10 Things You Learn Re-Watching The First Ever Episode Of Raw Is War
WAR
Celebrating 25 Years of Monday Night Raw has resulted in one of the biggest productions the company has ever embarked upon. A legitimate multi-location live shoot for the first time since WrestleMania 2 and the first potential simulcast since Vince McMahon purchased WCW in 2001, this is a very big deal indeed. But even this doesn't feel quite as monumental as when Raw finally entered the War Zone.
Perceived as one of the most radical adjustments in company history when it debuted in March 1997, it wasn't just aesthetics that got a major revamp when Vince McMahon elected to aggressively drive his Monday night staple in a new direction to compete with WCW's runaway success story Monday Nitro.
The show-opening promos and diluted main events became staples of the broadcast, and outside of very minor stylistic alterations and the dreaded third hour addition from 2012 onwards, Raw has remained in this holding pattern ever since.
Though on the surface it appears little has changed from one Raw to the next during the monolithic tenure of the 'longest weekly episodic programme in television history' (or however WWE are phrasing it this week), a glimpse into the dynamic actions of a wholly different company 21 years ago reveals an uneven Road to WrestleMania and an organisation with risks to take and little left to lose.
Taking a trip back to the embryonic stages of the Attitude Era, here are 10 things you learn re-watching the first ever episode of Raw Is War.
10. War Zone
Rarely does WWE hit a home-run with a first swing, but the opening credits to the revamped Raw were absolutely sensational.
Soundtracked to Marilyn Manson's 'Beautiful People' (before licensing costs required a change to the equally outstanding in-house Thorn In Your Eye/All Together Now recordings for the show), the sight of Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ahmed Johnson and others marching into an abandoned warehouse for an apocalyptic brawl was jaw-dropping, and actually still tonally ahead of the product in March 1997.
Emblematic of the rise of 'The Rattlesnake' in particular in late-97, the credits opened the show with a frantic angst, revelling in the sense of anarchy gradually engulfing the main event combinations in the run-up to WrestleMania 13.
As Austin, Ahmed, Bret Hart, Sycho Sid, The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels traded blows in a ring literally on fire whilst bombs exploded in the background, WWE finally seemed to acknowledge the war they were comfortably losing, with the release of huge missiles symbolically denoting a long-awaited genuine fightback against WCW.