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Originally Posted by dablackguy
I'll play Devil's Advocate with all of the Vince voters
First, if you put a date on the attitude era, you probably have to go with Wrestlemania when Austin won the belt as the starting point. Before this happened, you have Shawn Michaels running around with Gauze in his pants on national TV,(Which Vince allegedly hated and fined Michaels for) Brian Pillman shooting a gun at Austin(which got tons of negative press), etc. All acts that would be commonplace in the attitude era, but not at their times. These acts generated controversy, and you know Vince, any publicity is good publicity. The point is A) that there was proof before hand that the viewing audience was evolving and B) you see that there was a fundamental shift in both wrestling well before the actual start of the era. Who's to say that Vince wasn't digging in his backyard and just happened to find oil? So to speak.
Second, even in the chance that vince completely authored this shift, the era needed an image and a leader. Sure, if Vince had come up with it, that's great, but at the same time, you couldn't have a 50 something promoter go on tv and tell us to suck it. No one would buy into it. Mind you, at this point it still isn't common for a promoter/owner to go on tv and be a dominant character. The shift in the era needed a fresh face at a time where you had an injured Shawn Michaels, a midcard HHH, a Rock that couldn't get over as a face and so forth. We know who and what that face went on to be.
Third, even after all this, you can't say that Vince originated all this. WCW on his ass made him change a lot of things. ECW was the underground promotion that showed of things to come. There were a lot of factors in the change, but the one thing that made it possible was the face and identity that lead the era
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First of all, you can forget about ECW. ECW was never a threat. ECW would've died out long before it finally did if WWF hadn't promoted it on it's programming.
Second of all, since I was one of those who voted Vince McMahon, I'll explain why.
I didn't vote for Vince because of the "Hogan era." I didn't vote for him because of the "Attitude era.", etc. I voted Vince because of a little thing he did way back. That little thing was Vince basically saying "Fuck you" to every wrestling promoter in North America by going away from territorial wrestling.
Now you might argue this didn't happen in the last 15 years, but I can also argue that it affected it greatly. If Vince wouldn't have broken open that door, who knows where wrestling would be today, or if it would even be around at all.