On WWF RAW IS WAR – December 15, 1997 Vince McMahon announced the following:
“It has been said that anything can happen here in the World Wrestling Federation, but now more than ever, truer words have never been spoken. This is a conscious effort on our part to ‘Open the Creative Envelope’, so to speak, in order to entertain you in a more contemporary manner. Even though we call ourselves ‘Sports Entertainment’ because of the athleticism involved, the keyword in that phrase is ‘Entertainment’. The WWF extends far beyond the strict confines of sports presentation into the wide open environment of broad based entertainment. We borrow from such programs niches like soap-operas, like ‘The Days of Our Lives’, or, music videos such as those on MTV, Daytime talk-shows like ‘Jerry Springer’ and others, cartoons like ‘The King of The Hill’ on FOX, Sitcoms like ‘Seinfeld’, and other widely accepted forms of television entertainment. We, in the WWF, think that you, the audience, are quite frankly, tired of having your ‘intelligence insulted’.
We also think that you’re tired of the same old simplistic theory of Good Guys vs Bad Guys. Surely the era of ‘The super-hero urge you to say your prayers and take your vitamins’ is definitely, passe. Therefore, we’ve embarked on a far more innovative and contemporary creative campaign, that is far more invigorating and extemporaneous than ever before. However, due to the live nature of ‘RAW’ and the ‘WarZone’, we encourage some degree of parental discretion, as relates to the younger audience allowed to stay up late. Other WWF programs on USA, such as ‘The Saturday Morning LiveWire’, and ‘Sunday Morning Superstars’, where there’s a 40% increase in the younger audience obviously, however, need no such discretion.
We are responsible television producers who work hard to bring you this outrageous, wacky, wonderful world known as the WWF. Through some 50 years the World Wrestling Federation has been an entertainment main-stay here in North America, and all over the world. One of the reasons for that longevity is: As the times have changed, so have we. I’m happy to say that this new vibrate, creative direction has resulted in a huge increase in television viewership, for which we thank the USA Network and TSN for allowing us to have the creative freedom. But most especially, we would like to thank you, for watching. RAW and the WarZone are definitely the cure for the common show.”
That Speech was the birth of ‘The Attitude Era’, the Era that made the World Wrestling Federation #1 again and finally won the Monday Night War against WCW.
It’s because of this very era, that Stone Cold Steve Austin became the biggest short term draw in the History of Professional Wrestling, with Hulk Hogan still being the biggest long term draw by far though.
Top Stars:
• Stone Cold Steve Austin
• The Rock
• Mick Foley
• Triple H
• The Undertaker
• Kane
• Kurt Angle
• Chris Jericho
• Mr. McMahon
• The Big Show
• Owen Hart
• Ken Shamrock
• The New Age Outlaws
• Edge & Christian
• The Dudley Boyz
• The Hardy Boyz
• The APA
• The Radicalz
• D-Generation X
• The Nation of Domination
• Shane McMahon
• Jeff Jarrett
• Val Venis
• Goldust
• X-Pac
• Chyna
• Sable
& many more
