Many consider the ‘Attitude’ era of professional wrestling or as some call it ‘Sports Entertainment’ the holy grail era. The era brought us stars like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Kurt Angle, Triple H, then you had groups like nWo and DX to name a few. Stone Cold’s ‘3:16’ t-shirts were as popular as Calvin Klein throughout the entire country, the iconic DX “suck it” hand motions were getting kids suspended from school because doing that was banned at every middle school.

Fast forward to 2023 in the aftermath of this past weekend with WWE’s Marquee Event in SummerSlam in Detroit,Michigan at Ford Field an argument can be made that the era of professional wrestling we are in right now across the world is at a better and bigger place than the beloved Attitude Era. 

For a 5th consecutive PLE (Premium Live Event) the WWE has had recorded breaking numbers in terms of revenue and streaming. Earlier this week the WWE came out with a press release with the following information: SummerSlam which emanated from Ford Field in Detroit became the most-watched and highest-grossing SummerSlam in company history. The premium live event set new records for viewership, gate, sponsorship and merchandise. 

With 59,194 in attendance in the Motor City, SummerSlam generated a record gate of $8.5 million, the largest gate for any non-WrestleMania event ever. It was the most-watched SummerSlam in company history and among the top three audiences in the history of WWE on Peacock. 

SummerSlam generated the most sponsorship revenue for any non-WrestleMania event ever with $7 million, up 23 percent versus 2022. Slim Jim^®, C4 and Rocket Mortgage were among WWE’s sponsors for the premium live event. 

In partnership with special event retail partner Fanatics, merchandise sales were up 60 percent versus the record set in 2021, marking the best performance in company history for any premium live event outside of WrestleMania. On Location packages set a new SummerSlam record, up 47 percent versus 2022. 

In addition, SummerSlam became the most-viewed social SummerSlam of all time with over 230 million views and four million hours of video consumed, a 26 percent increase over last year.

Saying something is better than the Attitude Era is something that in the majority of my life I would have laughed at but let’s consider a few things starting with the numbers WWE laid out which to me means at no other point other than the Attitude Era is wrestling been so mainstream and actually cool. WWE produces over 7 hours of primetime programming, even more when you consider what is produced for the Peacock app. AEW produces over 5 hours of primetime programming for Warner Discover/TNT/TBS and that doesn’t even include Ring of Honor which is available digitally.

Let me add IMPACT Wrestling and New Japan Wrestling which have had a surge of new viewers as of late but the point stands that TV networks wouldn’t keep asking for more wrestling if it wasn’t successful and consistently topping the TV ratings for the night. When it comes to “Star Power” let’s not only include the impact of John Cena being omnipresent in culture through voicing every commercial, being in a plethora of movies (John Cena in Barbie was masterful) but then there’s The Rock, Dave Bautista, Seth Rollins will be in the next Captain America, and even MJF will star alongside Zac Efron in a new film due out this December about the Von Erich Family.

That’s just the stars that have been birthed through wrestling, don’t forget arguably the biggest artist in the world Bad Bunny not only coming to the WWE world for a promo appearance the man has a top ten match of the year candidate this year and maybe the best entrance of all-time in Puerto Rico at Backlash. Then there is Logan Paul setting a new standard and continuing to excel in a way nobody thought possible. 

I could go on and on with the merchandise sales, the in-ring action being led by people like Seth Rollins, Kenny Omega, Bianca Belair and others but I won’t. I’m not that good of a writer and don’t want to ramble. I really don’t because I would’ve mentioned that the stars coming into WWE are doing it at their absolute peak of celebrity like Bad Bunny wrestling 5 days after his headlining set at Coachella and not in the middle of a slump in his career like Mike Tyson did in the 90s. I’ll leave you with this, if someone asks me if this is better than the Attitude Era then in the words of L.A. Knight – Yeah!