10 Best Non-Attitude Era WWE RAW Moments

10. The Perfect Debut

Forget X-Pac, about the only act to emerge scathed from an era that otherwise lionises everything.

There is little justice in wrestling. If there were, Sean Waltman would be remembered as the 1-2-3 Kid—the revolutionary performer who influenced WWE from both an action and personnel standpoint. He also held sway over the man who contracted his services. If you couldn’t work a good match with the big-bumping, sympathetic Kid, you couldn’t work a good match.

His victorious May ’93 debut as the 1-2-3 Kid was ingenious. He didn’t even debut as the 1-2-3 Kid here. Randy Savage mocked Vince on commentary. “What’s the Kid’s name this week?” he asked. “The Cannonball Kid,” Vince replied. ‘L. KID’ was emblazoned on his tights, but he was born a new star.

The jobbers never defeated the stars; jobbers were jobbers, and stars were stars. Since most WWE acts fall somewhere between each of those designations now, you’ll not see anything like this, the Kid’s sensational overnight switch, ever again.

It was executed so brilliantly that Razor Ramon’s aura intensified, if anything. He beat the piss out of Waltman here so disrespectfully, so viciously—with full-force slaps, Olympian throws and gruesome contortion—that Kid’s victory was far-reaching in its catharsis and influence.