10 Most Shocking WWE Raw Manhattan Centre Moments
Supoib!
Start spreadin' the news - to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Monday Night Raw, WWE are going back to where it all began.
Running the beautiful upper deck of the Manhattan Center in stereo with a show at Brooklyn's Barclay's Center, WWE will present something resembling a simulcast for the first time since the flagship show crushed Monday Nitro and WCW wholesale in March 2001.
WWE have a jagged history with these sorts of occasions. Raw XV in 2007 and Raw's 1000th episode in 2011 were both enjoyable feasts of nostalgia and pay-per-view level in-ring action. 2002's Raw X however, was an unmitigated disaster. Self-serving in the extreme, the Hollywood awards show format under-delivered on action, drama, comedy and romance.
Typical of present day WWE, this celebration will be their biggest and brightest yet, with fan intrigue growing around how they'll utilise the vintage venue in an era of shiny floors and L.E.D doors.
For most of Raw's maiden year and one glorious 1997 return, the Center's Grand Ballroom played host to countless memorable moments and matches that turned up the WWE's traditionally muted Monday night volume.
Ensuring Raw became Prime Time Wrestling's modernised replacement and not an inferior low-rent retread, the angles and activities lived up to the 'Uncut. Uncooked. Uncensored' hype Vince McMahon thrust endlessly upon his typically unsuspecting audience.
10. A Perfect Start
Raw's first episode of was a hearty dose of WWE television that largely mirrored the way the product had been presented since 1984's grand expansion. The locale was in fact the one glaring difference.
The ballroom's audience was small but perfectly formed, in stark contrast to increasingly indifferent arena crowds that somehow made the whole product feel bloated yet empty. Though the jobber squashes and Bobby Heenan commentary didn't veer too far from the company's formula, the setting freshened the facade.
It wasn't until episode 2 where the chaotic potential of the show shone through. After Randy Savage was decked before the opening credits, Mr Perfect was assaulted by a raging Ric Flair at the climax of his contest with Terrific Terry Taylor. It triggered a heated war that the pair agreed to settle in a Loser Leaves WWE match on the following week's broadcast.
And a fine finale to a frantic feud it was. A night removed from the Royal Rumble (though actually taped a week prior), the pair engaged in an absorbing brawl to pay off their fractured relationship at Flair's original run with the organisation. Just one of 'The Nature Boy's excellent WWE displays, it concluded Raw's first success story.