10 Great WWE Raw Matches From The Original Brand Split

In the early days of the Raw brand split, the Intercontinental Championship was retired. For a brief time, both Raw and Smackdown were without secondary titles, but soon, cooler heads prevailed. Both the Intercontinental and United States Titles were brought back, and the competition for both belts was soon thick once again.

Heading into the fall of 2003, Christian was the champion. He successfully defended the belt against Chris Jericho and Rob Van Dam in a triple threat match at Unforgiven, but the following week on Raw, he went one-on-one against RVD in a ladder match (apparently, there were a lot of ladder matches in those days).

The bout was a worthy successor to the Eddie Guerrero-RVD match from a year earlier, and both men pushed the envelope even further. Van Dam nailed a somersault plancha to the outside on Christian as the champion held the ladder, and later, Christian nailed RVD with a reverse DDT off of the ladder.

Finally, RVD redeemed himself from the previous bout, hitting the Five Star Frog Splash from the top of the ladder, then climbing back up to get the belt.