I don’t know. I find I enjoy AEW quite a lot. It’s stuff like AEW, the old NXT, and the women’s revolution that kind of got me back into wrestling in more recent times while before all I really cared about was Japan (particularly women’s wrestling) and the Attitude era WWF - especially the latter half from late 99 to early 2002.
WARNING, Rant :)
I watched the Attitude era in full a few years ago on the WWE Network, minus Heat (which was a shame), and I found the first half (late 1997 to about late 1999) to be rough to get through. Don’t get me wrong, The Brood, Shane’s antics, Foley, Austin, and The Rock we’re all great, but it’s the other 85% of the content that I wasn’t into. Triple H became super entertaining in 1999, and the whole McMahon Helmsley regime was a giant shot of interesting stuff compared to the Corporation and Ministry - which I couldn’t get into “It was me Austin, It was me all along!” Is treated like this whole big decisive moment in WWE memories of the Attitude era, but when it originally happened it was a big anti-climactic “Uh, what?” - and going back to it in context, it’s about the same. Worse, nothing came of it. The storyline just ended cold stop.
Some of the disgusting Big Boss Man stuff, like feeding Al Snow his dog was actually a highlight, and so was the pee-pee choppy choppy. All that low brow stuff, I know people hated that stuff, but I found it entertaining; especially compared to most of the content. But the product became SO much more coherent between about Terri Runnels contract (E&C vs Hardyz) and Royal Rumble - IMO, the match with Foley vs Triple H was the best he did in WWE (at least). In 2000, especially by the later Spring, I was enjoying the whole show of any given RAW or Smackdown. Although, that period was a lot shorter in reality than it was in my memory. What was no more than a few months takes up something like the equivalent of 3-4 years in my memory (when compared to other periods of wrestling). The “Who ran down Austin?” story was massive, even if the conclusion left a little to be desired. As much as people hated Biker Taker in retrospect, I thought the character was substantially more interesting than Magical Ministry Undertaker - to each his own. And perhaps the Alliance storyline fell a little short given that it flipped so much on its head at once, but it was a lot of fun going back, and IMO this deranged heel Austin was way more fun than 98-99 Austin. While 2001 IMO wasn’t as good as 2000, it was still great (IMO). But after the whole “Get the F Out” I found the show declined in storytelling, even if the wrestling slept improving. IMO, NXT was on a whole different level, the women - who were a side show in the Attitude era, were putting on matches with better moves and better storytelling than they were in the Attitude era and subsequent years.
Why I like AEW? It’s not quite the Attitude era and it’s not quite classic NXT, but it’s the closest thing to a combination of the two I’ve ever seen.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
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