Well, well, well. I go away for a week of collegiate activity and I return to a wrestling world without a beer swilling son of a bitch. Now if you’ve read my past columns and then take a look at the actions on Monday night, I hate to say I told you so, but… Actually, when Dave Talbert reads this he will probably laugh and say that I love telling everyone that I told them so, but that’s another story!
I just want to take a little space here and write about this Austin situation as well as what my prior and current thoughts about this whole thing are. In my column entitled “The WWE’s Problem,” I wrote the following:
”The Big Show turned on Steve Austin and joined the nWo. He claimed that it was because he was at The World while Austin was at WrestleMania or something along those lines. It was a good explanation. I liked it. However, the aftermath has been a joke. Why is The Big Show not interfering in every one of Austin’s matches? So Austin beat him at the pay per view – does that mean that the years of frustration that are built inside of The Big Show are gone now? I don’t buy that one bit. Perhaps the issue is Austin himself, since we all now know that he doesn’t particularly like jobbing to people. Hey, if there was ever a time for Vince to use that iron fist, it is now. He already lost Jeff Jarrett (an underrated talent in the WWE) to Austin’s refusal to fight him and I think we can all come to the conclusion that Scott Hall’s stay in the WWE wasn’t helped by Austin’s reluctance to put him over – so why not “give it” to Austin? He sells merchandise, he sells this, he does that, these people love him, everyone loves him – oh enough of the bullshit already! The man has a job and that job is to entertain. He was put in a situation where he could have helped a HUGE investment (The Big Show) get over as a monster heel. He refused to do it. He did this to Scott Hall and he did this to Jeff Jarrett in the past. Perhaps this rattlesnake does have venom in his bite – maybe that lethal does that McMahon talked about on Smackdown all those months ago…”
So, not to say I told you so, but hey – I saw this situation coming a mile away. Let’s be serious for a moment (sorry Lance, I had to use that phrase), I don’t think that anyone can deny the sheer impact that Attitude had on the WWE during the late 1990’s and even the first part of 2000 and 2001. However, there is a change in the world today. Personally, I think it is a result of September 11th and the atrocities of the day, but it was coming anyway. This era of Attitude that took the WWE to the top of the wrestling game and brought them to a decisive victory over the WCW was looking at its last days way before the Stone Cold situation took place. Let me dip into the Bret Hart saga for a moment.
Once upon a time there was a champion that the WWE could be proud of to represent them on international goodwill tours, in humanitarian charity events, and as an overall role-model for their then-major audience of young preteens and children. His name was Bret “The Hitman” Hart. Bret was a major player in the WWE from the early to mid-nineties and actually up until his final day with the promotion in 1997. Bringing in the steam and the prestige of the era of wrestling that saw Doink, Skinner, Isaac Yankem DDS, Who, The Goon, Bastion Booger, and other not-so-memorable characters, Bret represented an era in WWE programming that was not what the current market desired to see anymore. No matter what Bret did to change his character, he was seen as the same perennial “good guy” no matter what he did. Some of you will be quick to say “well Bret was a heel, you fool!” And I will be quick to call you on your wrestling history – Bret was indeed a heel because the perennial “good guy” became a figure worthy of scorn and contempt during the late part of the nineties.
So to avoid going over Montreal, Bret had to be removed in a not so polite manner and when he left, the final vestiges of that hokey era of wrestling were gone as well. Enter Stone Cold and Vince McMahon. From Vince’s interviews in the weeks after the Montreal incident, he became an instant heel (and one of the best in the history of wrestling) just as quickly as the anti-establishment Stone Cold started to rally fans behind the WWE and their new era of “Attitude” that saw the owner of a multi-million dollar company get the hell beat out of him from his star employee.
Fast forward to today. No more do we want to see Vince McMahon get the shit stomped out of him by Stone Cold (well…yes, we do want to see McMahon get his, but this act is five years old already). The tides in wrestling are changing, as Vince himself alluded to just last week on WWE Byte This! The tides are changing and the warm, cool, known waters of the Attitude era are float away. For those of you who are really wrestling nuts, you will be quick to note that the WWE has tried to change from the Attitude era twice before the current day. Some of you might remember a small Aggression era in the WWE that saw Triple H begin his brandishing of a sledgehammer and I think we all remember the short Desire era that took place last fall that literally had a lot of old time wrestling fans filled up with emotion as a mixture of Creed’s “My Sacrifice” and a flood of memories took over our television screens. Just as I chronicle in my column entitled “The WWE’s Problem,” both of these eras had no lasting effect on the audience because the WWE did not give them time to impact. I believe that Desire is truly the greatest loss of an era only because it was the first time that a wrestling show tried to bring out true, honest emotions from their fans that weren’t simply “Kill the bastard!” or “Rip his head off!” Desire brought with it a deeper meaning and understanding of the lives of our favorite wrestlers.
Before I go too far off track, let’s get back to Stone Cold and my prognosis that I’ve seen this coming a mile away. Yes, Vince did say the tides are turning, and yes the Attitude era is coming to an end. Shawn Michaels also made reference to this fact in a recent WWE.com interview when he stated the he didn’t need to use profanity in the ring even if he wanted to because there is no more room for that in today’s wrestling market place. The times, they are indeed a changin’. However, Steve Austin didn’t seem to want to change with these times. I really believe that the WWE knows that Austin fills the same role for Attitude that Bret Hart filled for the hokey wrestling of the mid-nineties. I also believe that the WWE knows that if Austin didn’t do something drastic to change his presence, he would quickly fall below the likes of Triple H, The Rock, and even guys like Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho and to a lesser extent, someone like Brock Lesnar. These men, while receiving most of their name recognition during the Attitude era, are not the Icon of the Attitude era as Steve Austin undoubtedly is.
My issue comes with Steve himself. What he calls bad writing, I call lost opportunity. Did Bret Hart lambaste the writers when they booked him in a feud with this no name wrestler who was known as The Ringmaster? If he did give them some hell, did he ever have the audacity to tell the writers that they sucked and then leave and go home to Calgary? I think not. Steve Austin needs to remember where he came from and who helped to put him on the map. Or else he might find himself in the same position as that very man is in right now – bitter towards and unappreciated in the organization that he helped to build and hold together.
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