10 Reasons No Way Out 2001 Is WWE's Greatest February PPV Ever

9. Raven: Hardcore Champion

The Hardcore Championship is one most fans look back at as a joke, thanks to frequency with which it changed hands late in its existence. The title up for grabs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it was contested everywhere from Madison Square Garden to a kids play place. It made for entertaining television but, after a few months, the concept became watered down and the vignettes in which it starred suffered as a result. Along came Raven and reinvigorated the title. He was such a smart worker, as cerebral a performer as anyone else of his generation, and he understood how to take the most basic of segments and add a twist to them that. See the opening match of the 2001 No Way Out pay-per-view, where he entered as Hardcore champion and proceeded to bump around from Big Show, the champion that had run into a brick s***house in the form of The World's Largest Athlete. He mastered getting his ass kicked and, in the process, even lost the title. That happened to everyone at that time. Crash Holly became as over as he eventually became because he would get beat up, lose the title, and slide right back in at the nick of time to regain it. Essentially rendering the entire ordeal meaningless. Raven did regain the title, but rather than lobbying to retain it, he lost it a second time. It did nothing to hurt his heat because he knew exactly what to do to get it back. He always did. He was constantly one step ahead of the booking and during his time as Hardcore champion, the title regained some of its long lost credibility.