50 Greatest WWE Raw Moments Ever
18. Pillman's Got A Gun! (November 4th, 1996)
A key moment in the concurrent rises of both Monday Night Raw and Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1996, the night of Brian Pillman's home invasion foreshadowed brave new steps WWE were prepared to take in order to narrow the gap with the WCW Monday Nitro juggernaut crushing their product on a weekly basis.
It'd be forever in television terms before numbers reflected the shift, but many point to the powerful (and/or powerfully daft) scenes enacted at Pillman's actual house between the gun-toting 'Loose Cannon' and his former 'Hollywood Blondes' partner as critical turning point for Vince McMahon's attitude and philosophies for the fight ahead.
The sounds of smashing glass and smashed up foes would come to define Austin's entire run as a top babyface, and his Monday evening spent (literally) staring down the barrel of dire consequences mirrored his McMahon's newfound willingness to explore bold new avenues of Sports Entertainment. It was apology city the next day following complaints for the level of violence and bad language as opposed to the typical edition of Raw, but forgiveness rather than permission became the order of the day until the Network saw the uptick in numbers and simply stopped caring. The quality of the content almost didn't matter, though Pillman and Austin were two of the more credible ones to pull it off.