Then vs. Now

Scott,


I’m really not enjoying WWE these days. A lot of things don’t make sense. The most popular guys in the eyes of the fans don’t seem to be the guys at the top of the card. Heels don’t act/work like heels of years gone by and are lukewarm at best.

I’m currently watching the back end of 1996 Raws/ppvs and I’m not sure if this was looked back on fondly or not, but it’s packed full of star power, pretty good wrestling & great characters.

Are we living in an era that is the most scrutinised creatively or does another era/year trump it? (I know the mid 90s gets a lot of flack, but at least there was competition around that pushed the WWF to improve)

Cheers Scott & keep pumping out great content!

​You’d have to be watching the extreme back end of 1996 WWF, like November onwards, because I can tell you from personal experience at the time and ​doing these Network rants that the product was total horseshit up until the HHH-Mero-Perfect angle and Bret Hart’s return turned the product around from a quality standpoint.

As for the most scrutinized era, I don’t think so, mostly because the audience has become largely apathetic at this point. I’d say the most scrutinized was 2002 during HHH’s reign of terror, because WWE was coming off the panda lawsuit and establishing the brand split while trying to do stuff like opening Vegas hotels while still stinging from the flaming death of the XFL. That football league was a MAJOR source of embarrassment for Vince and torpedoed pretty much any good will he had with the mainstream press for many years to come.