wrestling / Columns

The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Raw Title Changes

May 23, 2016 | Posted by Mike Chin
Image Credit: WWE

Historically speaking, title changes do not happen on free TV. In the olden days, TV was a platform to drive fans to buy tickets for live shows where storylines paid off. Since the advent of PPV (and then the WWE Network), major promotions have insisted upon fans paying to see the biggest moments at shows that will become historically memorable.

But there are exceptions. Particularly in the case of WWE’s flagship show, Monday Night Raw, there have been a handful of truly significant instances of titles changing hands. While this became particularly common during The Attitude Era (and that period will get some play in this countdown), a number of other instances that have occurred outside those bounds and have often proven more memorable for how surprising they were, or because it was a title change for which WWE clearly made the choice to broadcast it to the masses watching on free TV rather than saving it for PPV.

So, this week I’m looking back at the top seven Raw title changes. All titles were in consideration for this list, as long as the title change happened during a broadcast of Raw. First and foremost, I considered the moment of the title change—how it came across to the fans in its original context, but I also gave some consideration to how the change paid off storylines, its historical importance, and impact on the performers at hand. I did consider factors like the element of surprise and match quality, and there are entries for which those factors were important, but I did not consider them essential for the purposes of ranking. In addition, while it was not a formal part of the criteria, nor essential, I did find myself more often than not drawn toward the first time a given performer won a given title. As always, personal opinion factors heavily in this countdown.

#7. The Miz defeats Randy Orton for the WWE Championship, November 22, 2010

A funny thing started to happen in 2009, when The Miz went from being a complete afterthought as an in-ring performer to suddenly being taken seriously. This period saw him in engage in a mini-program with John Cena (albeit one in which he got all-but squashed), win his first US Championship, decisively get the best of former partner John Morrison, and then forge a short-lived but largely dominant tag team with The Big Show.

Move ahead to the summer of 2010 and Miz won a Money in the Bank Ladder Match. Perhaps most confounding of all—it wasn’t a shock, and between his mic game and his arguably above average in-ring work at the time, it became suddenly reasonable to suspect Miz might get a world title run.

In the months to follow, The Miz was featured in an intriguing sub-plot to a red-hot WWE vs. Nexus program (the question at hand: would Miz put his ego aside to join John Cena’s team), and went on to an excellent feud with former mentee Daniel Bryan over the US Championship. All of this paved the way for November 2010, when Miz stormed the ring after a grueling main event bout between then-champion Randy Orton and challenger Wade Barrett. Miz cashed in in the final minutes of the show, only to meet surprising resistance—Orton wasn’t going down without a fight and it looked possible that the Miz character had mizcalculated and would become the first man to come up short in a cash-in match.

The results were far better for Miz, though. Rather than stealing a quick pin on an already beaten down champ, Miz got to engage in a couple minutes of action before hitting his finisher. Sure, the win still had Money in the Bank written all over it, but in besting Orton after some semblance of a real match, Miz got the final boost of credibility he would need to function as champ—he was finally a main eventer, albeit for only a short period of time.

#6. Lita defeats Trish Stratus for the Women’s Championship, December 6, 2004

The December 6, 2004 episode of Raw made history, featuring the show’s first women’s main event—a phenomenon that remains quite rare to this day. Even better—the match didn’t feel out of place. No, Lita and Trish Stratus were not as big stars as Triple or Randy Orton, but they were legit stars who had risen through The Attitude Era and arrived as the establishment on the other side. More over, years of on-again, off-again feuding, including a heated sequence building up to this night, built a mid-card program that’s blow off felt legitimate in a TV main event spot.

Looking back, this match itself fits into an interesting spot of not quite as good as the work women have put on in NXT over the past couple years, but so much better than the overwhelming majority of WWF women’s wrestling from 2007 to 2013. It was solid in-ring work, bolstered by stellar and consistent storytelling.

And then there was the title change. Trish Stratus was solid as a face, but truly special as a heel once she had found her bearings, and played the perfect antagonist in this program. Lita—not yet controversial from the whole Edge-Matt Hardy scandal, and still riding the wave of the wave of Team Extreme chic, was super over as a face. Thus, watching Lita pick up the clean pin fall with her signature moonsault finisher made for an awesome moment, and an awesome title change.

#5. CM Punk defeats Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship, June 30, 2008

The year was 2008, and while Money in the Bank was not a new concept, it was still a relatively fresh one. When CM Punk cashed in on Edge, it marked the first time a face used the briefcase in such opportunistic fashion (RVD was the only other face to have won the briefcase at that point, and he used it to schedule a match, as opposed to utilizing it for a run-in). Punk beating Edge had a few layers of poetic justice attached to it, too, after Edge had gotten the best of Punk a number of times, and all the more so after Edge had not once, but twice been the beneficiary of Money in the Bank himself.

This was also the very first time Money in the Bank was cashed in on an episode of Raw, leading of a post-draft episode that had seen significant shake up for the Raw and Smackdown rosters. More to the point, after the draft, and immediately after the Night of Champions PPV, Raw was a brand without a world title to its name—a point that Edge didn’t hesitate to make in an opening monologue, which led to Batista beating him down.

Enter CM Punk. Punk won the title back for Raw, and in doing so seemed to break a glass ceiling that had hovered overhead since his WWE debut. Sure, Punk could remain on the active roster and hold ECW Championship, the tag straps, or an IC title or two. But a world champion? WWE didn’t seem to hold him in that kind of regard, and when he won the briefcase at WrestleMania 24, speculation arose immediately that he’d be the first man to cash in and lose the match to follow.

Punk’s initial run as champ didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but it did lay the groundwork for his second Money in the Bank-sparked reign, and for the big push he would earn himself in 2011. And perhaps that’s what was most special about this title change—that in addition to being an electrifying moment in its own right, it felt as though it could be the start of something very, very big.

#4. Davey Boy Smith defeats Owen Hart to be come the inaugural European Champion, (aired) March 3, 1997

The legacy of the European Championship is not a particularly auspicious one as the title quickly felt redundant to the Intercontinental Championship as just another piece of hardware for mid-carders to chase, and even sometimes unify with the IC strap. But at its inception, it added a fourth worthy prize to the ranks of the World, Intercontinental, and Tag Team titles that any man, regardless of weight class, might pursue, it did feel a big deal.

The European title earned instant credibility for the match that crowned its first champion. Davey Boy Smith and Owen Hart were both heels at this juncture (not to mention tag team partners) but in working their way through a tournament on European soil, culminating in Berlin, each was treated by the live crowd more neutrally, if not outright like faces. They went on to put on a twenty-minute classic of a back and forth match—one that, to this day would probably hold its own in a countdown of top Raw matches of all time. And The British Bulldog went over.

Smith immediately fit as European Champion, but moreover, this win helped establish several interesting early-Attitude dynamics. It was a great match on free TV, it blurred the lines between heels and faces, and it teased dissension between tag team partners (who were holding the tag titles at that moment).

Finally, it’s worth noting that this match main evented this episode of Raw—an episode on which Triple H vs. Bret Hart opened the show, Rocky Maivia defended the Intercontinental Championship against Vader, and Sycho Sid defended the world title against Mankind. To be fair, few, if any of these guys were truly in their primes or character peaks at this moment, but even considering it’s context in time, that’s a stacked show. The tournament final for a secondary title getting the final spot on the card further established that this was a title to take seriously, and arguably marked the final time WWE really took Smith seriously as an upper-card act.

#3. Chris Jericho defeats Triple H for the WWF Championship, April 17, 2000

In the spring of 2000, Chris Jericho had never yet won a world championship and there were legit questions as to whether he ever would. Triple H, on the flip side, was a dominant heel champion, just two weeks removed from becoming the very first heel to retain a world title in a WrestleMania main event. Thus, while there was every reason to expect an entertaining match between these two top-notch performers, there was no predicting that Jericho would actually win the title.

But it happened.

In the opening match of Raw, with minimal build or foreshadowing, every star aligned for Y2J. He had the foresight to recruit the APA to have his back against outside interference. He had the good fortune of Triple H getting into a squabble with the referee. And finally, he nailed a spinning heel kick into a lionsault to pick the (fast-count) pin. It was a shocking moment and earned one of the biggest pops—particularly for anyone other than Steve Austin, The Rock, or Mick Foley—in Raw history.

This moment loses some of its luster (and at least one place on the countdown) because, within the hour, the decision had been reversed, and Jericho’s would-be first world title reign was officially voided. Some will surely argue that this title change should move even further down (or off) the countdown because it got scrubbed from the record books, and that’s a fair perspective. From where I sit, though, Jericho held the world title going backstage and into a commercial break, and thus the title change if not the title reign stands, and I don’t know that this countdown would feel complete without recognizing it.

#2. Roman Reigns defeats Sheamus for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, December 14, 2015

2015 was the year of Roman Reigns’ ascension in WWE, but it didn’t happen easily or in obvious fashion. His rollercoaster year more or less started and ended in Philadelphia.

In January, Reigns won the Royal Rumble and thus punched his ticket for his anointed spot in the WrestleMania main event. Despite a perfectly reasonable Rumble performance in and of itself, and despite an endorsement from The Rock, the Philly crowd booed him out of the building and thus compelled WWE to switch gears to a Reigns-Daniel Bryan match for the title shot at the Fast Lane PPV, which Reigns won, to be followed by WWE presumably calling an audible in having Seth Rollins steal the ‘Mania title win via Money in the Bank rather than risk Reigns getting booed out of WrestleMania as well.

In the months to follow, Reigns continued to show steady improvement as a one-on-one performer, including a very good Hell in a Cell outing opposite Bray Wyatt. Finally, Reigns returned to the main event scene and picked up his first WWE Championship over Dean Ambrose at Survivor Series, to a largely positive reaction. Minutes later, Sheamus would storm the ring, cash-in his Money in the Bank opportunity and steal the strap. Sheamus would go on to successfully defend the title against Reigns at TLC, courtesy of extensive interference from The League of Nations. In the post-match, Reigns would beat back Sheamus and his cronies and then decimate Triple H at ringside. Quite arguably for the first time, the majority of the WWE audience was indignant at Reigns getting screwed—Reigns was more over than he had ever been.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would Reigns get the title back at The Royal Rumble? Or would WWE string out Sheamus’s reign all the way to WrestleMania for Reigns to finally pick up the title for a sustained reign then?

Against most popular theories and prevailing logic, WWE didn’t wait for its next PPV. Reigns challenged Sheamus live on Raw the very next night, in front of the very same crowd that condemned him eleven months earlier. He got the win to an overwhelmingly positive response and one of the greatest Raw moments of the last decade.

I typically hold off on ranking items that are too recent too highly on countdowns like this, but Reigns beating Sheamus embodied what a Raw title change can do—paying off a long journey, legitimately surprising the audience, nailing the timing, and giving a free TV audience a thrill. I’d argue that there was only one Raw title change that struck each of these chords better.

#1. Mankind defeats The Rock for the WWF Championship, January 4, 1999

In early 1999, the WWF was rolling—reaching a creative peak, winning over the fans and preparing to not only catch up WCW, but steamroll them in the Monday Night War.

Enter The Rock—a fresh star who had risen steadily over the course of 1998 before the masterfully orchestrated swerve that saw him win The Deadly Games Tournament at Survivor Series, become the world champ and pose—arguably for the first time—a worthy in-ring stand-in for the Austin-McMahon rivalry.

Enter Mankind. After busting ass opposite Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, and Steve Austin, he had proven himself as more than an also-ran, but a guy worthy of main event mainstay consideration in his own right. What’s more, after getting screwed at Survivor Series, the fans were really behind him.

Mick Foley had never won a world championship at this point, and the writing was already on the wall for The Rock to collide with Stone Cold at WrestleMania 15. But on January 4, 1999, the stars aligned for Mankind to challenge The Rock live on Raw in a No Disqualification Match. The Rock had The Corporation behind him. DX had Mankind’s back. And then there was the x-factor—Stone Cold Steve Austin, with no allegiance to Mankind or DX, but a hell of a lot of spite toward The Corporation. As the match broke down, Austin demolished Rock with a steel chair to facilitate Foley picking up the pin, to earn about the biggest pop a crowd of 10,000 has ever mustered.

The moment, in a vacuum, would be in serious contention for the number one spot in this countdown. It becomes an even clearer choice given its historical context, though. January 4, 1999 was one of a number of nights when WCW opted to spoil the results of pre-taped Monday Night Raw live on Nitro, but it resulted in massive backfire because fans were thrilled at the prospect of watching Foley win his first world title. Moreover, it was the night of arguably WCW’s single biggest creative misstep (though I’d give it to David Arquette winning the world title over this one) in the infamous Fingerpoke of Doom spot—Kevin Nash gifting Hulk Hogan the WCW Championship, turning heel, and reuniting the nWo factions, past the concept’s expiration date, for another run atop the company.

Mankind’s win was fresh, electric, and a key moment in the legacy Foley built as a bona fide legend. It was surely the most important win of his career, and in my mind, the single biggest title win to ever happen on Raw.

Which Raw title changes would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments section.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin

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RAW, The Magnificent Seven, WWE, Mike Chin