10 Great WWE Raw Matches That Came From Out Of Nowhere
PPV quality showdowns on WWE's flagship, from seemingly out of nowhere...
It's kind of the norm these days to have long, competitive matches take place on free television, especially on WWE's flagship show, Monday Night Raw. When you have three hours of time to fill and an ever-thinning roster you kinda need to have the workhorses go out there and eat up twenty minutes or so from time to time.
Turn on Raw today and (even if the show as a whole isn't particularly inspiring) odds are you're going to get a long, competitive match featuring the likes of Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Neville, Cesaro, Seth Rollins, Chris Jericho, John Cena and co.
Back in the day, when WWE TV was primarily used as a means to promote pay-per-views (where the really big matches took place), you would typically have shorter matches, many of which were outright squashes. Even in the first few years of Raw's existence, you wouldn't typically see a match go over fifteen minutes.
And rarely, if ever, was a match that did between two top-tier stars. Just didn't happen.
Sometimes, though, a great match just came out of nowhere. It wasn't built up over a period of weeks and nobody expected it to tear the house down, but it came out PPV quality. That continued to happen with more frequency as the years went on, as the demands of the audience and the changing industry force it.
The following are ten such matches, great WWE Raw matches which came from out of nowhere.
10. TLC IV - Raw Roulette (2002)
WWE Raw was all about 'car crash television' for much of 2002/03, and car crashes don't come much bigger than a four team TLC match. This one came about on a themed 'Raw Roulette' episode of the show, where Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff would determine match types by spinning a giant (gimmicked) wheel.
It was set early in the show that World Tag Team Champions Kane & The Hurricane would defend their titles in a TLC main event, also featuring the teams of Bubba Ray & Spike Dudley, Chris Jericho & Christian and Rob Van Dam & Jeff hardy.
Unfortunately, everyone's favourite superhero didn't make it to the ring after being attacked backstage by Triple H and Ric Flair, so the Big Red Machine had to go it alone. Not that it seemed to matter to much, as Kane was doing just fine until he was zonked with some steel DIY equipment and put through a table by a monster Jeff Hardy legdrop off the top of the ladder.
That was the tip of the iceberg, really, as this match featured more breathtaking high-risk stunts than just about any other in memory. Other standout moments include a Van-Terminator, a ladder-assisted Walls of Jericho and a chokeslam from the top of the ladder.
Kane won the match to retain the straps single-handedly for him and his fallen partner. It was an incredible tour-de-force but, unfortunately, not everyone came out unscathed. While all men were probably moving a little slower the next day, Bubba Dudley received the worst of it in the form of a rather severe concussion.
Watching the match back, however, he probably felt it was worth it.