>>10005974The difference between the Reign of Terrors is that despite how terrible HHH's reign was, he put Benoit and Batista over. Batista was their most-over face for a year before Cena really caught on.
The other thing is that we had JR telling us he's cheating and being a dick. All the commentators today get amnesia the moment Roman wins and assume he won clean. It's weird as shit. And that's not to say Roman doesn't have clean wins but after the first year they kind of slowed down on all of that and gave us repeat finishes.
As for the thread, contrived spots. There's another thread on the board of great finishes and it's fucking incredible how guys took simple shit and made it work. Especially Shawn Michaels, who people like to say is their inspiration, he got so much out of the smallest of moves. His superkicks always looked like it was fucking over. He didn't have to put some goofy face in front of the hard cam for a minute. He had the right body language for it. I don't know if I'm explaining it right, but today, guys either do way too much or make it obvious they're doing a spot. Back then, even if something fucked up (Cena had a couple of finishes in that thread that still looked good), it looked like it meant something. Guys fought to win the match. Today, they just want to "Fight" to do cool spots and get a Twitter pop.
tl;dr. 2000's was a dead-period, but honestly had more soul than today. Even if the talent today is technically better.
