What year did WWE start to lose their edge?

[CBright7831 0]

I'm watching The Top 10 RAW thing on USA, and it's better than most of RAW tonight, because I love rewatching some of this stuff and it inspired this thread. So, my question is, what year did you notice WWE was losing their edge on things and beginning to go to hell?

 

1999 - The Higher Power, Vince McMahon: WWF Champion, Chyna: Intercontinental Champion, Austin gets injured, Bossman/Al Snow, Big Show/Bossman, over 10 WWF champions in one year (11 to be exact), Big Show: WWF Champion to end the millenium.

 

2000 - Mae Young gives birth to a hand, WM2000, Angle/Steph/HHH: botched, Rikishi - the man who ran over Austin, after being dropped in a car - HHH returns one week later, Six-man Hell in a Cell, Stephanie takes control.

 

2001 - XFL flops, ECW & WCW goes out of business, Austin heel turn, Triple H rips his quad, Invasion angle botched, ratings begin to fall, McMahon's Kiss My Ass Club.

 

2002 - Triple H: Face, botched nWo invasion, Brand Split, WWF turns to WWE, Austin walks out, Triple's H reign as a backstage asshole begins, Rock leaves after Summerslam for Hollywood, Katie Vick.

 

2003 - Al Wilson, Triple H's reign continues, disappointing debuts from Scott Steiner and Goldberg, Rock leaves fulltime for Hollywood, Kevin Nash: main eventer, to much to name.

 

For me, it would have to be 2002. I know 2001 will probably be the popular answer and I think you could see it dwendling, but 2002 confirmed that the WWE was starting to go to hell.

 

Discuss.

[World's Worst Man 0]

I stopped religiously watching WWE in 1999, but that was mostly due to me growing up and as such, growing out of the product. I would imagine WWE actually lost their edge in 2001, after they turned Austin heel and made a mockery of the invasion.

[Guest BillyTheStud]

Heel Austin is one of the things that made 2001 still watchable. The answer is 2002...

[ZGangsta 0]

The night after Wrestlemania X-7 was when it all started to go downhill. There have been a few bright periods since then (Smackdown 6 era) but since then it's pretty much been crap. The period between Royal Rumble 2000 and Wrestlemania X-7 in 2001 was the greatest period in the history of wrestling in my opinion.

[JasonX 0]

Heel Austin is one of the things that made 2001 still watchable.  The answer is 2002...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

No, Kurt Angle and to a lesser extent Rock and Jericho were the one thing that made 2001 watchable. Heel Steve Austin was a gunshot to the head that killed the WWE so badly and fucked EVERY FUCKING THING UP, leading to the hellish nightmare we've got today.

 

The only fucking way they could have salvage such a shithead, and ultimately suicidal decision, would have been if they had had the balls to burn the "Stone Cold" dead immeadiately after the 2001 WM and had Austin literally regress back to the stone age Hollywood Blonde/Stunning Steve Austin persona complete with him having hair on his head, a bimbo on his arm, no swearing or drinking, and Austin resurrecting his old "Your Brush With Greatness is Over" catchphrase as his one and only catchphrase. But they refused to do that and in the process they slit their own throats....

[SuperJerk 0]

The WWE lost their edge with the Invasion angle. Everything after that point was just them burying themselves deeper.

[Epic Reine 0]

Towards the end of 2001. I wanna say the Fall.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

The Invasion angle was the start (arguably the aborted Steph/Angle angle in 2000), but the real decline began when they brought the NWO in and killed Jericho's title run. Go back and watch the Invasion PPVs (besides Invasion itself). They are much better than anything we get these days from the WWE. As such I voted 2001, but the biggest drop was early 2002 because we saw the match quality drop sharply and the Undisputed Title bounce around to six guys in as many months (Jericho -> HHH -> Hogan -> Taker -> Rock -> Brock).

[Guest MikeSC]

It all started with No Way Out 2002, when Austin decided to make Jericho look inept.

[razazteca 0]

It all started with No Way Out 2002, when Austin decided to make Jericho look inept.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The match were Austin did nothing but chops for offense?

 

I think the day Austin "walked out" on WWE was the day WWE went downhill. Was it 2002 the year WWE decided to start pushing Orton, Batista, Cena, La Resistence, Benjamin Shelton? Was this the year that the style changed started with the slow down style and the banning of certain moves which meant that the cruiserweights could'nt do anything entertaining and the begining of the never ending chinlock and armbar restholds?

[Guest fanofcoils]

I'll say 1999, after Wrestlemania 15 or Backlash 99, things just weren't as entertaining.

[Dangerous A 0]

IMO, I think it was 2002 about the time where they put the title on Hogan which seemed like a good idea at the time but in hindsight was not. Add in the brand split and that was when WWE started it's downward spiral for me.

[JimmyHendricks 0]

To me, it was when HHH tore his quad in 2001. He and Austin were putting on some great matches with Benoit and Jericho, and they were obviously building for a Austin vs. HHH program for the summer/fall.

 

With their #2 star out for 8 months, the WWF went into panic mode and started the Invasion way too early. We all know that. They blew their load on that angle, and with Vince still in burial mode with WCW, the whole idea was a joke. Plus you had the McMahon kids in charge of ECW and WCW with Austin, a WWF guy being the Hogan character that everyone bowed to. No one bought the whole idea when half of the "WCW" and "ECW" invaders had just been with WWE a week eariler.

 

Then the era of the quick fix began, with the nWo returning, along with Steiner, Goldberg, and Bischoff. None of them were ever pushed strong, again as a result of Vince hating anything WCW created.

 

Heel Austin could have been awesome, but instead of changing his entire persona like Hogan did, we just had the same SCSA beating up faces instead of heels. I mean, the Austin character as a face was a classic wrestling heel, and I don't think the WWF knew what to do with him when he REALLY was a heel. Then they had him hugging Vince and doing comedy with Kurt Angle, and the entire turn, and character, was a joke.

 

But in my opinion it all goes back to HHH's quad tear. That injury fucked up the long term booking plan the WWF had prepared, and they had to re-do everything once he went out. If the WWF/E would have not done the Invasion, they could have spent more time building up guys like Booker T. as main eventers. Instead, anyone associated with WCW or ECW became a joke after the Invasion, because they lost. Therefore, they were weaker than any of the WWF/E guys, like.......HHH.

 

That same feeling is there today---that HHH is the biggest star they have and no one is over enough to carry the show other than him. Perhaps, just perhaps, if he hadn't torn his quad, he would have had to wrestle through the year with everyone else, and wouldn't have become THE GREATEST WRESTLER IN THE WORLD BECAUSE HE CAME BACK FROM A CAREER ENDING INJURY BAH GAWD!

 

Just my two cents.

[geniusMoment 0]

The last time I enjoyed the product was the Raw before Mania 15, the one with the beer bash. I thought the mania following that raw sucked, and have not liked the product since.

[Guest MikeSC]

Ah. Missed --- well, pretty much all of 2000, eh?

[Guest JMA]

I'm saying 2001. 1999 was a pretty awful year (as was 2002), but 2001 is when things all started to go downhill. The WWF botched THE biggest angle of all time, making themselves look awful in the process. Ever since then I've noticed an increased trend in booking being done to entertain the office, rather than the fans. For all the crap wrestling fans have had to endure, they deserve decent payoffs to angles--the InVasion didn't deliver at all.

[Chazz 0]

November 2000: Vince McMahon has The Bright Idea To replace Head Writer Chris Kreski(sp?) with daughter Steph. The Product has been horrible ever since, IMO.

[cawthon777 0]

November 2000: Vince McMahon has The Bright Idea To replace Head Writer Chris Kreski(sp?) with daughter Steph.  The Product has been horrible ever since, IMO.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I would agree with that but they've certainly had bright spots since then.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

I voted '01 because I found my interest in the product waning more and more during the InVasion (and I was a WCW fan before I was a WWF fan, and was a mark for ECW since I first saw it in mid '98) than at any other time. Sure, I stopped watching regularly in '02, but it was '01 that saw me stop caring initially.

 

Thus, I say '01.

[SteakGrowsOnUecker 0]

2001 is when they were knocked down a peg and lost their maximum amount of fans during the Invasion. Then when they did the reset and still didn't change a whole lot in early 2002, they panicked and began bringing in the old acts (Hogan, nWo, etc.) and continued to lose their fans. So really 2002 is the official year because they decided to stop being completely edgy (although at times Vince would pull out crap like Katie Vick, being retarded instead of edgy) and for the most part since they have stayed away from shock tv. The only problem is they never came up with a fresh presentation of the show, they just rehashed the attitude type of presentation without anything really cutting edge or new, its just WWE wrestling with horrible backstage skits. And that is where we have been for the last 3 years.

[Enigma 0]

I quit obsessively watching wrestling in 2003. It started with the weekend shows, then I found myself, barely watching Smackdown anymore after the Mr. America bullshit started, and then started barely watching RAW because I was sick of HHH-mania.

 

But overall, it's just the shitty product and it started, as someone said above, when Stephanie McMahon took over the booking. The absolutely blown InVasion angle did a number on me, since that was a dream I had since I started watching wrestling in '87. The InVasion was just like always wanting to see a girl you know naked for years, and when you finally do, she has zits all over the place, veins in her tits, and the lumpiest ass you've ever seen. It's just like I was telling a friend over the weekend when I was watching TNA Impact: WWE now is like a horrible sitcom written by reject sitcom writers featuring wrestlers being forced to be actors instead wrestlers wrestling on a wrestling show with a few angles sprinkled here and there. It's trying to be one big fucking Hollywood production now instead of just being a good wrestling show, and it blows.

[Black Lushus 0]

2001...as I've said before, I stopped watching faithfully around Summer of 2001 and got back into it by WM20....2004 was a pretty decent year, but they hit the wall again here in 05...

[Papacita 0]

I voted 99, since WWF really began to work my nerves around the time that Smackdown debuted. Other than that, I look at the period between Fully Loaded and SummerSlam 2000 as the start of the downfall.

[humongous2002 0]

I think WWE started going downhill by the end of 2000 when the HHH/Steph/Angle love triangle ended abruptly for no apparent reason. Stephanie McMahon becoming head booker was the beginning of the end.

[chaosrage 0]

It did start going down in about August of 2000 for the reasons above, but there was still periods of greatness in the months to come like Angle winning the title, WMX7, Austin heel turn, Austin/Angle skits, and the summer of Benoit and Jericho in 2001. The invasion was the first time you can look at where everything started falling apart and nothing seemed to go right. Some of it was still entertaining like Jericho as the world champion, and nothing that year was as bad as when HHH came back and took the life out of WWE in 2002. But the start was definitely the invasion, the middle of 2001.

[UseTheSledgehammerUh 0]

Fall 2000.

 

The storylines and in-ring work went from constantly great to:

 

Lame 4-way main event at Unforgiven

Benoit buried against Trips

Angle/HHH never really resolved correctly

Rikishi - Megaheel that no one cares about

More and more Handicap matches

Regal - European Champion defending against Mideon and Holly ON PPV

Coffee Fearing Kane Vs. Jericho

Vince drives truck filled with hay to ring DURING A PPV MAIN EVENT

KKwik raps with Road Dogg

Dean Malenko - Love Machine

[redbaron29 0]

I always dated the beginning of the fall as 2000 post "mania".

[Epic Reine 0]

Didn't HHH/Angle have a proper blow-off? Didn't they have a blow-off match at Unforgiven?

[Gary Floyd 0]

I'd have to say during 2001 (The Invasion Angle, Austin becoming a face again after a kick ass heel reign, the kiss my ass club) or 2002 (Too many things to mention). Man, '02 was almost fucking unwatchable.

[cabbageboy 0]

Well to me the signs were there once HHH won at WM in 2000, which pissed me off to the point where I would have considered not watching anymore if not for the Judgement Day PPV here in Louisville, which kept me interested.

 

Lots of people have a fondness for 2000 that it really doesn't deserve. To me that year was HHH jerking off in front of everyone and the general direction started to suck. I'd say the events and storylines surrounding the TNN move is what really started the WWF decline. To wit:

 

--At this point we had the long running "Who ran over Austin?" angle payoff with Rikishi killing his career by being the driver.

 

--The HHH/Steph/Angle love triangle fizzed out and didn't have a decent payoff.

 

--The actual ratings declined due to being on a shitty network like TNN.

 

People piss on 2001 a bit much I think. Mainly due to some vague orgasmic dreams of what the Invasion should have been. 2001 actually had a very solid amount of in ring action.