I've recently been watching WWE stuff from late 96 and 97 and I'm wondering your thoughts on what point in time Vince become fully committed to the Attitude Era? For me, the Raw where Sid beats Bret in a steel cage match is significant for all the drama that went with it. Also, Stone Cold cheating to win the Rumble and being cheered for it stands out.
One more thing…do you feel that Bret being Canadian allowed for the attitude era to be a success? Without that there is no Canadian Stampede and do you think he'd been a over as a heel in the US without the heat from being Canadian?
Keep up the good work and I hope you make some money doing this, your work has kept me far more interested in wrestling than the WWE has.
I'd be making more money if both TNA and WWE were doing awesome stuff and drawing peoples interest at the same time. Which is why I find it so weird that people think I have it in for one promotion or the other at various times or that I want them to fail. The RAW 1000 show had a thousand comments! If WWE was doing Attitude-era numbers again I could retire and live on a gold boat, to steal Bryan Alvarez's famous metaphor.
Anyway, yeah, the Attitude era pretty much started with Bret's profanity-laden tirade, and I think even Vince has said so in the past. Obviously the set-in-stone start was the "Shades of grey / good guys and bad guys" speech from Vince, but I think when Bret went nuts on live TV he knew he had something special there.