Injuries in 97
By Scott Keith on 21 October 2017
While rewatching 97 WWF, holy crap did they have tons of injury problems.
Whether bad accidents on-air (Austin at Summerslam, H. Godwinn against LOD, Putski at Ground Zero), longtime problems (Pillman, Rude, Foley around WM, Goldust after Survivors), clumsiness (Ahmed multiple times) or kayfabe (Shawn's smile, Bulldog at ONO?), every week on RAW you would hear how multiple people are on the shelf or unable to compete.
I don't know how many times planned matches were scrapped or altered (Mankind subbing in many times, mostly for Austin or Shawn).
Must have been thrilling for booking, wrestlers' pockets and fans (on TV and in arenas). Was the general change of style (more garbage wrestling, more hardcore stuff, more highspots/highflying) to blame, or just bad luck/clumsiness?
It's the style. Bryan and Vinny have been watching the 97/98 RAWs on their show, and the amount of brutal chairshots and stupid spots for no reason is just staggering on those Attitude Era shows. Vince was basically treating his guys like disposable stuntmen at that point, and we all know what it led up to, sadly. In fact, seeing at lot of it again, it's kind of shocking something didn't go horribly wrong a lot sooner than it did.