As stated in my last post, I’m going through the Attitude Era of WWF on Peacock, starting in 1996, to see how the most popular era in wrestling history went down.

It’s getting a bit harder to watch Raw from 1997 due to my own knowledge of the “real life” behind 1997’s WWF.  In early 1997 Bret Hart came back and started doing the best work in his career with his “heel in America, face in Canada” schtick, where he would say bad things about the USA making American fans hate him and Canadian fans love him.  In early 1997 Shawn Michaels was a pilled out rapist junkie, but who was still the company’s top draw and so had a lot of backstage pull.  This would eventually come to a head in the Montreal Screwjob.  There’s way too much to talk about with Montreal so I won’t say anything more here, but the kind of sad thing is that in the history of WWF, the Bad Guys won with respect to Montreal.

Bret Hart should have come out a winner because even though he was screwed out of his title, he went on to work for WCW for a huge load of money.  Unfortunately Goldberg ended Bret’s career with his sickeningly unsafe wrestling, and WCW folded in 2001.  Bret should have had a 10 year career worth about 25 million dollars post 1997, but he only ended up receiving about 6 million of it.

Owen Hart (Bret’s brother) was already making waves about his plan to retire young, prior to Montreal.  However less than a year later Owen died due to an in-ring stunt gone wrong.

Davie Boy Smith (Bret’s brother-in-law) was doing the best work of his career with Bret in 1997 but he, like Bret moved to WCW, and within a year his own in-ring accident would cause a spinal infection leading to a painkiller addiction which ended his life.  He was already a crack addict though, and known to be very difficult backstage by taunting and bullying other wrestlers, not exactly an angel.

Then there were the “bad guys” of this story, the people who screwed Bret out of his WWF contract, and the people who covered for WWF’s sins.

Shawn Michaels dropped the title to Steve Austin, then was taken off the air in 1998 because of his addictions.  These were already visible, as he had several spoken promos where he slurred his words and generally sounded pilled out of his mind, but he was kept on the air because he was their biggest draw.  If he had stayed retired in 1998 his career might be looked at with more venom, as a junkie and a bully who was brilliant but short lived.  He converted to Christianity in 2002 though and returned to the ring after finishing his 12-step program, and his second career has sort of washed away all memory of what he did in the 90s.

Vince McMahon managed to drive WCW out of business and become a billionaire.

HHH was Shawn’s backstage ally in WWF politics, and he married Vince’s daughter and became heir apparent of the company.

The only “good” guy who seemed to get anything good out of Montreal was The Rock (fka Rocky Maivia).  In 1996 and 1997 Rocky Maivia was a below-average midcarder, but was a solid wrestler and people realized his potential.  Shawn and HHH wanted to have Bret Hart take the Inter-continental title from Rocky, which would not only push Rocky back down the card, it would also keep Bret away from Shawn’s world title.  Bret refused because the story didn’t make sense, and instead pitched having a DQ finish, which would protect Rocky’s title.  The match ended up being scrapped, but Rocky was grateful that Bret stood up for him, and when Bret and Shawn left the company Rocky (now the Rock) had the opportunity to move into mega-stardom.  Rock never forgave Shawn for Shawn’s backstage dickery and refused to ever put Shawn over.  Now Rock is in movies so at least he got a happy ending.

Other than the backstage drama, 1997 is pretty good, Steve Austin is a joy to watch, and I feel like part of his original draw was how he was one of the first WWF wrestlers with the patented “attitude.” 1996 and was still VERY kiddy friendly, and I don’t believe the Attitude Era will officially begin until the Godwinns Henry O. and Phineas I. are off my screen. But Austin was the first one to for lack of a better term act like an adult instead of a weird PG superhero. Austin was the first I noticed swearing and flipping the bird to other wrestlers, and he always managed to find creative and funny ways to push the limits and yet still get his point across. His anger and his motives felt very “real” for their time, and contrasted sharply with most of the WWF and WCW fair of cackling cartoon villains and pristine but bland heroes Austin was great and it’s no wonder he rose to the top.