Corey Graves agrees people miss wrestling’s “Attitude Era,” but it’s not for the reason you’d think.
Graves opened this week’s new episode of his After The Bell podcast and addressed his Twitter activity from Monday night, which included some commentary like “Wow. F*** this. Fire me. I’m already fired.” He noted that he’s beaten it to death and it’s no fault of the performers, but the shows have been lacking in a certain way and once again brought up his issues with the ongoing Lana / Lashley / Rusev / Liv Morgan storyline.
Graves stated that it “physically made me angry” and pointed out how silent the crowd was, and also questioned why Liv Morgan is getting beat up easily by Lana after they pushed how important she is in the grand scheme of things. Graves said he knows people want some of that back, but the things people miss aren’t “cheesy, Jerry Springer storylines and four-letter words, and boobs” and pushed WWE to move on from the “latest call back” to the WWE Attitude Era.
“The Attitude Era was awesome because you had a bunch of Superstars who were allowed to figure things out, allowed to be themselves, allowed to connect and weren’t pigeonholed or forced into these garbage circumstances. And every once in a while there was a terrible storyline but people made it work because you could laugh at yourself. It was tongue-in-cheek. The talent made each other better. It was a competition, night after night. You talk to Stone Cold,” Graves said, “you talk to Triple H, anybody who was on top during that era—you had to figure out how to survive. It made everybody better, it made the product better.
“Yeah, there were a ton of awful, horrendous storylines. Mae Young gave birth to a hand, there was Katie Vick. I mean, some of the worst storylines in the business’s history took place in the Attitude Era,” Graves said, “but as a whole, the business was on fire because everybody had to step up. Even if you were in a garbage circumstance and a terrible story, you had an opportunity to make your own path and I think that’s what we need. That’s what we as fans miss from the Attitude Era. Not crude storylines, not lewdness, not ‘puppies’ and jokes like that. We need more action and guys who are badasses, allowed to be badasses, allowed to be entertaining, which I think is the goal for Rusev in this entire scenario, to make Rusev entertaining but also be a badass. But give him somebody to fight, give him some circumstances that allow him to be a star and show what he’s capable of.”
Check out the full episode of After The Bell with Corey Graves below:
Do you agree with Corey Graves? Should WWE move on from the current storyline?
