Quote:
Originally Posted by Cool King
I liked Raven during his time in the WWE. I liked him a lot. I thought he had a really cool look, cool theme, cool name, cool titantron, cool attitude, cool everything. His matches were great too. Even though he was a big name in the Hardcore division at the time, his non-Hardcore matches were quite entertaining too.
I liked the way he was really innovative when it came to Hardcore matches, bringing in bowling balls, shopping trolleys (cart), potted plants and even a Frankenstein Doll into his Hardcore matches. When he debuted in the WWF in 2000, I was 11 years old and I was familiar with who he was but I only knew him as being a "WCW guy" and that was about it. I didn't know at the time that he had a past with ECW and Hardcore Wrestling, so when it came to him having Hardcore matches in the WWF, it was all new to me and I thought it was great, and it made me love Raven more and more.
Then there was a period where he drastically changed his look. He had blonde dreadlocks, no facial hair and began wearing some kind of Kilt thing. I liked it, but not as much as his previous look, but it was still a pretty badass look. He also got a new theme, which again, was pretty badass to me at the time. I still list to it occasionally today, along with the theme posted above.
Then came his move to commentating on Heat, but that was pretty short lived. He was a pretty good commentator though, I enjoyed listening to him and he didn't have an annoying voice like some commentators do. Not long after that he was released.
I think one of my fondest memories of Raven during his time in the WWE, is his Hardcore match against Kane and Big Show at WrestleMania X-Seven. That was such a great entertaining match. It's stuff like that, that makes me miss the Hardcore Division. The Hardcore Division was a nice escape from your usual wrestling show of "good guy vs bad guy in the ring" thing. You would have just this random assortment of guys beating the hell out of each other in the most random places with the most random objects and the majority of the time, they would manage to insert a good amount of comedy moments into them, even though Hardcore matches are supposed to be these brutal serious matches.
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I was thinking about Raven the other day. I was too much of a mark to really appreciate him at the time, but he seemed like a guy who really lost out by a change in creative processes after WrestleMania X-7. I think I read somewhere that the head writer at the time had everything pretty much set out until Mania in 2001, but then Stephanie McMahon took over as head of creative or something?
Raven dropped the Hardcore Title in that Triple Threat you mentioned at Mania, and then, from memory, I seem to remember him going after Eddie Guerrero and the European Title. But then Matt Hardy (who I was a giant mark for at the time) cut in front of Raven and won the Euro Title off Eddie. To me it seemed like there might have been loose plans for Raven to become the European Champion, or at least move out of the Hardcore Division and into some serious rasslin'.
Imagine if Perry Saturn had turned on Eddie Guerrero during the feud and aligned with his former Flock leader? Or imagine if it had led to The Radicalz going at it with a group put together by Raven? Or just imagine Eddie Guerrero and Raven trying to get into each other's head. It seemed like a lot of guys who got the European Title for a while would then move up to the IC Title scene, so we might have seen Eddie Guerrero get a bit of a push after dropping the title to Raven and Raven then get a push a bit later on in the year. Had it all worked out, of course. Fun to speculate about.