WWE In 1997 | Wrestling Timelines
26. March 10 | Charred To Beat
Raw is rebranded as ‘Raw Is War’. The new introduction is mind-blowing.
We are drawn to a derelict warehouse. Pyro blasts in and out of it as terrified civilians run away. Steve Austin struts into the scene, casually no-selling the bombs and the flames - and if they can’t scare him, what’s a human being going to do? Highlights of WWF action are interspersed with the warehouse scene, which ends as the top guys fight in a ring that is on f*cking fire.
Initially, shockingly, Marilyn Manson’s ‘The Beautiful People’ soundtracks this incredible scene before the WWF opts for a cheaper archive in-house composition: ‘Thorn In Your Eye,’ repurposed from the 1995 WWF Full Metal compilation album. It’s awesome. The new air raid siren, while on-the-nose, works to brilliant effect as a warning of imminent chaos. Hearing something close to blast beats on a WWF programme is an almost scary feeling for the preteen millennial fan. The Federation is darkening, becoming more alluring. The speed of the metal riff is something else, too; it’s not unlike ‘(sic)’ by Slipknot, except two (well, four) years early.
This bleeds into ‘We’re All Together Now’, a chest-pounding chug of meathead bliss, as the new set reveals itself. The new TitanTron looms over a steel ramp that will soon bruise the backs of the wrestlers as a strain of hardcore infects programming. The ropes are blood red, the ring skirt is black - aesthetic foreshadowing of the violence and danger to come. Sabu smashes himself through a table in an ECW invasion angle. If you stopped watching for a few months, you might as well have stopped for a decade.
The theme sounds like the dangerous stuff an elder sibling won’t let you hear. The WWF wants to be illicit and new and unsettling, which is hard to achieve when a team rebooted from the 1970s, the New Blackjacks, appears on the rebranded show. The aesthetic and the tone remain a strange bedfellows tag team.
As jaw-dropping as this new intro is, the show can’t yet deliver on the promise. It’s launched too early, almost, as if Vince knows the direction but does not yet have the map.