and done that within the WWE landscape.
The only way to add some type of variety to the faction was to bring in some new faces, but not through additions to the group, we've already seen Samoans added and subtracted across WWE programming so to throw someone new into the faction without a firm purpose would see them flounder. That's why it's best for Zilla Fatu, the son of the late Umaga, to get a chance to establish himself in NXT. The other option is to add new performers for The Bloodline to work with, which is why the Royce Keys faction was brought to Raw. Sure, it was a very deliberate maneuver since Keys had been off the radar for the most part so the group was more or less shoehorned onto the scene, but considering the circumstances of The Bloodline desperately needing something new to work with, it's understandable. Plus, Keys and his crew were given credibility and made to look legitimate so it gives the audience a reason to stay tuned for the storyline as it evolves going forward.
Jaida, who was rumored to be involved with Jey Uso in real life, showed up at the beginning of Raw, claiming that she was there to talk to the General Manager, Adam Pearce. The tension between The Bloodline and the Keys group boiled until a confrontation at the end of the show when there was a brawl between the two stables. The stunt double in place of Jacob Fatu took a tremendous bump on the hood of the car as it jolted into view. Parker gets out of the car and looks concerned until it was revealed that she was aligned with Keys all along.
Ironically, this was literally a case of crash TV, but the point is, there are rarely times in the modern era that a specific edition of WWE television is directly episodic within the span of one broadcast. Yes, I understand that you can't throw everything against the wall every week, that's the lesson to take away from the Attitude era, but in this scenario, it worked very well to build to the reveal at the end of the night and it leaves somewhat of a cliffhanger for next week, which is also a rarity in the modern era.
If I had to guess, I'd say that the copy and paste format of most of the modern WWE programming is an unintentional pitfall of the sheer amount of content that the company produces each week. The WWE is a well-oiled machine that churns out countless hours of programming to collect the massive amount of cash from the media rights deals. It's much easier to stack segments on a run sheet each week and then rinse and repeat to keep everything steady. The difference is that a decade ago, you could skip Raw for weeks without actually missing anything of importance, but thankfully, the week-to-week programming is more focused toward progressing the narrative now. Still, it will be interesting to see if the Jaida Parker segment opens the door for a more fast-paced show in the next week months.
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