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MARCH 21, 2005 - MONDAY NIGHT RAW
Raw kicks off with WWE Chairman Eric Bischoff makes his way to the ring, and he's smiling. Which can't POSSIBLY be a good thing. The announcers speculate on the identity of the third man on the RAW Authority Committee, hype a seven-man gauntlet for a Television Title shot at Backlash and the huge champion-vs-champion main event as he enters the ring. "Well, I'm sure you heard the news from this weekend. Nineteen Superstars getting their walking papers. What you probably missed was the thirty-seven developmental deals that were cut as well. Well, here's the deal. And this is not a knock on any of these fifty-six men and women, but I have a business to run. There were almost 200 people under my watch and - great as I am - there's just no way to get all of them into six hours of television a week. Which leads me to the point of this whole thing: competition. This whole business is about who wants it more. And we're going to find out. Starting Wednesday night on Superstars, we're going to have a series of battle royals. Ten men in each match. The winner will receive a title shot later in the night. And you want to survive as long as you can. Because I'm going to randomly pick a number while the match is going on. And whatever number I draw, I'm going to fire that many of the participants, in the order they were eliminated. I'm calling it Feast Or Famine. One man may win a title. Nine may lose their jobs. Let's get to competing!"
Our opening match tonight pits Mickie James and newcomer Trinity against Jazz and Molly Holly. These four have to be considered among the top contenders for the Women's Title, which is up in the air due to Trish Stratus' injury. Solid match between the four Divas that Mickie is set to win with her tornado DDT on Molly. As she swings up into the air, Trinity snatches her out of midair and slams her down. Mickie is in shock and walks right into the Molly Go Round, giving the heels the win. After the match, Victoria and Gail Kim hit the ring to make the save, driving off the three heels. (80% overall for a divas' tag match?)
The TV Title #1 Contender gauntlet kicks off as Erik Watts takes on the Disco Inferno. Pretty bland match that Disco wins with the Chartbuster.
Disco recovers from the abuse he sustained at the larger man's hands. "Oh, you didn't know?!?" The crowd erupts as the D-O-Double-G makes his way to the ring. Slightly better match than its predecessor that Road Dogg wins with the Dogg Pound.
As Dogg celebrates, he gets blindsided by Buff Bagwell. After a brief beatdown, Buff hits the Blockbuster for the win.
The hour one main event is another gauntlet match as Bagwell takes on Rob Van Dam. Best match of the gauntlet so far, which isn't really saying much, but a solid match. RVD hits a Five-Star Frogsplash for the win to move on.
It's a battle of the frogsplashes next as RVD battles D'Lo Brown, and they pick right up where they left off last week in a fantastic match. D'Lo grabs a handful of tights on a roll-up for the cheap win, knocking RVD out of contention. RVD walks off in anger as D'Lo celebrates being one win away from a TV Title shot.
Taiyo Kea is D'Lo's last opponent in the series, and D'Lo definitely takes him lightly. However during a moment of distraction, RVD returns to the ring and takes D'Lo out with a big kick allowing Kea to hit the Hawaiian Smasher for the upset victory! Afterwards, RVD hits the Five-Star Frogsplash and plays to the crowd. He winds up hitting another and another, which pops the crowd huge before walking off, leaving D'Lo laying.
Stephanie McMahon is backstage, and she congratulates Kea on his win and makes the Backlash match official - Brock Lesnar defending the Television Title against Taiyo Kea!
And now for our huge main event as the WWE Champion The Rock takes on Television Champion Brock Lesnar. Neither title is on the line, but a ton of bragging rights are. These two continue to show that they have remarkable chemistry as they put on another great show. The end comes as Rock prepares to hit the Rock Bottom, only to get blindsided by a flying leg lariat from Sabu! The homicidal, genocidal, suicidal, death-defying maniac goes to work on Rock, picking up on what he did last week.
"Pomp And Circumstance" hits the speakers, and the crowd erupts. The announcers lose their shit as "Macho Man" Randy Savage comes to the ring. He gets in Sabu's face and tells him that what he just did to Rock may have flown in those other places, but that's not the way we do things here. If Sabu wants his shot at The Rock, he'll get it. But he has to wait until Backlash! Rock and Sabu stare each other down as RAW fades to black.
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