50 Greatest WWE Raw Moments Ever
30. Batista Brutalises Ric Flair (February 25th, 2019)
There's a special quality to any WWE angle/story/match/anything in 2019 that's actually good, because the system around it would do everything possible to make it bad.
That was almost the case with the Batista/Triple H WrestleMania 35 feud. The pair had a stinker of a match at the 'Show Of Shows', thanks mostly to the ego of 'The Game' and the untenable length of the supercard before the pandemic mercifully broke it up over two nights. And by the time they hit the ring, some of the story had been through the social media meat-grinder - a strange promo exchange made a meme of Big Dave thanks to him constantly screaming for Hunter to give him what he wanted despite everything he was after already being on the table.
The opening angle was fortunately so strong that people were mostly willing to wave the rest away. Appearing without an invite to the Ric Flair 70th Birthday celebration on the February 25th edition of Raw, Batista brought his actual acting chops with him in a legitimately scary heel turn that was at least produced to maximise the terror rather than...well, rather than how WWE shot just about everything else.
Shots "caught" Dave commandeering another helpless cameraman to come and shoot the violence he'd wrought in sinister secret. He burst into Flair's dressing room not to cartoonishly do the damage but simply reveal it. Dragging a badly beaten 'Nature Boy' out by his blazer collar before delivering a cold scream down a lens he was holding hostage, the former Evolution monster was instantly the most dangerous figure in WWE's universe