Around homecoming, there's been a lot of talk of eras. Some memorable ones include the Stone Cold Era, The Deadman Era, The Rock era, ECW era, Monday Night Wars era, etc... Some not-sp-memorable ones include the David Arquette era and The WOW era. Now this begs the following questions. 1. What is an era" 2. What makes a good/memorable era"

As I go along, I'll try to answer these questions.

Dictionary.com defines an era as "A period of time characterized by particular circumstances, events, or personages." So as such any length of time could be an era as long as there's some common event underlying the entire period of time. For instance, there was an era when Eddie Guerrero was WWE champion. There was also an era when Kane was champion.

A misconception is that eras have to be a long length of time. This is wrong. An era could be really small. But these eras don't serve any specific purpose. For instance, "the era in which Earl Hebner, Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon together screwed Bret Hart" does exist, but it doesn't really serve us any purpose. And as such doesn't make sense to mention.

And so we will only consider eras which last about a month or longer, because in these eras you can accomplish a significant progress in your promotion. Sure, the significant improvements come in the form of moments, but it is the cumulative effects of these moments that make your promotion popular with the fans.

And so we define an era as a sizeable amount of time in which a wrestling promotion may or may not provide some memorable moments which may cumulatively lead to the success or failure of the promotion in the eyes of the fans. If the promotion succeeds in providing something memorable then it succeeds, if not then it fails.

So we have also defined a memorable era. This leads to the definition of a successful promotion as a promotion which provides as many memorable moments for the fans to remember.

So is the WWE successful" How successful are they" Is there a yardstick to measure them by"

Answer to question 1 is yes. The WWE has provided us with a lot of memorable moments in the past and they continue to do so constantly. How successful depends on the yardstick by which you measure the success of the eras. Are the WWE as successful now as the Hogan era or the Austin era" No. Are they as successful as the David Arquette era of WCW" That they are and are actually much more successful than that.

So the point of this article, though ended rather abruptly focuses on this.

Here we are, as fans, as critics, as promoters, as haters, as marks, as wrestlers at the threshold of a new era. An era of USA Network. This marks an important transition for RAW, WWE and the world. This era could be successful or it can fail depending on what Vince plans for us and for his company.

Also, this marks my comeback... As Bischoff's theme goes, "I'm back!!! And better than ever"

by Rohit Ramnath..