10 Forgotten WWE Matches That Came Right Before Iconic Moments
Get in, get out, then get out of the way...
The whole thing about never forgetting when you were when [insert generational moment here] happened only works if the particular event is as pivotal as any one individual believes it to be.
Your writer's broken brain relays everything to pro wrestling so can't help hearing a year without immediately thinking of some stupid WWE storyline that defined it within Vince McMahon's warped world. Not a clue what of interest was occuring in the early-2010s, but The Shield turned the company upside down when they rocked up at the end of the Survivor Series so 2012 looks like turtlenecks. 1998 gave rise to all sorts of counter-cultural movements the world over but the only one that matters here starts with glass breaking and ends with cans being guzzeld as JR screams about the magic unfolding. 2020 will be remembered for one powerfully dominant story - yep, you guessed it; Triple H colouring in Michael Cole's soul patch.
And so on.
WWE exists as an artform for public consumption to create moments. Either in matches, promos or vignettes, they'd be the spikes in the graphs if we were all wired up like Alex Delarge and forced to endure all three hours of a Raw on a big screen. And until Vince McMahon can actually get away with doing that these are the lulls that came right before everything briefly went mental. More hidden than gems, they are the run-ups and cool-downs before what we all came to see.
10. William Regal Vs Crash Holly - Shane McMahon Buys WCW (Raw, March 26 2001)
In an obviously very eventful edition of Monday Night Raw going head-to-head with Nitro for the very last time, William Regal had taken a presumably scripted potshot at the former competition that earned him a bit of blowback on the other channel from Tony Schiavone. This one remark from the future joyous uncle of AEW lingered longer in the memory than the Commissioner's brief brawl with Crash Holly.
As was the style at the time, the contest barely existed before it was broken up, in this case by Chris Jericho dressed as Doink to promote both the Gimmick Battle Royal and their Intercontinental Championship match at Sunday's WrestleMania X-Seven.
The famous McMahon/McMahon simulcast happened immediately afterwards as any memories of Regal and Holly beyond Jericho's humourous clowning were lost to time completely. Even that survives mostly as a result of Jericho's guiltily hilarious tale of a not-very-well-at-all Shawn Michaels not being able to reconcile that this was an angle rather than 'Y2J's next move. "I can't believe they made you Doink" was 'HBK's furious assessent before stumbling off to get into a blazing row with Triple H that wouldn't be rectified until he finally cleaned up several months later.
Busy night.