Smokebreak Psychology: “But the Attitude Era” Is Not an Argument

My morning ritual is sacred to me. For more than two decades, I was up at 4:00 a.m. with or without an alarm for work. Now, my ritual goes like this:

Wake up by 4 a.m. If I don’t, I have a 13-pound black cat named Loki softly headbutting me into consciousness to let me know it’s time to feed him and the other two cats. After I feed them, I put on a pot of coffee, then take a joint, incense, and my tablet to the bathroom.

That’s where the real ritual begins. I smoke, meditate, and set my mind for the day. I let the noise settle. Then I kick back, run a bath, and either read a book in the tub or listen to an audiobook. It is my quiet hour before the world gets a vote.

Somewhere in between all of that, I check sports scores and news headlines while purposely avoiding any potential wrestling spoilers. I always watch the next morning on demand. But the news of Max Caster still managed to make it into my spoiler-free feed.

This column isn’t about Max Caster.

It’s about a train of thought I keep seeing.

This isn’t about whether what Max Caster said was right or wrong. I won’t say much about that, because we are all entitled to our own opinions, and we all have to answer to our own virtues and morals. I’m not here to teach people what morals and virtues are.

What this is about is the constant argument of “but the Attitude Era.”

I was born in 1980. I’ll be 46 on Thanksgiving. I lived through the Attitude Era. But the mid-’90s were a different era. That was 30 years ago.

Let me remind you of the ’90s: steroids in baseball. The Twin Towers were still standing. O.J. Simpson was on trial. Independence Day was the number one movie at the box office. Will Smith had officially broken out after The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette was the number one album.

I want to put even that into perspective. Thirty years before that, Martin Luther King Jr. was fighting for civil rights. The number one movie was the James Bond film Thunderball, and Rubber Soul by The Beatles had just been released.

Something else that was 30 years before the Attitude Era: there was no legal age of consent. Let that settle in for a moment. For my generation, we were just as far removed from a time with no legal age of consent as today is from the rise of DX.

You know what else we did in the Attitude Era? Think of every derogatory term you can think of aimed at the LGBTQ community, and we used it openly. Was it hurtful then? Yes. Did we care, or think about things in that way? No. But if something was different, “that’s gay.” If someone said something stupid, “you’re a fag.”

The world evolves. Mankind evolves. Wrestling evolves with it, and so do social norms and what is or isn’t acceptable.

Athletes are different now. There’s new science and new understanding of how to maintain or build the body. We see diverse athletes doing different things. People consume media differently. Tastes have changed. We live in a viral world where most people value moments over long-term storytelling.

So let’s take a look at what Max Caster said and compare it, just for argument’s sake.

Now, I won’t pretend to know the exact phrasing, but that’s not important. What’s important is that he used a tragedy for entertainment. He referenced an attack where at least 13 people were murdered and more than 300 were injured. These were innocent people. The strike hit King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, and TNA later apologized, removed the segment from replays and social media, and cut ties with Caster.

Where does that become entertainment?

You know what else happened just shy of 30 years ago? Columbine. I was a senior in high school when it happened, and I remember it vividly. It was a world where school shootings were not the norm. Sixteen dead. Twenty-three injured.

I lived through this. If Degeneration X or The Rock had come out in the wake of Columbine and used it for edgy heat, it would not have flown. The outrage would have been rule. In a world where we used terms like “fag” on a daily basis with no regard for anyone else, we still would not have allowed that.

So what makes what happened in Riyadh any different? Why am I seeing people try to defend what Caster said by using the Attitude Era as an example?

Let’s look side by side:

• Attitude Era: Columbine — 16 dead, 23 injured. Columbine would have gotten someone cancelled before cancelling was even a known thing.
• Today: The Riyadh airport attack — at least 13 dead, more than 300 injured.

We are supposed to be progressing as a world and as a species, making things better. In no world is this acceptable. But to pretend these comments would have flown in the Attitude Era is someone using it as an excuse for one reason or another. If you look at the pure numbers, 39 victims would have gotten someone cancelled before cancelling was a thing. More than 300 victims, and the response is “but the Attitude Era.”

Why? Because the attack wasn’t on American soil? Because the victims were mostly Muslim? What makes this different? I’m not judging. I’m genuinely asking.

But that’s not my whole point. It’s not just current issues and how we address them.

The music we listen to and how we obtain it is different.

Every major sport is different. Why do you hear endless debates about Jordan versus LeBron? Two different eras. Two totally different games. The game has evolved and become something different.

What was a catch in the NFL 30 years ago is no longer a catch.

You know what else I did in the Attitude Era? I went to Blockbuster Video, rented a VHS called UFC 1, and watched a one-night tournament where Royce Gracie beat three men — all in the same night, all in higher weight classes than Gracie.

Would that happen today? Shane Strickland is in the same weight class. Today, if someone said Strickland was going to fight Carlos Ulberg, only to then fight Alex Pereira and Ciryl Gane later that night, all within a two-hour span, we couldn’t fathom it.

Different world. Different time.

For today’s teenagers, Steve Austin and The Undertaker are what Bruno Sammartino and Lou Thesz were to my generation. Just look at the difference in presentation and what was and wasn’t acceptable then.

We need to quit comparing everything to the Attitude Era. The world is vastly different. No different than 30 years from now, in 2056, when I’m sure the art of wrestling will be much different than it is now. Austin and Undertaker will be nothing more than names from the past, an age of a bygone era, while names like Cody Rhodes will be revered for their contributions in much the same context as we view Steve Austin — as a defining part of his era.

The Enlightened Part

Here’s the thing: nostalgia is not a moral defense.

The Attitude Era gave us moments, characters, and memories that still matter. It gave a lot of us reasons to love this business. But loving something does not mean pretending it existed outside of its time. Wrestling has always been a mirror of the world around it, whether we like what the mirror shows us or not.

We don’t honor the past by dragging its worst instincts into the present. We honor it by understanding it, learning from it, and allowing the art form to grow. The Attitude Era was great for what it was. It is not a permission slip for what we do now.

Progress is not the enemy of wrestling. Forgetting where we came from is. But so is refusing to move forward.

The Fun Part

Now, on to a little fun, because I like to lighten things at the end.

So, just for shits and grins, I sat down and did a full list of my 25 all-time musical artists. I ran an algorithm that took into account my listening habits over the last six months, one year, two years, and five years.

Per “science and math,” here’s my top 25 musical artists of all time:

1. Counting Crows
2. Misfits
3. J. Cole
4. Gojira
5. Bad Religion
6. Cattle Decapitation
7. Descendents
8. Amyl and The Sniffers
9. Kendrick Lamar
10. Lorna Shore
11. Social Distortion
12. Whitechapel
13. Knocked Loose
14. The Chats
15. Dead Pioneers
16. Trivium
17. Escuela Grind
18. The Black Dahlia Murder
19. Prince
20. David Bowie
21. The Killers
22. Rapsody
23. Fleetwood Mac
24. Dead Kennedys
25. Mastodon

That list says a lot about me. Punk, metal, hip-hop, classic rock, deathcore, and a little Prince and Bowie to keep things civilized.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? Taste changes. Time changes. People change.

And so does wrestling.

Until the next smoke break, be excellent to one another.