10 Awesome Things You Don't Remember About WWE's Ruthless Aggression Era

1. The Weirdest Night in WWE Championship HistoryWWE.comOctober 7th, 2007 - the night of the No Mercy pay-per-view - was a strange time to be a WWE fan. WWE Champion John Cena had torn a pectoral and been forced to vacate the title only days beforehand, when he was due to defend it against Randy Orton in a Last Man Standing match that Sunday. That left WWE with no champion and no main event so who should step up, but a man desperate for more world title wins to add to his record? The show opened with Vince McMahon simply handing the title to Orton, but advising him that he€™d have to defend it that night. At that point, a babyface Triple H - who was already scheduled to face the Samoan Forklift Umaga that night - turned up and made the challenge, which heel Orton rejected. Triple H goaded McMahon into making the match regardless, starting immediately. Eleven minutes later, Triple H had won the WWE Championship - with a roll-up. That was the shape of things to come, because then the ruling came down that Triple H€™s match against Umaga would still be going ahead, but would now be for the title. He defeated the Samoan Lawnmower with a Pedigree to retain the WWE Championship in just over six minutes, only to be informed shortly afterwards that Orton was activating his rematch clause for that evening. The main event would see Orton vs Triple H for the WWE Championship in the Last Man Standing match that the fans had paid to see... just with Cena swapped out for the Game. How Orton had any kind of clause, rematch or otherwise, in a championship match contract that didn€™t exist is a question only a pretend lawyer can answer. Similarly, one wonders what McMahon intended the main event to be before Orton invoked this fictitious clause, as one would assume that the whole point of awarding the title at the beginning of the show was to safeguard the WWE Championship match for later that night by setting up a title match as the main event. Orton was successful in the main event, keeping Triple H down for a ten-count after a twenty minute battle. So nothing changed from the opening segment, then. Orton was still champion, Triple H still faced Umaga, but both Orton and Triple H notched up an extra WWE Championship win each. In the aftermath, Orton moved straight into contention with Shawn Michaels, while Triple H continued to feud with Umaga. Utterly baffling.