How’s it going my Force of Wrestling readers? It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but like I’ve said before, life can get in the way and it took me some time to figure out what to write about. Actually this idea came to me while I was watching some old episodes of Raw from 1999. I came across downloads for all the episodes from that year so I decided to take a nostalgic look back at one of the hottest years in WWE history. Currently I’m on the July 5 episode. So let’s get through all the fluff and get to the column.

First a few random thoughts:

-Survivor Series is Sunday and while the build for everything hasn’t been great, looking at the card, I am expecting some good stuff to go down. The Team Kofi vs. Team Orton match should be good and the feud with Orton and Kofi has been fantastic so far. I just hope WWE holds of their first one-on-one match until PPV instead of giving it away on Raw next week.

-Raw last night was pretty weird until the final 2 segments. The Orton-Kofi brawl was great and Kofi has clearly stepped up his game in the past month or so. WWE always is able to have major moments occur in the Garden and Kofi’s Boom Drop on Orton through the table could be one we look back on years from now and think of that as Kofi’s 3:16 moment.

-FOW Radio has been a lot of fun to do. Thank you to everyone who listens and thank you to the guests we’ve had so far. We’ve just begun to be sure to keep your eyes on our website, which is growing everyday!

-I also want to welcome our new columnist BJ Carter. BJ’s been working behind the scenes on FOW since the beginning and really did a lot for us by helping make the site look good. BJ and I have become good friends in the past year and I’m happy to have him on the column team.

Now on to the column!

So I was sitting back trying to think about what I was going to write for my next column while I was watching an episode from 1999. It kind of hit me on the final episode before Wrestlemania 15 when I realized that in a big way the same complaints we IWC fans have currently about the WWE product today can apply just as much to 10 years ago. They only real difference is that it was abundantly clear then, who the new main event stars were going to be. Triple H really grew up during this time and really evolved his character from a pompous Connecticut snob to the DX prankster to the ruthless Cerebral Assassin and the change was gradual, but when he totally flipped it made a major impact. For anyone who can remember, he sealed up The Rock in a coffin and pounded the crap out of it with a sledgehammer. Wow. Happy 10-year anniversary to Triple H and his sledgehammer. I suppose you can make a bit of a parallel to Triple H jumping into the top of the card with Kofi doing the same. Kofi’s character changed gradually and is feuding with an established main event player. I guess being a face, Kofi couldn’t do something as vicious as lock Orton in something, but destroying his car is an adequate substitute.

That go home show also featured Steve Austin driving the beer truck down to ringside and spraying beer at the McMahon’s and Rock. Watching this stuff again also made me recognize that times like this and a feud like this, both Austin vs. Rock and Austin vs. McMahon, only come around once in a lifetime. Stuff like that was just magic and I see all over the place that people are demanding that things go back to how they were during the Attitude era, but like I said before, stuff like that was magic and to expect a company to do that again the same or even similar way is asking too much. WWE had an epic moment when Hogan faced Andre at Wrestlemania 3. When WWE hit gold with Stone Cold Steve Austin, he wasn’t anything close to what Hulk Hogan was. Austin and Hogan are polar opposites. I don’t think WWE yet has that character to represent this era of wrestling like Austin or Hogan did. As much as they’d like to think it, Cena isn’t really that guy. He might be remembered down the line, but he won’t be the guy to represent the new great era of wrestling. Maybe we’ve already had our era and the next generation of fans will have their own someday down the line or maybe my kid will one day be writing wrestling columns too. Maybe he’ll write them in between stopping the zombie apocalypse.

I’m not saying that maybe wrestling has passed us by, but maybe we demand too much. I don’t think it’s realistic that WWE is going to morph into the apex of the Attitude days anytime soon. The wrestling landscape and its place in popular culture are radically different. Then it was cool to be a fan. Today, it’s like there’s something wrong with you. Wrestling is just different and maybe once we can just accept that and allow the past to stay there and remember it fondly, we can finally begin to enjoy wrestling again, which seems to be a big issue with most fans. Let me also make it clear that I don’t think WWE or TNA or any company can achieve the same level of success that WWE and WCW achieved in the late 90’s. I saw last week’s Impact and Kurt Angle said that Hulk Hogan’s signing could be the thing to give wrestling the same boost it had back then and I have to respectfully disagree. That was lightning in a bottle and people should remember that Hogan going to WCW didn’t even make WCW an overnight success. WCW really began its huge run when Scott Hall and Kevin Nash showed up on Nitro. That and the NWO angle got the ball rolling. Just like when Austin made his 3:16 speech at the King of the Ring. That got him on the map, but it wasn’t until the won the title at Wrestlemania 14 that he and WWE took off. For TNA to truly take off in some way, they need to find that right catch and I doubt that in 2009, Hulk Hogan will be that catch.

I’ve also seen the Black Wedding and Higher Power episodes of Raw from this time and this and the first 2 months of that year made me think about what would happen if the internet was as prevalent then as it is today. Today we bitch about the Raw open being a 15-minute promo. That Higher Power episode had Vince open the show for a few minutes, then a commercial break, then we got the big reveal of the Higher Power. Then after that, same segment and no breaks, Linda and Stephanie reveal that Austin is the new CEO. This made the opening of Raw last for over a half hour with zero wrestling. I think we let a lot of things slide then than we do today. Today we bitch incessantly about wrestlers facing each other at too many successive PPVs. I saw people complaining about CM Punk and Hardy facing each other at Night of Champions, an episode of Smackdown, Summerslam, then the Smackdown following. Well, starting from January 4, 1999 to February 15, 999, the Rock and Mankind faced each other a total of 5 times. Each was a title match and there were a total of 4 title changes. Let me spell that out in case anyone missed it. That means that in a span of 6 weeks, there were a total of 4 world title changes. Today we complain if someone has a month and a half reign and say it devalues the belt. Shouldn’t 4 changes in 6 weeks devalue it more? I understand why we do it though. For most of us in the IWC, we got into wrestling during the Attitude Era. We hold it on a massive pedestal and I’m not even saying that that’s wrong. I think I’ve just come to the conclusion that all wrestling, no matter the era, has major flaws and the sooner we accept it the better. This particular era of wrestling will probably be remembered like the early to mid 90’s WWE when it was filled with silly gimmicks and uninteresting matches. I have little doubt wrestling will have some other major era that gets remembered with as much fondness as the mid to late 80’s and the Attitude Era. It’s just a matter of time, but whether or not we’ll be fans long enough to see it is another story. Maybe our kids will have better luck.

Well that will do it for this column; I hope you all enjoyed it. Just a reminder to everyone that there will be another addition of FOW Radio this Wednesday, which I will be a part of. I think we’ll be talking some more about Hogan so I’ve only got another day to come up with some fresh Hogan jokes. Until then, I’ll see you guys later and as always…stay out of the water.