15 Most memorable moments in the history of Monday Night Raw
Monday Night Raw has been WWE’s flagship program since 1993 and is currently the longest running episodic television program in history, as WWE often likes to point out. Raw has come a long way since the first episode aired on January 11, 1993 and left us many indelible moments over the years.
From Stone Cold crashing The Corporations party with a beer bath to any one of Stephanie’s on-air weddings to Mick Foley winning his first WWE Championship, some of my fondest childhood memories are related to watching wrestling and especially Raw, since PPV’s weren’t broadcast on Indian television in those days.
Going through all the epic moments from Raw over the years, combing through them with a fine comb and selecting just the 10 best moments was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in a long time. I looked at various factors while making my final list like the surprise factor and impact and most importantly, how memorable the moment was while looking back.
With that out of the way, here are the top 15 moments in the history of Monday Night Raw.
15: Pillman’s got a gun
Brian Pillman and Steve Austin were good friends since their days at WCW, but in 1996 they were in the middle of an intense blood feud in the WWF which led to one of the most memorable and controversial moments in the history of Monday Night Raw.
At the time, Pillman was at home recovering from a legitimate broken ankle so WWE sent over cameras to do an interview on Raw. Unbeknownst to everyone involved, Stone Cold Steve Austin had gotten wind of the cameras heading to Pillman’s house and decided to drop in unexpectedly himself.
Austin showed up and beat up a whole load of Pillman’s friends who’d tried to stop him. The segment had a level of realism that wasn’t common for television at the time and especially not professional wrestling programming. After taking care of Pillman’s friends Austin moved on to try and break into the house. At the same time, cameras inside the house showed Pillman brandishing a gun to protect himself and his wife.
When Austin finally broke in the screen went black as Pillman pointed the gun at Austin while screaming as Austin was being restrained by other WWE officials, with Kevin Kelly yelling “Call the police!” behind him and Pillman’s wife crying on the sofa.
The whole scene had an air of chaos and a shock factor which was unique to wrestling at the time and can be seen as an early precursor to the Attitude Era that started around a year and a half later. WWE created shockwaves with the segment with many parents groups complaining and many individual parents writing in saying that their kids would never watch WWE programming again.
However, ratings only went up after the segment.