Curious on everyone’s picks, I know another thread had started listing their favorite moments and can include here as well.
Top 3 - BEST and WORST moments and/or matches in Raw history.
We will probably discuss some of them on Rewind-A-Raw this Monday night.
Best 3…
Best
Foley Wins the Belt from Rock
Even though he became something terrible, as a small kid I remember FREAKING out when 1-2-3 Kid pinned Razor Ramon
Jericho and Benoit vs. HHH and Austin (the quad tear match, though it is also just a hot match start to finish even without the historical significance.)
Worst
Old Day
Mae Young’s "hand"
Worst has to go to the infamous Diva’s Battle Royal of 2011, thank god women’s wrestling has come so far since then.
In no particular order:
Pipe Bomb! - led me down the rabbit hole of wrestling podcasts as ultimately to John and Wai
Rock Returns to host Mania - I think I’ve wrote this before but that took place on Feb 14 and my birthday is the 15th. I started Raw late that night so I was actually watching as it became my birthday and since the Rock has always been my all time favorite as a kid growing up in the late the 90s, this was an incredible birthday surprise. Must have watched it a dozen times that night on repeat
Undertaker returns on 2.21 to be upstaged by HHH - I think this was the week after Rock returned and the return of Taker followed by an even bigger surprise (with how it was presented it felt like the bigger return) and the simple stare up at the Mania sign created an awesome build. It felt so simple and so well executed.
Worst Raw Moments: any that included Vince being relieved of his duties, fired by the Board, or blown up entirely! As someone who likes to follow the WWE stock and business dealings, as well as somebody with common sense I always found it incredibly stupid to do those angles when he’s the CEO and Chairman of a public company. I liked seeing him get beat up, but outright written out of the company was a step too far
TOP 3 BEST -
WORST
Not necessarily the best RAW moments, but just a few off the of my head
Worst, probably everything involving Stephanie McMahon
Austin/Tyson
NXT destroy RAW
Trish/Lita main event
Vince millions BS
Vince ass kiss club
Vince Trish
(excluded previously mentioned bits)
Best
Worst
Best.
Worst
Punk pipe bomb…ushered in whiny entitled neckbeards making the company the heel instead of the performers and forever ruining anyone’s enjoyment if you want to talk about it online
Katie Vick
Any guest host not named Bob Barker, Mike Tyson and Betty White.
I only have two that come to mind, and I think they’re from the same RAW or at least very similar. The good is Cena beating Jericho in the Loser Leaves Town match, when Bischoff fires Jericho. This probably wasn’t a stellar match but I remember being a young mark watching my first handful of RAWs and this match really pulled at every heartstring. Cena was the underdog I cared about, Jericho was the meanie I wanted to get punished, and I just got such a massive payoff watching that. I cite it as one of the few things that turned me into a fan.
The worst is Shawn Michaels and Chris Masters in the Masterlock Challenge. I remember seeing this advertised - it was at a time where I was INTERESTED in wrestling but my mom wasn’t quite ready to let me watch it. I was so interested, like, “what the hell is a masterlock challenge I wanna see this” and then I saw it by sneaking behind my mother’s back, risking getting grounded, to see a lame boring guy putting another dude i didn’t know that well yet in a lame boring hold. Granted, Shawn made this segment about as entertaining as he could have, with all the energy and the flips and the work he did to try to break this hold. Still wasn’t good worth a damn.
Best
Wrestlers defect to ECW to destroy KANE/Jericho
Jericho Debut
Rock/Austin Sing together prior to fighting each other at WM
The bad memories have been erased forever
BEST
1: John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels in London in 2007 - still the best match in RAW history, and I was at ringside for it.
2: The Pipebomb - say what you will about Punk, but nothing had people talking for the longest time like that segment.
3: Ric Flair’s retirement - devalued a bit following his TNA run, but nothing felt more real or as emotional as this.
WORST
1: Katie Vick - though Kane is among the biggest fantasy characters there is, this whole deal was an utter farce - imagine any other wrestler as a murderer and a necrophiliac.
2: Trish Stratus being forced to bark like a dog - completely degrading to women. I know Trish ultimately got her revenge, but it exposed management’s view of women as subservient to men, and has aged even worse since.
3: Bayley’s This Is Your Life - the textbook in how to kill a surefire top babyface. This and the Kendo Stick match that followed buried Bayley six feet under, and she still hasn’t recovered, when any other regime on earth would have capitalised on her appeal and connection with the young female audience.
Best 3
Worst 3 (i’ve blocked a lot of the bad out)
I also just want to say I have fond memories of just watching Raw with my friends in the late 90s/early 00s. My parents were very generous and welcomed the group into their home every Monday night.
I have a good anonymous GM story. I had gotten back into WWE during the time of the Raw GM and would watch Raw, sometimes my wife would watch with me. Flash forward a year and a bit and she’s in labour with our first daughter. Our sister-in-law gets a message on her phone with the exact same alert tone as the GM and my wife, without missing a beat (and keep in mind, this is a good 7-8 hours into labour), calls out “we’ve received a message from the anonymous Raw general manager”!
It’s for this reason I can’t hate on the anonymous Raw GM.
BEST:
(1999/03/22) A truck load of Steve-weiser’s / Beer bath for the Corporation.
(1999/08/09) Millennium clock reaches zero / Y2J Debut.
(1999/01/03) Mankind wins his first WWF World Heavyweight Championship.
WORST:
(2001/03/26) “WWF Raw / WCW Nitro Simulcast” - The night wrestling changed forever.
(2012/07/23) “RAW 1000” - The 3 hour era begins.
(2017/05/29) “Bailey, This Is Your Life”
Best:
The Punk Pipebomb. Incredible angle which actually led me back into regularly watching RAW for a while and also led me to buying a few PPV’s. Had people at work, who had little-to-no interest in wrestling, talking about it. That’s a success in my book.
The RAW where the Radicals debuted. I had a low interest in WWF time (and wrestling in general) but I caught the Jan 31st 2000 RAW at my grand parents house and it hooked me again! All the intrigue surrounding the Radicals, the Dudley’s and Hardy’s table based antics, seeing how The Rock, Triple H and Kane had developed, it all had me enthralled. I was back on the WWF gravy train and great timing as 2000 is probably my all-round favorite year for WWF.
The Daniel Bryan/Bray Wyatt cage angle. How incredible is this? It just amazes me. The story was perfect. The moment where Daniel removes his Wyatt jumpsuit to reveal his own gear? Goosebumps. Refusing to take the Sister Abigail? Goosebumps. Leading the ‘Yes!’ chant on top of a cage? Goosebumps. Also it led me to regularly watching RAW for Wrestle Mania 30 (coincidentally, also for the last time). Are you seeing a pattern emerging here?
Worst:
RAW goes 3 hours. A nail in the coffin of my regular RAW viewing. Long, drawn out episodes with little substance, following the stale WWE TV formula.
Can a story line be a moment? As the whole Invasion debacle through me off WWF until I heard about the Smackdown Six in late 2002. The RAW where ECW debuted then immediately joined WCW on the same show baffled me. I was a massive ECW fan and seeing the rebel ‘third’ promotion get slumped in with the DubyaSeeDubya jobbers, really boiled my piss. Their handling of the story was terrible and my decline in WWF fandom started there.
The handling of Daniel Bryan after WrestleMania 30. They had me and then they quickly lost me, and I haven’t gone back. Sticking Daniel Bryan in a schlock filled feud with Kane was it for me. Remember when Daniel and Brie were trying to escape Kane in the car? Woof. What a way to make your courageous, underdog champion look weak and cowardly. I couldn’t bare to watch any more after that. I was done and haven’t watched a full episode since.
I don’t know if this can be called the “best” moment all things considered, but Daniel Bryan’s retirement speech was one of the greatest non-wrestling segments I’ve ever seen.
Favorite matches are Flair/Perfect, Bret/1-2-3 Kid and Mankind/Rock on Jan. 4, 1999.
Some of the worst that come to mind are the Bayley “This Is Your Life” thing, the Old Day bit, Lavar Ball, and any Bray Wyatt promo from at least the last 18 months or so. These are all recent… I consider it a blessing that I’ve missed a lot of Raw since 1999 or so and that I have a pretty short memory when it comes to the negative stuff.
3 Best Moments:
Mankind defeats The Rock for the WWF Title 1/4/99 - The crowd was electric when Austin’s music hit, and Foley won the title. I thought Michael Cole really put over the moment on commentary as well.
Austin Attacks Bret Hart in an Ambulance 4/21/97 - This is a special moment to me, since it was one of the first times I really remember “marking out” as a kid. This also solidified my fandom for Stone Cold growing up.
Undertaker/Brock Lesnar Locker Room Clearing Brawl 7/20/15 - I thought this was a unique angle in the normally stale 3 hour Raw era. One of the few times in the last couple of years where I marked out.
3 Worst Moments
Katie Vick 10/21/02 - Not much more needs to be said here. A tasteless storyline during the beginning stages of the decline of the wrestling business.
Rob Bartlett’s Commentary - Various Early Raws, 1993 - I’ve recently gone back and watched a few of the first couple episodes of Raw. Rob Bartlett’s commentary is so bad he makes the episodes almost unwatchable. He was a horrible experiment.
Raw’s Entire Year of 2009 - This was right in the middle of the Guest Host Era. It was one of the few times I checked out of wrestling entirely. The only bright spot was Randy Orton as a sadistic heel punting Vince McMahon early in the year.
Best 3
Mick Foley winning the World Title from the Rock
The first time Stone Cold gave the stunner to Vince McMahon and the crowd reaction when he was "arrested"
DX invading Monday NItro
Worst 3
Katie Vick
Mae Young giving birth to a "hand"
Vince McMahon making fun of JR having surgery
Best:
Worst: (to many to list)