50 Greatest WWE Raw Moments Ever
31. Dumpster Ride (February 2nd, 1998)
Far more than just a high-impact stunt emblematic of the time, the New Age Outlaws' assault on Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie was a landmark moment for Monday Night Raw as the show within the show came to an abrupt halt at the scale of the carnage.
It was in many ways a line the company took years to step back from, but the reactions of the roster, boss Vince McMahon, and fellow sh*t-stirrers D-Generation-X to the massive push sold the attack as a transcendent moment as Mick Foley and Terry Funk were scraped out of the receptacle. Never had the show taken the stance of "none of this is real, except this, this is real..." so transparently, but firsts are typically always effective in wrestling, and the event screeching to a halt to try and manage the ramifications of the brutality categorically had the desired impact. Two powerful pay-per-view main events (and another epic post-WrestleMania Raw rematch) were built by the crime scene it it was just the latest step on the ladder for an Outlaws unit racing to the top.
Typical of Vince Russo's style, Foley and Funk would return "from the hospital" at the end of the very same episode, but the trivialisation of the scene has thankfully been lost to time in the euphoria of Dogg and Gunn's heinous strike.