Former WWE World Heavyweight Champion Adam Copeland was recently interviewed by Sam Roberts of NotSam Wrestling. During the interview, Copeland shared his thoughts on the Attitude Era.
The Rated R Superstar mentioned that while the Attitude Era is praised a lot, the matches during that era were very short.
“There’s a lot of people that really pine for those Attitude Era days. And I’m like, ‘Okay. It was fun. And it was on fire. So you can’t dispute that.’ But it was like three-minute matches. They were haikus. You couldn’t tell a story. We are talking like a three-line poem here. And that’s it. I wrestled Lance Storm for one minute and eight seconds in Madison Square Garden. And we had to get a run-in. I had to get laid out by I think, laid out by Christian and the end of it. A minute and eight seconds. Do we even lock up? I don’t even… What do we do with that? We made it work.”
Adam Copeland on the characters in the Attitude Era
Copeland also mentioned that while the matches were short, the characters were great and everyone was invested in each character.
“But if you’re looking for quality over necessarily maybe quantity and the wrestling is by far better now. But the characters were I think what the great part of the Attitude Era was. And I’ve said this, you could have Crash Holly come out first. Massive reaction. And from top to bottom on that lineup, everyone had an established character. Even if you’re just trying to figure it out. Even if you’re stumbling through, you’re still something. And I feel like somewhere around the way because owners got put so much on the wrestling, the character side of things got a little bit lost. So now, you can get all those…”
Adam Copeland talks about the current era of wrestling
During the same interview, Copeland mentioned that wrestling is absolutely amazing nowadays. But there is no character buildup and thus it is difficult to get completely invested in the matches.
“They’re all great matches. Everybody’s trying to have Match of the Year. But do I care about them as much? Because I’m not invested in the person who’s doing the moves. And that to me was one of the biggest learning curves I had to understand. Like, ‘Okay, when they care about the character, they’ll care even more about what moves you do.’
“And you don’t have to do a Spear off the top of a ladder. And if you do, you can save it for Main Event in Toronto against John Cena in a TLC match for the Heavyweight Championship. If I’m going to Spear Mick Foley through a flaming table with Thumbtacks in my back, it’s going to be WrestleMania. That was along the time when I realized, ‘Okay if I’m going to do it, I’m going to mean something. I’m going to make sure it’s something that’s replayed forever,” Copeland said.
Do you agree with Adam Copeland?
