10 Most Crowd-Pleasing Victories In WWE History
3. "That'll Put Butts In Seats!" - WWE Raw 1999
The January 4, 1999 episode of Monday Night Raw was a taped show, in the can for about a week before it actually aired. On that broadcast, Mankind defeated The Rock to capture the WWE Championship.
It would be a monumental moment in the career of Mick Foley, the man under the mask, but it was nearly ruined by Eric Bischoff and a single, dismissive sentence from WCW commentator Tony Schiavone.
On the instruction of Bischoff, the voice of WCW revealed to fans that Foley would win the heavyweight title on Raw, looking to convince the audience to stay tuned rather than switching to the competition. It backfired, tremendously, as 600,000 fans switched from Nitro to Raw.
The connection wrestling fans had with Foley was so strong that the audience was willing to ignore WCW's live event to tune into a show that had been taped just to see their favourite wrestler achieve his lifelong dream of capturing WWE Championship gold.
The pure joy and elation on the face of Foley, under the brown leather Mankind mask, was worth it.
The win not only paid off the emotional roller coaster that had been Foley's career, it also proved a pivotal point in the Monday Night Wars, a death knell of sorts for the once-dominant WCW.