YMMV / Attitude Era

• Best Known for the Fanservice: Many of the more risque moments are remembered, such as Sable entering a bikini contest wearing painted-on hand pasties over her breasts, Miss Kitty flashing her breasts to the crowd after winning the Women's Championship, and Vince McMahon making Trish Stratus crawl around and bark like a dog (although the latter could be considered Fan Disservice as it was once of Vince's Kick the Dog moments).
• Common Knowledge: Due to the Nostalgia Filter, a lot of fans mistakenly lump the boom period for women's wrestling in with the Attitude Era - even Paige herself in a documentary about her signing to WWE. While some of the figureheads for the boom period - Trish Stratus, Lita, Molly Holly, Victoria did debut in the Attitude Era - their careers didn't take off until the Ruthless Aggression Era (except maybe Lita). The Attitude Era was...not kind for women's wrestling.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Rock was one of many sons of Hall of Famers pushed during the era. Given that his first push as Rocky Maivia didn't take too well with fans, it's even more incredible how over he became - and was able to translate this into Hollywood success.
  • Sable was just a valet to Triple H and Marc Mero, and she wasn't the first pretty woman to stand at ringside. But she proved insanely popular with fans, just for her stunning beauty and charisma. Despite her inexperience, WWE resurrected their women's division just to give her something to do.
  • The Hardy Boyz were just another sibling tag team who took a while to find their feet - and had spent years as Jobbers on the B-shows. Yet their high flying antics and exciting matches with Edge & Christian and the Dudley Boyz gave way to superstardom. Adding Lita to their ranks resulted in other stables adding females just so there could be more 6-person tag matches against Team Xtreme.
  • Many people forget that the New Age Outlaws weren't originally part of D-Generation X. They were put together separately but proved so popular that they were made a part of the stable. To put it in perspective, they have the third best selling merchandises during the Attitude Era, only behind The Rock and Steve Austin.
  • Chyna was a bodyguard to Triple H, barely speaking and only interfering in the occasional match. Yet she was unlike any woman WWE had seen in a while, and ended becoming the first female Intercontinental Champion. There was a time when Chyna very nearly played Wonder Woman due to her stardom.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Vince Russo's booking that left WCW fans and later TNA fans moaning and complaining was present in WWE's Attitude Era - and there was plenty of nonsense going on that was done just for shock factor. The difference was that it was new at the time, and Russo usually had Vince McMahon to filter out some of his sillier ideas.
  • Sable's presence led to WWE deciding to copy what they had done with her and emphasise Cat Fights and T&A over legitimate wrestling talent, putting the title on inexperienced models - leading to a lot of actual wrestlers being lost in the shuffle. With Sable it was a little more justified given her explosive popularity - and like her or not it did involve the women's division getting resurrected. What's more is that Sable could at least pull off some impressive moves in the ring.
• Hype Backlash: Due to numerous fans hyping the Attitude Era as the greatest era of wrestling ever, it's understandably suffered a backlash. A lot of detractors point to the booking and endless title changes, sometimes with an overemphasis on gimmicks - not to mention women's wrestling fans cringing at the blatant T&A substituting actual athleticism.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Chris Jericho put it best: WCW had a great undercard in terms of talent, but not-so-great main events. WWE had a so-so undercard, but stellar main events. The cruiserweights were a main reason for this, but towards the latter half of the Monday Night Wars, WWE improved a lot in this area.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Pick a Diva, any Diva. Even when WWE weren't putting the title on models with no experience, they still weren't giving any time for matches or feuds. Terri Poch and Luna Vachon had it worse; the likes of Ivory, Jacqueline and Molly Holly got opportunities to wrestle more in the Ruthless Aggression Era. The previous two got released just before WWE started taking women's wrestling seriously.
• Tough Act to Follow: With the Attitude Era bringing wrestling back to mainstream popularity, the subsequent eras simply couldn't follow it and WWE saw their numbers dwindling as a result.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The whole InVasion angle (which, while considered an era of its own, it's also considered as capping off the Attitude Era). The company didn't see bringing in Ric Flair, Sting, Goldberg, Scott Steiner or the original nWo trio (Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall) immediately after the acquisition as a priority, and the few that were brought over were buried, such as Diamond Dallas Page with his booking as a stalker.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Quite a bit, especially compared to today's "Be a Star", PG WWE. For instance, one of Kane's unofficial nicknames invoked slurs on the disabled that would never fly in this day and age in any media, much less PG era wrestling.
  • The storylines in general were this. Does one want to see two grown men fighting over a baby stroller, or does one want to see Vince make Trish Stratus strip down and bark like a dog?◊
  • The amount of unprotected chairshots and excessive blading would make some fans cringe - due to awareness of concussions and blood-transmitted diseases coming to the forefront in the 2000s.
  • WWE's female talents during that time period would often be sexualized by competing in stripping matches, pillow fights and bikini contests. With WWE in the midst of the Women's Evolution where its female talents are now treated just like their male counterparts, as well as the #MeToo Movement, these types of matches will never happen ever again in the WWE nowadays.
• Win Back the Crowd: The WWE became the undisputed top promotion of the wrestling world in the 1980s, but by the time the '90s rolled around, their top name (Hulk Hogan) was gone, nobody else was grabbing the audience's interest, and the booking had become ridiculous, predictable, and lame. The WWE found themselves trailing behind WCW and staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. Then came the Attitude Era, a Darker and Edgier reinvention focused around "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, and the rest is history.

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