An Era Ends With Attitude

The vaunted "Attitude era"...no one is quite in agreement with when it started (the genesis can be seen in different periods throughout the mid-90s) but the general consensus is that it properly began when Shawn Michaels put over "Stone Cold" Steve Austin at Wrestlemania XIV in 1998, dropping the WWE World Heavyweight title to Austin in the process. The significance is legendary, as it was one of the few successful times WWE were able to implement a passing of the torch moment, rather than force something to happen.

Steve Austin had been on a hot roll since winning the King of the Ring tournament in 1996, and following brilliant bouts against the likes of Bret Hart and his brother Owen, was poised to step up into that role as the company's top guy. It would be a course that would surge WWE ahead of its competition, ushering in one of its most lucrative periods and put Austin in a spot in pop culture that he's enjoyed ever since.

Meanwhile, there is the outgoing Shawn Michaels. Much has been said about Michaels in the 90s, whether it was bad backstage politics that derailed many a storyline and match to his favor or that of his friends in the Kliq (Triple H, Razor Ramon, Diesel, and 1-2-3 Kid) or his rapidly escalating drug and alcohol abuse, the only two constants about Michaels in his first run was that he always performed at the highest capacity possible, rarely putting on dud matches, and that he was the torchbearer for a company in a time when it looked like it was about to go under.

Think about it--WWE in the 90s (specifically 1993 until around 1998) saw a decline in viewership, ratings, roster, and above all else attendance at its shows. While it arguably boasted some top tier main event names in Bret Hart, Razor, Diesel, Michaels, and of course Undertaker the company was still figuring out how to move forward beyond giving career gimmicks (such as garbage men and hockey players and race car drivers who happened to wrestle as well) and relying on celebrity power to get through these dark times. The departures of Kevin Nash (Diesel) and Scott Hall (Razor Ramon) in 1996 followed by Bret Hart in 1997 would have crippled the company under ordinary circumstances but the usual troopers like Triple H, Shawn Michaels and Undertaker, along with a scrappy pack of new guys like Dustin "Goldust" Runnels/Rhodes, Mick Foley and Steve Austin and a "Blue chipper" named Rocky Miavia (we all know how his story ends up) would help steer the ship with the company moving towards edgier programming.

It was this collision of the old with the new that turned things around around for WWE. Its well known that Michaels was working with a destroyed back, the result of an injury received following a botched bump on the edge of a casket during a match against the Undertaker a few months earlier. Its also well known that Undertaker threatened Michaels with doing the right thing by putting Austin over, instead of pulling his usual shenanigans to get out of working matches or events. Wrestlemania XIV would represent the end of the era of cartoon wrestling proper, and the beginning of a time when anything truly goes, where the ante was upped plenty. Austin would be at the lead of that movement just one night later, sparking the fuse that would become his big feud against Vince McMahon on that Monday's Raw. There were other ramifications of this changing of the guard, as without Michaels, it created a pretty big spot that various others would try and admirably fill, allowing Mick Foley to get over and become WWE Champion (something that obviously wouldn't have happened just two years earlier), Rocky Miavia became the Rock, and of course Undertaker began that transformation into one of the wrestling's greatest attractions, reinventing the character from the cartoonish ghoul into something much more nuanced and with a wealth of character development (the ever sprawling Brothers of Destruction story with Kane...quite probably one of the greatest soap opera's ever concocted). Triple H too would benefit from the departure of Michaels and the changing of tastes, allowing himself to transform from the arrogant blue blood persona he'd had into something like an exaggerated version of himself, leading DX and starting his own rise to the top of the main event scene with the turn of the century.

Its such a shame that Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin never had a proper rematch; Michaels returned to the WWE in 2002, a changed man (sober, and a born again Christian) who was performing at a different, much better capacity than his 90s run had been (likely due to the injuries his old hard bumping style had accrued), but Steve Austin was largely absent that year, having problems with the direction of the WWE writers not having anything lucrative for him and his own problems with recurring knee and neck injuries aggravating him much of that year. 

That both would have their final ever matches at Wrestlemania (Austin at XIX in 2003, Michaels at XXVI in 2010) makes things a little full circle in the way both had their careers made at Wrestlemania.