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| WWF The New Generation Part 1: An Introduction; An introduction to the New WWF Generation | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 9 2010, 11:58 AM (54 Views) | |
| Stinger | Jul 9 2010, 11:58 AM Post #1 |
To me, to be a conservative means to conserve the good parts of America and to conserve our Constitution.
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 The New Generation: An Introduction  [P_indent]“Let me tell ya something you stupid little puke.”[/P_indent] When Sycho Sid spoke these words on Monday Night RAW the night after WrestleMania XI, the hair on the back of my soon to be nine-year-old neck stood up. On a couch in Alabama, I could feel the tension emanating from the Manhattan Center in New York City, and my little eyes were glued to the television set. The Heartbreak Kid had just embarrassed a giant; I knew it wasn’t going to end well for my favorite wrestler. What I didn’t realize was that it would serve as the rekindling of the Shawn Michaels and Diesel friendship/partnership. For a kid who had loved the pairing of HBK and Big Daddy Cool throughout 1994, I could not have had more goosebumps than I did when RAW came back from commercial and Diesel was out to help his former friend and tag team partner. That is but one of many great moments that occurred during my favorite “era” in WWE history: the era of the New Generation. As far as the World Wrestling Federation goes, I grew up with the New WWF Generation. It was that great period of time in WWE history that was largely devoid of Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, Ultimate Warrior, Andre the Giant, Sgt. Slaughter and “Macho Man” Randy Savage. It was the years spanning 1994 through 1996, and it was a great time to be a young wrestling fan. I was a WCW guy for the most part until 1994. Of course, at the time, WWF and WCW came on different nights and one could watch and enjoy both products. I just enjoyed the WCW product, usually, a lot more. At least that was the case until 1994. I suppose it was really in 1993 when WWF launched Monday Night RAW that my attitude of fandom began to shift, in very small increments. It wasn’t until July 1994 that my allegiance fully shifted from WCW to WWF. To be more specific, it wasn’t until WCW brought in the guy I always despised and made him their world champion in his debut match. It certainly didn’t help that by the end of 1994, WCW was running Hulk Hogan vs. Brutus Beefcake (ahem, “The Butcher”) as the main-event of the sacred Starrcade event. It was like shoving a dagger through the heart of the NWA wrestling fan. July was a different story in 1994 for the WWF though; it was on July 11th that WWF RAW featured a match that would cement my new allegiance to the northern-based World Wrestling Federation. I am of course talking about the WWF World Heavyweight Championship match that took place on that night between the champion Bret Hart and the challenging 1-2-3 Kid. For an eight-year-old boy who had already wanted to be a wrestler for years, this match epitomized the dream. Small children tend to view the world around them as being filled with giants, and that was certainly the case when watching the larger than normal superstars in the WWF. Matches were billed on the sizes of the competitors, with Andre vs. Hogan being the biggest example. But on this July night, the World Wrestling Federation seemed smaller. In a strange way it seemed closer and more personal. Watching Bret Hart and the even smaller 123 Kid compete, for almost twenty minutes, for the coveted WWF Championship was like heaven on Earth. I sat there on the floor, mesmerized like a fat kid in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and quietly hoped the match would never end while vocally cheering on the young 123 Kid. With each near fall the Kid made, and kicked out off, my heart raced faster and faster. I could feel the title change coming; I knew the upset king was going to pull off his greatest accomplishment. And so I sat in bitter disbelief and disappointment as the 123 Kid made another high risk mistake and was forced to submit to the Sharpshooter. My disappointment that the Kid didn’t win the championship did not, however, erase the fact that I knew I had just witnessed an amazing match that would forever serve as an inspirational and internal torch for the burning desire to live the dream. By the time the match ended, I had come to truly believe the slogan: anything can happen in the World Wrestling Federation. July 11, 1994 was the (un)official beginning of the New WWF Generation in my mind.  A change had come over the WWF. I did not know a great deal about the behind the scenes crisis, for lack of a better word, that was ongoing at the time that practically forced these changes: the steroid trial of Vince McMahon and financial woes that made the “smaller feel” of the new WWF a necessity. To be honest, I didn’t care about any of that stuff back then nor did I have a desire to know it. All I knew was that the WWF was this amazing product and WCW was sinking fast. We had entered the age of Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Shawn Michaels, Diesel, Razor Ramon, The Undertaker, Jeff Jarrett, Lex Luger, Tatanka, and Bam Bam Bigelow, amongst many others. In my over six-years being a part of the Internet Wrestling Community, I have read a great many forum posts bashing the New Generation as being “cartoonish” and “the downtime of the WWF”. To make matters worse, a lot of these bashers are products of the Attitude Era; those people who became fans during the peek of the wrestling boom of the late 90s and who think trash TV is great pro wrestling. Now I loved the Attitude Era for a plethora of different reasons, but I know what both companies were like prior to that era and have no doubt that the actual wrestling was better during the New Generation. That isn’t to say the actual wrestling suffered or was bad during the Attitude Era, because there was a lot of great stuff, but by and large the wrestling was in the background. That wasn't the case in the New Generation. It is certainly true that the WWF did come to embrace a number of cartoon gimmicks. But for the most part the corniest of these characters were the lowest of the low. I dislike Friar Ferguson as much as the next guy, but how many titles did he win exactly? How many PPVs did he wrestle on? Exactly. I don’t care how big a fan someone is of a wrestling promotion, there will never be a promotion that only has good or great things and no bad things. It’s never going to happen. As good as WCW was in the late 80s and early 90s, there were many god awful things. Robocop anyone? Any promotion in an era is going to have bad things; and as wrestling fans, we take the bad with the good and just let it slide. I loved the New Generation, including those “horrible” (as I’ve read from others) pay-per-views called “In Your House” in 1995. That was a great time to be a wrestling fan and I often find myself watching RAWs and PPVs (to say nothing of Action Zone and Superstars) from the period of 1994-1997. This is the introductory piece to a new miniseries I’m beginning. I began work on this miniseries about a week before the LOP NXT contest pairings were released, but I had given consideration to postponing posting this introduction piece because of the Round 1 topic. But screw it; I’ve been working on it (the series) for long enough to hold off because of all the columns about the 1990s. So in addition to the NXT competition (for however long I am in it *ahem, until the end of it*), I am going to post new entries into the New Generation miniseries occasionally. Currently, there are four parts (including this one), but I have not ruled out a fifth part to serve as the conclusion. Nevertheless, the next entry in the series will take a look at the year 1994 and is titled “The New Generation Part II: The Hart of 1994”. And, as will be the norm throughout the series, here is a teaser image for the next part:  COMING SOON: The New Generation Part II: The Hart of 1994 |
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