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Dive back into the year 2004 and explore the most memorable and shocking moments from WWE Raw. From controversial storylines to groundbreaking matches, relive a pivotal year in wrestling history.
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00:002004 is such a mad WWE year to look back on because every day seemed to give us something
00:05different. I mean, the rise of Chris Burnwell to the world title is now impossibly hard to look
00:08back on for obvious reasons, but it's also when Brock Lesnar decided he was going to leave the
00:13company. Those two are somewhat connected. It kind of opened the door for other superstars to
00:17step into the limelight. WWE was still obsessed with pushing the envelope, which resulted in some
00:21terrible TV too. And really, it's just one big hangover from the attitude era. What do we do?
00:26Who do we push? And what direction are we heading in? There's a lot more we can take from 2004
00:30as
00:30well, though. Hello, my friends. I have watched this a lot. And I am Simon Miller. Let's see where
00:34we were at. Number 10, the game-changing main event. So it's totally fair to say that the women's
00:39division in 2004 was not being treated in the right way. A lot of the stories for the females
00:43were terrible, which is why Trish Stratus and Lita main eventing Raw was absolutely massive.
00:48It was the 6th of December, so it just snuck in, and it is historic. It's mad WWE took forever
00:53to
00:53finally change this, but at least it was something. Trish and Lita went out there and put in the work.
00:57It's kind of funny to watch now because it's likely not of the level you'd expect from today,
01:01but that's the whole point. You need the OGs to walk so that those after can run. You have to
01:05figure
01:06that they would still find back against all this backstage too. Some women in 2004 were being told
01:11that they weren't allowed to punch each other. So to get on the main event of Raw, I mean, that
01:15is such
01:15a massive 180. You do have to watch it through the eyes of the time, though, but still. No one
01:19else even
01:20came close to this, and that is why they are legends. They fought for what we have right
01:24now, and thank goodness they did. Some of the other choices that we made this year were utterly
01:28horrific. Number 9. The absolute bizarreness of the bad blood pay-per-view. Now look, this show is
01:32indeed main evented by Triple H and Shawn Michaels' inner hell, inner cell, so it's not all bad. And you
01:37also see Randy Orton versus Shelton Benjamin for the WWIC Championship, which is a decent match.
01:42And the very strange Chris Jericho versus Tyson Tonko. 2004, WWE really wanted to push Tonko.
01:47Somehow, a lot of resistance were even on this event, which goes to show you how old it is.
01:51And in the pre-show, Batista defeated Maven. So you can kind of see all the pieces of the
01:55future coming together. What will really make your eyebrow raise, and we are going to talk
01:58about Eugene later, is that slap bang in the middle of this, looking in at 7 minutes and 38 seconds,
02:03is Eugene taking on and defeating Jonathan Coachman. That's why the Jonathan Coachman who was on commentary.
02:09Just to give you an idea of how this was received, some people rated it a whopping 0 out of
02:1310 stars.
02:14And after a few minutes, an unknown woman in a bikini walks to the ring, and she wants to give
02:19everybody some cookies. Jonathan is into this, and he says,
02:22Hi Eugene, maybe you would like a sugary sweet. When of course, this woman lords Eugene out of the
02:26ring, and Coachman slammed Eugene's head into a cookie tray. I'd love to be making this up.
02:31All of it did happen in 2004, and I saw it with my own eyes. Eventually, Lance Cade comes out
02:35to
02:35join in the shell again as well. And yes, naturally, he's holding a stuffed animal,
02:39which had sentimental value to Eugene. So because Cade was a heel, he ripped up said animal.
02:44Cade and Coachman were then going to beat up Eugene, but of course, because they are the heels,
02:48eventually they ran into each other, which allowed Eugene to hit the rock bottom of people's elbow
02:51to get the one, two, three. So I just kind of felt like it needed to be in this list.
02:55When you are binge watching, and all of a sudden you get into a match like this,
02:58you kind of stare off into the distance and ask yourself, am I actually choosing to use this
03:02wonderful thing called life to its most beneficial? And the argument with this is probably no.
03:07It was one of the worst things I'd ever seen. But to be fair, it did make me go,
03:10well, I wonder what Dave Meltzer thought about it in the Wrestling Observer newsletter,
03:13and he just didn't bother to rate it because he thought it was terrible.
03:16Kind of sums it up. 8. We didn't really use Shelton Benjamin properly
03:20Anytime you mention this, people will refer to Shelton Benjamin's mic skills. For starters,
03:24they were more than fine, but it's also 2004, so you could say the same about one Brock Lesnar,
03:29but we went and put Paul Heyman with him. Not saying that Heyman should have been paired with
03:32Shelton, but there would have been other options. He was just such a great athlete,
03:36and could do such amazing stuff in the ring that he was deserving of a proper push.
03:40Even when he left the tag team division, he continued to fly,
03:42and those matches against Triple H and Chris Jericho from 2004 absolutely rule.
03:47One of those with Jericho happened on Cyber Sunday too,
03:49when Shelton won the IC title after the fans voted for it,
03:52and that should have been enough to tell management,
03:54er, we better go and do something. Now he did actually hold that belt for 244 days,
03:58so maybe it's fairer to say it's what didn't happen in 2005 that derailed him,
04:02but it also felt like the opportunity was there, and Vince McMahon didn't see it. I mean,
04:06it's his show, I suppose, but it does feel like a mistake. I mean, look at the 2025 world,
04:10Benjamin is kicking ass simply because match quality is of such importance. All we had to
04:14do was copy that 20 years ago, but we did not. I do want to point out Shelton Benjamin has
04:19still
04:19had a great career. He has been busy essentially forever. If you want to go back to that 2004 period,
04:25don't you tell me we didn't kind of hold him back a little bit.
04:277. The difficulty with Eugene The Eugene character is not
04:31good. You'd never do it today, which sums it up, but one thing is still true. In 2004,
04:36this gimmick got so over it was crazy, and surely nobody expected it. Frank D was dubbed as Eric
04:41Bischoff's special nephew, sort of summed it up. But be it the 17th of May Raw, when The Rock saves
04:46him, or the 11th of October show where we pretended Eugene and William Ragan won the tag team titles,
04:51honestly, Eugene was getting mega pops all over the place. And once again, please don't get me wrong,
04:56the motivations for this have to be questioned. But Nick Dinsboe, the man behind it, somehow made
05:01it work far beyond what anybody could have thought was possible. Seeing him interact with top stars
05:05like The Rock Triple H and the rest of the evolution is totally wild. It sort of feels like WWE
05:09should
05:09have switched this gimmick to give Dinsboe a proper opportunity to fly, because he's the guy that did it.
05:14Instead, sooner rather than later, it sort of cut his legs off from underneath him. 2004 was an absolutely
05:19mad time. 6. The worst of the worst
05:22Kane-Lita-Matt Hardy storyline from 2004 is so bad, people have made countless videos
05:26on just that subject to try and figure out what the earth WWE was thinking.
05:30The start was self-explanatory. Goes back to what we always talk about,
05:34which is Vince McMahon thinking Shock TV was the way to get better ratings.
05:38Issue with that is the bar continues to be raised when you get to stories like this,
05:42the implied notion that Lita was pregnant after Kane had forced himself on her.
05:46Aside from not being appropriate for wrestling, imagine watching this and somebody else walking in
05:50who wasn't a fan. It is utterly embarrassing. The real, what the hell are you doing moment
05:55came a few months after, however. Once Matt Hardy picked up a knee injury and had to leave TV,
06:00Gene Snitsky somehow got involved and yes, he punted a baby. WWE then decided to try
06:04and make Kane the babyface in all of this, because Lita suffered a miscarriage after
06:08Snitsky had knocked Kane into her. WWE actually wanted you to feel simply for the big red machine,
06:14even though he had done one of the worst things that anybody can possibly do.
06:17I mean, it really is just beyond distasteful and has aged terribly. So when you go through
06:212004 and this keeps popping up, man, you just want to turn it off. Remember, wrestling is meant to be
06:26a distraction from life. This was anything but. 5. The Raw Diva Search
06:30And we had put this one back to back for the same reason. It is exactly the same mentality.
06:35Surely people will tune in for disturbing stories and everybody else will be super excited for sexy
06:40women in lingerie. I tell you, man, the Attitude Era didn't actually die until WWE went PG.
06:45Because as much as Trish and Lita wanted to help push the women's division forward,
06:48actually it was kept rooted where it was. On the 24th of May, in front of a briefcase filled with
06:53thousands of dollars, Vince McMahon announced the Diva Search to find the next big female star.
06:57That the next steps would be a reality show based on Raw every single week.
07:01Meh. These are not good.
07:03It was a second year in a row WWE had done this, so it wasn't a massive shock. But seeing
07:07the
07:07contestants tasked with challenges such as go and seduce the male wrestlers, that's awful. And even the
07:13fan voting got called into question. Nobody believed this was actually legit.
07:17There's also the diss the Diva segment on the August 30th Raw, which has to be seen to be believed.
07:21It got so obscene, half the thing has to be bleeped out. Christy Hemi won, but a lot of these
07:26women
07:26got hired anyway, so it is just a giant waste of time. And as always, just to underline as usual,
07:32you would never get away with it today. 4. There actually is a lot of good wrestling
07:36After the Adjutant era had come to an end from a date perspective, there was actually one really
07:40decent change. If shenanigans had been the choice for many of Raw, all of a sudden we were at least
07:44going to try and get back some good in-ring action. I suppose it probably started when Paul Heyman took
07:48over on SmackDown years before this, but in amongst that madness, so many guys went out there and
07:53reminded you what the name of the game was. Chris Jericho and Christian have an awesome steel cage
07:57match in A before Jericho is back again in August, and he has an absolute banger with Edge. You should
08:02watch
08:02anything with Shelton Benjamin and Triple H too. As we've talked about, the Benjamin push may not
08:06have been sustained, but this is still really good. The game also bumps his ass off for William
08:10Regal off the back of the Eugene stuff, so if you do like some good wrestling,
08:14then goodness you can find it. It's not all run-ins and disqualifications.
08:17You could even see Shawn Michaels smashing out TV bouts as if it's nothing. Always feels like
08:21when you look back on time, he reserved all his best performances for pay-per-view. It's not true.
08:25So this roster just deserves more credit, as I think they knew they had to get back to basics.
08:29I mean, I wouldn't go as far to call them mini-classics,
08:31but there are some damn good fights you should care to see. Go have your way to find them.
08:353. The use of Stone Cold Given it had been a year since
08:38Steve Austin hung up his boots, most fans started to realize this wasn't being done for laughs.
08:42If Stone Cold was going to wrestle again, they wouldn't have eked it out this long. He really
08:46was too injured to continue. Now we know today Austin was struggling with this disconnect too,
08:51even though he was still involved on screen. On the 8th of March Raw, for example, he's reminding
08:55Brock Lesnar and Goldberg he's the special guest referee for their match at WrestleMania. But I don't know,
09:00man, he just seems a little bit checked out. He even stumbles over his words at one point,
09:05and that is something the rattlesnake rarely did. I don't want to say he wasn't excited about this,
09:09but I do kind of think with Mania around the corner, it's probably a little sad that he couldn't
09:13compete. And I suppose it all comes down to the question of how Steve Austin should have been used.
09:17I get why WWE would want to feature him, he was still the guy, but maybe a shift to the
09:21next
09:22generation would have been more correct. It's a lose-lose, I guess. People did still want to see
09:26him. Of course, it's not as bad as the latter end of 2003, but then again, long after this,
09:30Austin was back refereeing that Jerry Lawler-Michael Cole match that you should never watch from
09:34WrestleMania. So it really was just a roller coaster for a good chunk of time. And you can kind of
09:39see it
09:39all popping through the cracks here. 2. The July Ironman match
09:42So I cannot watch Chris Benoit matches anymore. I always feel the need to get that out there,
09:46and you can figure out why. If you can still sit through them, more power to you, however,
09:51it's most definitely a personal decision. When going through Raw in 2004, though,
09:54you eventually get to the 26th of July show, where Benoit and Triple H do a one-hour Ironman match.
10:00It of course was continuing on the feud from WrestleMania 20, but many people still consider
10:05this one of the best Ironman matches WWE has ever done on TV. So to get that on a free
10:09service
10:09was mad 20 years ago, the pay-per-view model was still so strong, so usually that's where
10:14you kept your heavy hitters. Triple H is also in full-on mega-hill mode,
10:17so let's not forget there was a time where he was the best at this. And by 2004, fans were
10:21desperate
10:21for guys like Benoit to be given proper pushes. That's exactly what happened for a while anyway,
10:26and if you do go out there, you will find this match on a lot of best ever Raw matches
10:30lists.
10:31So you do have to mention it. In many ways, it does seem to be forgotten about,
10:34although you can understand that. And if not, just think about it for one second.
10:39So Edge returns to WWE in 2004, and it becomes obvious super quickly that he needed a refresh.
10:44Even though he had been away, fans decided the character felt too similar to what we had done
10:48before, and this man gets booed. You can pick most Raw's from after his comeback,
10:52and the audience just isn't having him, which is mad. Edge was one of the best talents WWE had
10:57at that time. Now thankfully, the company doesn't ignore it either, which is pleasant,
11:00because by the end of the year, he is starting to embrace his heel ways. And of course, when we
11:04pulled
11:04the trigger in 2005, well there was no looking back. It was great for Edge's career, because
11:09he flew to the main event. But just go and find footage of the Intercontinental title reign from
11:13July to September, and I suppose fans were just desperate for something new. So man,
11:18do they give it to Edge. This actually turned out for the best, because the rated-R superstar
11:21character he would go on to find was the perfect antithesis to many of the babyfaces WWE had.
11:26And thank goodness we did do that, because do you not know what probably happened in 2025?
11:30All of this would have been ignored. You shut up fans, we don't want to listen to you.
11:34It's just another telling reminder that most of the time you should go with the audience,
11:37because they're telling you what they want to see, and nine times out of ten there's actually
11:41a reason for it. It's pretty cool to see it evolve in real time here as well, and my gosh,
11:45has Adam Copeland just embraced that? He probably wanted to be a bad guy, because once again,
11:49there was a massive hole for these, and before long he would be feuding with John Cena for the
11:53World Championship. So if you ever wanted to see the seats planted for the rated-R superstar,
11:57well you've probably got to start in 2004. Not really the talking points that we should
12:01have gotten into from 2004, make sure you let me know in the comments below before you like the
12:05video, share the video, and damn it, subscribe. You can also click the video on the screen for
12:08another binge watch year to find out what was going down in WWE, but otherwise my friends.
12:13I appreciate you joining me, talk to you again, very soon.
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