{"id":20542,"date":"2018-07-03T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T13:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=20542"},"modified":"2018-06-25T12:55:30","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T17:55:30","slug":"the-unpopular-opinion-ruthless-aggression-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2018\/07\/03\/the-unpopular-opinion-ruthless-aggression-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unpopular Opinion: Ruthless Aggression: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0Coming off the cusp of the Attitude Era, WWE was the biggest remaining promotion in America after they bought out their competitions WCW (World Championship Wrestling) and ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) in 2001. However, as the times change, the culture changes and WWE was in need of a change within their superstars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0After the buyout, WWE was able to scoop up some of the top free agents on the market that were ex-WCW and ex-ECW wrestlers. However, some of those big names were aging, while some of the fresh faces were stepping in and striving to be on top.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0In this column, we will dive into what some including myself call the greatest era in professional wrestling history. \u00a0An era that lasted an upwards of 6 years. The last era as of this moment to have been broadcasted at the TV-14 rating.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0This era was a changing of the guard and showcased the younger stars that would become some of the biggest stars in WWE history. Stars like John Cena, Randy Orton, Batista, Brock Lesnar, Edge, Eddie Guerrero and many more. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0We also will delve into the first brand expansion and its importance to this era in professional wrestling. The first brand expansion created and impacted the scene of WWE leading to the development of future talents on each brand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0I got into wrestling around 2003 and now for over 15 years, I have sat in front of my television every Monday night for Raw and from Thursday, Friday and now Tuesday for SmackDown. \u00a0Before I was connected to wrestling on social media, I had to wait for the next episode of Raw or SmackDown to continue the story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"20559\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2018\/07\/03\/the-unpopular-opinion-ruthless-aggression-introduction\/attachment\/jbl_as_wwe_champion\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/JBL_as_WWE_Champion.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"1000,662\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"JBL_as_WWE_Champion\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/JBL_as_WWE_Champion.jpg\" class=\"  wp-image-20559 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/JBL_as_WWE_Champion.jpg\" alt=\"JBL_as_WWE_Champion\" width=\"484\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/JBL_as_WWE_Champion.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/JBL_as_WWE_Champion-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/JBL_as_WWE_Champion-768x508.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 484px) 100vw, 484px\" \/>\u00a0 \u00a0In the era before DVR and online streaming became a part of households worldwide, you had to watch Raw and SmackDown or you would miss a key part of the ongoing storylines. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0I am not saying the Ruthless Aggression was perfect because no era in wrestling ever was perfect. However, the amount of stars and future world champions that came from this era is astronomical.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0The way WWE transitioned from the \u201cAttitude Era\u201d to the \u201cRuthless Aggression Era\u201d changed the way most people view professional wrestling to this day. There was no era that brought more importance to the in-ring ability of the wrestler. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0In professional wrestling, you have to talk a big game, however, in this era it brought the importance back to storytelling in the ring. Meaning using what you do in the ring tells the story between you two without words.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0 \u00a0So, let us go through piece by piece to truly understand why people other than myself label the \u201cRuthless Aggression Era\u201d was the great era in professional wrestling history.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As a s<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">idenote: We cannot deny the impact that Chris Benoit made during the Ruthless Aggression Era. However, in this series there will only be brief mentions of him because of his deplorable actions in 2007 that forever changed the world of wrestling. We are not celebrating nor forgetting his significance in this era.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>David Jacobus<\/strong><br \/>\nIntern<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0Coming off the cusp of the Attitude Era, WWE was the biggest remaining promotion in America after they bought out their competitions WCW (World Championship Wrestling) and ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) in 2001. However, as the times change, the culture changes and WWE was in need of a change within their superstars. \u00a0 \u00a0After [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":20558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2104,2109,3,2138],"tags":[2617,2141,1384,2618,2619,2646,772,2173],"class_list":["post-20542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-opinion","category-tartan-news","category-wrestling","tag-david-jacobus","tag-online-exclusive","tag-opinion","tag-raw","tag-smackdown","tag-the-unpopular-opinion","tag-wrestling","tag-wwe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/EddieandBenoitWMXX.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-5lk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20562,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20542\/revisions\/20562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}