>This started at the tail end of May, but a series of segments every RAW was for opening the curtain for Mick Foley and his shoot backstory, which also worked into kayfabe, though still performing as Mankind, starting from his childhood, to how he got inspired to enter the business, acknowledging his previous personas (Cactus Jack and Dude Love), and his specialty in hardcore wrestling, at the very end he clawed JR to, which was based, this was supposed to be his face turn btw, as from this point on his opponents are heels
>Speaking of Mankind, there's this ongoing story of him trying to be Austin's new Tag partner after HBK gets injured, all done in his own creepy way of course, even complete with a sign of 'PICK ME AUSTIN", absolutely hilarious stuff
>KOTR 1997 was mostly a slog to watch through, 0/10 would not do again, this is a full length PPV lasting 3 and a half hours, there are only really two quality matches , Hunter vs Mankind (they'll have better matches much later),and Austin vs HBK, otherwise, this was dreadful, in the former, Mankind got a very good ovation from the fans during his match.
>Paul Bearer is letting out is obnoxious side so much more now that he has Taker with him thanks to the blackmail or whatever, Taker only lasted a month before he finally got that sick of him, Kane finally got namedropped for the first time along with Taker's supposed backstory

>It's really is striking me now that the Hart Foundation is literally just The Bloodline but Canadians, they even have that one "outsider" thats just there for the ride (Pillman/Sami), holds most of the gold, a good portion of the show is dedicated to them, way
>Something interesting is actually being done with the Undertaker here, him being forced to realign back with Paul Bearer because of some "secret" that must not be revealed, it actually allows him to have an exploitable weakness for once instead of the seemingly near-invincibility that defined his gimmick
>I failed to mention him last time but one guy getting a push in this period is Ahmed Johnson, 6'5" huge jacked nigga that was getting good crowd reaction, probably the most popular guy not in the main event scene, doesn't really have that much of a personality aside from intimidating badass, kind of like Stone Cold but nowhere near as good in the mic, and his in-ring is just okay, slow and plodding like most wrestlers in this period.
>Something that was really hitting the Attitude Era vibes was Farooq (Ron Simmons) straight up playing the race card about how there had never been a black WWF World Champ at that point and even bringing up a lot of real life black grievances into his promos as a motivation into becoming the first one, and it resulting to Vince, The Undertaker, and Ahmed no-selling that shit in response

finally got around to watching old WWF stuff since current WWE sucks ass right now, decided to start from the post-mania RAW (March 24) to the April 28th episode, I don't want to go head first into full-blown attitude era just yet, I wanna see the transition, also wanna see Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels in their prime too since they both are no longer active by 1998

im a PG baby and was literally not alive to see this for myself, i got no nostalgia glasses, so lets se how it was like back then

>the biggest angle of this period is the Austin-Hart Foundation blood feud, very kino and is practically the only thing worth watching RAW for, by this point, Stone Cold is at his prime and is already the WWFs most popular guy judging by crowd response, anti-american heel Bret is so good as well, he can actually be amazing on the mic and at playing a character when he's not just the "I wrestle really good" guy that he was for most of the New Gen era, I'm also pretty sure about a solid third of every RAW is dedicated to this one angle, with frequent segments peppered each episode, its so unlike modern day RAW/SmackDown where every angle is neatly given its own little segment or two, it does make it feel like its a live developing story, rather than the structured format of today.
>Downside is, anything other than the world title scene or the biggest angles are POORLY, poorly developed. the midcard and lowcard is extremely grim, the wrestlers are barely given or any time to promo or to show off any character, the most they are getting is a subpar, thrown-together match for 5 minutes, this is something modern WWE does much better by giving midcarders the necessary screentime to show off
>worst still, since this is New Generation, the undercard is mostly bad, dimeless cartoon gimmicks performed by people knowing they aren't moving anywhere up the card and are clearly just there to cash a check, neither the crowd or the performers give a shit.