10 Most Exciting Run-ins In WWE History
Stone Cold Steve Austin: Interference runner extraordinaire.
This past week on Monday Night Raw, we saw not one but two run-ins during Roman Reigns’ match with Kevin Owens.
First, it was Seth Rollins who entered the fray, jumping Owens to force a disqualification—though Mick Foley would soon overturn the result. The match was then restarted, but this time it was the turn of Rusev to stick his nose where it didn’t belong, distracting Reigns to allow Owens to capitalise and hit the pop-up powerbomb for the victory.
Now, more often than not, shenanigans like these can ruin a match. Here though, that wasn’t quite the case as the interferences helped to further two separate angles heading into the Clash of Champions pay-per-view.
Still, these instances were nothing on some of the examples we’ll be seeing over the course of this list, because over the years WWE has managed to deliver a handful of truly awesome run-ins.
When executed at the right time, for the right reasons and, most crucially, in the right manner, outside interference has the potential to produce some of the more exciting moments in history - as the following ten instances will likely illustrate.
10. Kurt Angle (Survivor Series 2001)
There may well be a little personal bias shining through in this one, or rather the bias of my 9-year-old self, who was totally and utterly invested in the 2001 Invasion angle.
With the benefit of hindsight (not to mention a better grasp of how wrestling storylines work), the Invasion angle now doesn’t quite look as great as I once remembered it.
Even so, that doesn’t change the fact that at the 2001 Survivor Series, in the all-or-nothing Winner Take All match, Kurt Angle provided us with a memorable run-in when he turned his back on the Alliance and came home to Team WWF.
Having earlier been eliminated from the ten-man match-up, Angle would return in the contest’s closing stages, batter his supposed partner Stone Cold Steve Austin with the WWF Championship and allow the Rock to capitalise to score the win for Team WWF.
For the stakes involved - in kayfabe, of course - and the crowd’s reaction to Angle’s actions, this will always be remembered in my mind as one of WWE's more exciting run-ins. Plus, it was very much helped by Paul Heyman’s misguided, famous last words of “thank God, here comes Kurt” just seconds before the backstabbing went down.