Chris Jericho sees plenty of great wrestlers today. What he doesn’t see is another roster filled with main-event stars who can touch the generation he came up with.
While speaking to The Sportster about why the Attitude Era and the years surrounding it remain so beloved, Jericho pointed to something he believes wrestling simply doesn’t have anymore: an absurd number of legitimate drawing attractions all operating at the top of WWE at the same time. And Jericho wasn’t talking about wrestlers who occasionally got booked in a main event. He meant stars who could actually draw.
“I think the biggest difference between this era and that era and I think you know if you throw in the 86 expansion those are probably your three biggest eras for pro wrestling in in in North America. I think what made if you want let’s say we want to call it the Attitude Era. Uh although it was kind of a little bit maybe the Ruthless Aggression, whatever you want to call it.”
Then he started naming names. Le Champion estimated WWE had around 12 legitimate top draws when he arrived in 1999, and he didn’t exactly struggle to find evidence.
“There was legit I mean when I got to the WWE, there was legit I’d say 12 legit top drawing main event stars. Not just guys who worked in the main event, top draws. Rock, Stone Cold, Undertaker, Mankind, Triple H, Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit. Um, and that’s just off the top of—Kane. There’s nine right there off the top of my head without even really thinking too much about it. There’s probably three or four others that that I could throw in there. Um, Big Show. That shows you there’s 10 right there.”
The Rock. Steve Austin. The Undertaker. Mick Foley. Triple H. Kurt Angle. Kane. Big Show. Jericho himself. And that’s before getting particularly deep into the roster. That’s where Jericho believes the comparison with today’s wrestling falls apart.
He made it clear that he isn’t knocking the talent currently working. If anything, modern wrestling potentially has more eyeballs available to it thanks to streaming and the number of platforms carrying the product. But great wrestlers and iconic main-event draws aren’t necessarily the same thing.
“Now listen there’s a lot of great talent in wrestling today but main event stars, main event draws, main event like almost iconic characters that are still super popular today because of that time frame, we we don’t have that now. You know, you have a lot more eyeballs maybe on it because of platforms and streaming, but if you look at the main event names, they can’t be touched.”
That’s a pretty enormous statement considering the names leading WWE and AEW in 2026. Jericho’s argument isn’t that wrestling stopped producing stars once the Attitude Era ended. It’s that his generation had an almost ridiculous concentration of them at exactly the same time.
There wasn’t one guy carrying everything. There were enough legitimate draws that Jericho could start listing them from memory, reach ten and still believe he’d forgotten several.
“So that’s probably why that era is so critically acclaimed and so and so um positively remembered because of just the name value of those stars that were all there at the same time.”
Nostalgia will always play some part in why wrestling fans obsess over previous generations. Jericho thinks this one has something considerably stronger behind it. In his eyes, today’s wrestling has plenty of talent and potentially more ways than ever for people to watch it. It just doesn’t have that collection of stars.
Do you agree with Chris Jericho that today’s main-event stars can’t touch the collection of draws WWE had during his era? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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