Elimination Chamber was a great show!
They've been doing 5 matches a card the past couple of years, this year they did 4 plus a segment. But holy crap I think that segment was worth it. It reminded me a little of the whole Wrestlemania season kickoff event last year. And I just wanted to note that they did it with gender parity, half men half women matches. :D It felt almost like an NXT event in that regard.
Women's half:
The women's match topped the men's IMO, and the men's was pretty great. And yeah, Liv Morgan and Bianca Belair really blew it up. But right from the beginning when Jade Cargill beat the living fuck out of Naomi it was on fire. The tag match was the weak point of the night, but only because it was the only non-gimmick match the entire show -n seeing Trish Stratus mark 1 and 2 in a match together was still fun.
Men's half:
Sami vs KO was nuts! That was probably the my favourite match of the night - it was brutal and violent, and continued the theme set by Jade Cargill at the start of the event. Sami vs KO was also kind of a weird setup, because IMO I wasn't feeling the "something bad is going down" feeling as the match started, but that kicked in within a few minutes, this was enjoyable on a similar level to Triple H vs Foley Royal Rumble 2000. The second Elimination Chamber match wasn't as exciting as the first, and I felt like Logan Paul was fodder, and that they could have had someone else in there that would have contributed more to something: LA Knight comes to mind - would have been fun to see him and Drew get into it. The segment after the match is really what made it though, I'm glad they didn't wait for some future event to do that - even if the segment was kinda like the replacement to the Rhea Ripley main event on last year's show (which was also otherwise a women's half and men's half, with one match + chamber).
On the Attitude era discussion. I loved the Attitude era, and I watched it all on the WWE network a few years ago and still loved it. It's kind of hard to judge the whole thing, because there were several phases to it.
Phase 1 - late 1997 when they started using the Attitude Era branding, and Vince's announcement of WWE's change of direction. This ran roughly from November 1997 to June/July 1998. This was still very much feeling like a mix of Attitude era and the 1990s WWF. But the entertainment Attitude Era stuff was clearly what was shining in this phase. There is a bit of overlap as Austin vs McMahon really kicked off after Wrestlemania, but it didn't quite feel like "Attitude Era proper" yet.
Phase 2 - Summer 1998 to December 1999. This was the shock TV, trash match phase. This was also the era where Foley dominated the ring and Austin-McMahon dominated the storylines, there was the Ministry, the Corporation, the rise of the Rock, the whole Mark Henry/Chyna thing. This is when entertainment segments were the main attraction, not the matches... unless it was a gimmick match featuring Foley, and sometimes some of the others like Shamrock and Owen. The end of this era began in mid-1999 with the rise of high quality wrestling, particularly in the tag division (starting with E&C vs The Hardy Boyz), the introduction of Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho (who, admittedly, was wasted a few months in a program with Chyna), and some stellar matches such as The Terri Runnels contract tag match after Edge and Christian shifted away from the whole vampire gimmick. As well, this is where the soap opera style storytelling began, starting with Stephanie McMahon and Test... and the Triple H rape segment.
Phase 3 - December 31st 2000 to Wrestlemania X7 2001 - This one was, IMO, the peak of the Attitude era. The reason I say December 31st is because I recall very clearly watching the New Years Eve special and it was clear they were shifting focus again to the more story driven format and the higher quality matches. It was more or less a very refined version of the last part of the Attitude era, the entertainment stuff was still all over the place, but it now had context to it. RAW and Smackdown had storylines from top to bottom, those storylines were now part of month-long programs, and those month long programs fit into more longterm stories. It seemed like everyone in the company had a place in an ongoing storyline. Also, the match quality was stellar by comparison to the previous era, and instead of being something that happened every now and then, great matches were happening every night WWF was on. And they didn't give up the entertainment stuff, 2 Cool always did their dance segment, Steve Blackman always did something violent, Crash Holly still did something hilarious, etc... Undertaker came back as well, controversial gimmick, but I thought it was enjoyable, and I felt his matches had been mostly better than they'd been in years (King of the Ring HotC against Foley earlier was mainly Foley). This was also the most iconic period of WWE IMO. And it ended with what was the most climactic Wrestlemania to date, and of the whole era.
Phase 4 - April 2001 to May 2002 - this one was much the same as the last phase but with some key differences... and it's not the Austin heel turn, but WWE buying WCW and ECW and injecting those elements into the show. It began with the championship expansion, being two major championships in the company now instead of just the one. Jericho unified the belts at Survivor series. The NWO then came in to cap it off. And it all ended with the Get the F Out Campaign where they dropped the Attitude era branding and began the official brand extension. Also, it just happened that Austin and Rock were both more or less part timers from this point on, with both leaving on a more semi-permanent basis about a year or so later.
The Ruthless Aggression era was more like a "post Attitude Era" phase, because the Attitude era was mostly still there in philosophy, just without branding. But, at the same time, it was shrinking rather than growing. And mostly petered out when they went PG after the Benoit incident. IMO, it wasn't a true era, but a fan created one based on a promo by John Cena, because there just wasn't a better name for it. But at the time, many were calling it the WWE era, the whole "Ruthless Aggression" era thing I didn't hear until much later. No doubt people were using the term, but it wasn't wide spread enough that I came across it.
Anyway, I felt the Attitude era was great because it felt wild, like anything could happen on the show. It was also a period of almost constant evolution, things never got stale. And lots of people were talking about it. It was also the first time wrestling was heavily discussed on the internet. It was also getting mainstream attraction, and actual women were watching it - it was kind of the first time where I could ask a girl "wanna watch wrestling" and she'd join our little club and watch with us. It was mostly an excuse to drink beer and get rowdy on a Monday or Tuesday night (depending where you lived, some places showed it live, others on a 24 hour tape delay, and others on a 1 week tape delay). So that really changed things up a lot. Because culture isn't really changing at the rate it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you can't really repeat much of that.
That said, I think things are moving in great directions now. The wrestling quality is undoubtedly a lot better. The move to Netflix has made it all more available. But I wouldn't say it's the move to Netflix that made this era, as it's been great for over a year now. I'd say it was when CM Punk coming back at Survivor Series 2023 that this current era of WWE really kicked off. That's also when Vince McMahon got the F out.
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