What Was The Best Shocking Match In Raw History?

[Mudlup50]

By that I mean a match where you didn't expect much but got blown away by what actually ended up happening. Of course I'm talking Television matches so no PPV's or house shows. I'll also take Smackdown or NXT matches.

The match I think is the John Cena Shawn Michaels match April 27th 2007. It was the night after Wrestlemania, Raw was still only 2 hours long and the match ended up being about an hour long. I just remember going into the match expecting an interference or something, plus I'm not a big fan of John Cena's in ring ability, instead they got to put on an hour long match which regardless I ended up enjoying.

Feel free to include tag team matches or divas matches...if there's a mid card match feel free to include it, doesn't have to be a main eventer.

 

[Slash-LN]

Jeff Hardy vs The Undertaker for the Undisputed championship.

Undertaker in a ladder match? How is that going to work?
Jeff Hardy hadn't reached his highest level yet (no pun intended) so I just figured it would be a short match with Taker just destroying Jeff.

Instead they went nearly 20 minutes and put on a fantastic match.
Then the post match stuff was cool since I liked Jeff and Undertaker.

 

[Catacomb]

flair vs edge, i think it was a tlc, didnt know what to expect, they put on a great match

bret hart vs 1-2-3 kid, i remember thinking bret would destroy the kid but it ended up a back and forth match and probably the kids best

 

[The_Don]

That impromptu WWF title match between HHH and Y2J at the beginning of Raw in April of 2000. I didn't expect a title match so soon after WrestleMania and obviously didn't expect Y2J to "win the title". Since then, I became a strong Y2J fan.

 

[Wolf Pac]

Razor Ramon vs. 123 Kid? Kid was just a jobber at the time, he went by different names previously before this match, The Kamikaze Kid and The Cannonball Kid, Razor spent the entire match just toying around with him like he was a rag doll, and then one boot later and a Moonsault, The Kid scores the ultimate upset in Raw history. Wasn't a great match, but it was a great moment.

If you mean a match though that you didn't expect to be great but ended up being that, I would have to say Shelton Benjamin vs. Shawn Michaels. We all knew they were both excellent wrestlers going in, but this was just part of a tournament and it went on in the middle of the show, we all expected a 5 minute decent match with Shawn advancing through the tournament. But it turned out to be a 15 minute classic with brilliant action and awesome spots even if the winner was obvious. The crowd really popped for the match and loved every second of it.

 

[TootsieBear]

Stone Cold winning the belt off Kane the night after the Pay Per View.

I remember that match! When Kane one the title I was like; OMG! KANE WON! YES! Kane was one of my favorite wrestlers at the time. And to see SCSA win the title the next night broke my heart. I like Stone Cole, but Kane was so hot back then.

 

[DirtyJosé]

I really don't think anything compares to Foley's first title win over The Rock. Looking back now, it's like "hurr hurr of course Foley was going to be champion at some point, he's god/so good." Back then, however, it was entirely conceivable that Foley could retire from WWE without having held the big one. I think Austin's interference probably got the bigger pop from the crowd, but still an excellent ending to Raw that no one saw coming (unless, of course, you happened to have been also watching WCW that night).

 

[boywithatoy]

The match I think is the John Cena Shawn Michaels match April 27th 2007. It was the night after Wrestlemania

Just a quick correction. It wasn't the night after wrestlemania (mania was 1st April that year). It was the RAW from London. I believe they went long because Orton and Edge were due to have some sort of match (this was during the Rated RKO era) but something happened with Orton getting wasted, trashing his hotel room and being sent home meaning Cena and HBK went the full hour.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/176283 (this is from 1st May 2007)

 

[Reflection]

Randy Orton vs Cesaro from earlier this year was a good one with surprise result, which Cesaro won. It was good to see a young guy go over an established main eventer. The match itself was also good enough.

 

[tomthebodz]

I was in London for the Cena v HBK match, my first taste of WWE Live. Absolutely brilliant match. Still the best I have ever seen.

I fully agree with Mudlup50's thought. I never expected them to have a match that long on TV. Also expected Cena to win it.

Had no idea that that Orton story was the reason it went that long.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

Jeff Hardy vs The Undertaker for the Undisputed championship.

Undertaker in a ladder match? How is that going to work?
Jeff Hardy hadn't reached his highest level yet (no pun intended) so I just figured it would be a short match with Taker just destroying Jeff.

Instead they went nearly 20 minutes and put on a fantastic match.
Then the post match stuff was cool since I liked Jeff and Undertaker.

I LOVED that match!! Undertaker as the Biker was always one of my favourite gimmicks (I know most people do not like it), and the Hardyz were my heroes growing up, so to see Jeff actually getting a shot at the title was great on its own, but for him to get so close to winning the belt in his speciality match was so surprising but fantastically done from WWE. I truly believe that the company thought they had a future mega-star in Jeff Hardy, the next coming of HBK perhaps and this SHOULD have been the match to catapult Jeff to the next level, but his personal issues stopped that from happening.

I was expecting an easy Undertaker win, but it was great to see Hardy get so close and the respect from the Dead Man at the end was good to see. I remember thinking "Wow!" at the end of that match, which is something that even then I didn't do very often when it came to wrestling.

 

[justtxyank]

Sting vs DDP on Nitro in April or May of 1999.

It was a match setup mid show by one of those "fan vote" deals. Didn't expect much, certainly didn't expect a title change.

Match was surprisingly very good, the crowd was eating it up and you had Sting pull off a surprise victory to win the WCW title!

 

[madness1992]

I have no idea why my comment has disapeared from this forum, but I wanted to add the cage match between Jeff Hardy and Umaga. I'll never forget JR's screaming "whisper in the wind for the love of god from the top of the cage."

 

[USMNT]

TAKA vs HHH -- I actually bit on a couple of TAKA's near falls. For as much as people joke about HHH burying guys, he made Taka look like a million bucks that night.

Bret Hart vs Sid -- An awesome cage match featuring interference from Austin and the Undertaker. This match drove home the two main events of WM13.

Cena vs Punk (#1 contender match)-- If we are talking shocking, how can we leave out a match featuring a piledriver and the Cenasteiner? Not one single wrestling fan would've thought we'd see either of those coming ... and it was an awesome match.

 

[FlairFan2003]

Curt Henning vs Ric Flair - loser Leaves WWE - The idea of someone actually losing a match like that with a name, especially by clean pinfall, was unheard of. Fact is, such matches continued to be rare (I remember The Giant losing one to Kevin Nash in 1999 on Nitro but there was a lot of cheating). Wrestling fans just never saw that, a main event level guy in a clear "Im Outta Here If I Lose" moment losing and leaving, and it was live TV to boot at the very beginning of the RAW era.

The match itself is classic, it's been talked about often over they years and usually ranks high on any lists of "RAW's Greatest Matches" , etc. Both guys were given the chance to put on a great show and did, but Flair put Henning over clean, no controversy, to elevate him as he was leaving. Not many guys with that kind of name would have been willing to do that (and according to Flair he paid for it when he went back to WCW and Ole Anderson, among others, griped about him losing a high profile match like that on TV before he returned, like it somehow made him damaged goods).

Great match, shocking end, big deal, very memorable

 

[FlairFan2003]

flair vs edge, i think it was a tlc, didnt know what to expect, they put on a great match

That was the first ever TLC Match for the WWE Title (Edge was champ). Flair was IC Champ but his title wasn't on the line.

This was a pretty big deal at the time. Edge had sworn off these matches since he A) Didn't want to be thought of only as a "Gimmick Match" wrestler and B) They are extremely dangerous. Flair did a lot of cage and NO DQ stuff but never a ladder match, plus he was only a few weeks away from his 57th B-day!

The idea came about as a way to draw fans away from a UFC Special airing opposite RAW on Spike TV. Needed a big match to make sure viewers didn't leave to watch Spike, WWE added the TLC stipulation since it wasn't something you saw on TV very often and in all honesty there would likely be a "can he actually do that" contingent of fans watching just to see how Flair could perform in such a match at his age.

The match itself was well paced (both guys really sold being injured, it wasn't a spot fest just moving from one spot to another that would look ridiculous) and brutal, lots of blood (you don't see that on TV anymore). Edge took the off the ladder/outside the ring table plunge, Flair took a suplex off the ladder and went through a table (separate spots), Lita interfered and took a crowd pleasing Figure Four for her efforts, lots of brutal chair shots, though it lasted roughly 15 minutes both guys looked like H#$% when it was over.

Not only did the match receive surprisingly strong reviews but it also rocked the ratings (adding to Edge's claims in his promos that he was "Most Watched WWE Champ" of the time, he really excelled in his Rated R SuperStar Heel persona) and RAW dominated the UFC Special.

 

[SorgFamily]

If you mean a match though that you didn't expect to be great but ended up being that, I would have to say Shelton Benjamin vs. Shawn Michaels. We all knew they were both excellent wrestlers going in, but this was just part of a tournament and it went on in the middle of the show, we all expected a 5 minute decent match with Shawn advancing through the tournament. But it turned out to be a 15 minute classic with brilliant action and awesome spots even if the winner was obvious. The crowd really popped for the match and loved every second of it.

This was literally the first match I thought of. I just remember Shelton springboarding right into Sweet Chin Music. It was awesome.

 

[CrucifiedRaven]

HHH vs Y2J for the title in 2000 is a good choice. Fans popped big time for Jericho.. it's too bad this "reign" isn't actually recognized. Y2J didn't get many wins over HHH over the years.

Rock vs Foley is obviously a shocking moment for Foley's win of the big one.

There was also a Shelton Benjamin vs HHH match at one point. I can't remember the time period, 2004 I think, but it was really great story with the underdog going the distance vs the champ.

HHH/Austin vs Benoit/Jericho where HHH tore his quad in 2001 is another one. RAW ending in tag matches was becoming more common place, and I wasn't expecting this particular main event to be one of the best televised tag matches.