Forgotten Favorites 07.27.10: Raw 2004 – Evolution vs. Edge, Chris Benoit, and Chris Jericho

Welcome back, wrestling fans. It’s time once again to travel down memory lane to take a look at those matches that Vince McMahon either hates or has forgotten about due to his rapidly deteriorating mental awareness. Senility wins every time.

This week we’re venturing into territory I had once sworn off. While I still never plan to cover a one-on-one match featuring you-know-who, I’ve brought this match out this week for purposes of multi-man-match discussion. The focus of this week’s article is the awesomeness that was Evolution … not the other guy.

And so, who wants great wrestling?

Raw – June 14, 2004
Six Man Elimination Tag Team Match
Randy Orton, Batista, and Ric Flair vs. Edge, Chris Benoit, and Chris Jericho

WHY IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED

When Triple H decided he wanted to play mid-1980’s make-believe and put together his own Four Horsemen, the word circulating on the internet was interesting, to say the least. Not long after HHH was named the first Raw-exclusive World Heavyweight Champion, something slipped through the cracks at WWE Creative and word got out that Trips was very big into the idea of taking on the role of a modern Ric Flair. It was a given that HHH would be the dominant heel champion to lead the group, with Flair eventually coming on board as H’s exclusive mentor. But then the rumor mill got going, and word of the two other soon-to-be stablemates leaked out.

Here I am flashing back and you can color my past self underwhelmed in response to the leaked news: Randy Orton and Batista? The green kid who can’t stay healthy and the awkward, generic roidhead? Really?

Now here we are over seven years later, after multiple World Title reigns and WrestleMania main events, and Orton and Batista are two of the biggest names of the modern era. Each one is a legitimate main event superstar who could believably (and cleanly) defeat any other wrestler, and they are destined to be immortalized in the Hall of Fame someday. Without a doubt, these two have made it.

Steel Cage for the WWE Title? I think they made it.

But then again, would it be more accurate to say instead that they were simply made?

I think it would be unfair and insulting to suggest that Randy Orton and Batista had no hand in their success within the business, as each guy has shown to possess a high level of talent and charisma over the years. But I don’t necessarily think that we would’ve seen all of that talent and charisma had it not been for their recruitment into Evolution in early 2003.

A newer fan who has come around in this post-WM 21 era may have little grasp of this, but in its beginnings Evolution was far from impressive. Any young kid reeled in by Cena in the last couple of years may hear about Evolution’s lineup and assume that it was some sort of supergroup that towered over its competition, comprised of four of the biggest names of this or any era. Indeed, if HHH, Flair, Orton, and Batista were to reform under the old banner and walk the aisle once more to the sounds of Lemmy’s beautiful vocal stylings, the result would no doubt be a mega-stable of four huge names. But in its earliest stages (hell, for most of 2003), HHH and Flair were the only seriously established threats within the group, with Batista and Orton coming across more than anything as unworthy lackeys leeching off of their more experienced colleagues.

So how did Orton and Batista go from nameless duds that we were told to take seriously to money-drawing names that are now automatically taken seriously?

Children, it’s the art of the stable.

There are a lot of factors that go into building a stable, all of which depend upon the previously established legitimacy (or lack thereof) of the wrestlers involved. In Evolution’s case, half of the group was already legendary and World Title-worthy, with the other half being completely unestablished and essentially unknown. I will not dispute that the sight of HHH and Flair standing beside Batista and Orton week after week helped to solidify the idea of the two younger stars as two of the “best,” simply because we fans all know that the mighty Trips and the Dirtiest Player in the Game wouldn’t partner up with just anybody. But in order for this new generation to succeed, they had to do more than rely on the recognition afforded by standing side by side with legends of the business; they had to become their absolute best possible in the ring.

Enter the beautiful miracle that is the multi-man match.

Randy Orton initially made his name and reputation as the arrogant young prick with no regard for the history of the business. Batista was able to stand out based on his freakish figure and ability to manhandle an opponent of any size. These are the things that (along with HHH’s and Flair’s seal of approval) made fans take notice of these guys and remember their names. But longevity in this business is determined by a young upstart’s ability to improve his ringwork and become a solid hand (Paging Dr. Warrior), and therefore it was up to these two future World Champions to constantly up their game in the ring on a weekly basis in order to stake their claim in the WWE.

Tag team matches. Six-man tags. Handicap matches. These were Evolution’s bread and butter for the last official year of the original four-man lineup, and these were the matches that saw Orton and Batista transform from green non-threats to legitimate superstars in the squared circle. It wasn’t anything that happened overnight, but over the course of several months each of these two young lions matured into the true main event material we know them as today. Whether it was Batista learning the ropes as one half of the Tag Title reigning tandem that he and Flair formed or Orton leading the charge in a gang-style beatdown of Mick Foley, the stable’s youngest members made their greatest early impact when Evolution operated as a unit. The strength in numbers and limited individual ring time that goes with most multi-man matches allowed Evolution’s greener stars to shine without their inexperience bleeding through too heavily. For example, in a six-man tag like this week’s Forgotten Favorite, Batista’s shortcomings in technical skill can be masked by keeping him in the ring for short spurts of time, during which he hits his impressive power moves before tagging out and preventing his lack of (what was then) ring awareness from hurting his image.

Aside from improving basic movesets and timing, multi-man matches are the best methods of training in order to get somebody ready for the “big game,” that being the holy grail of the one-on-one main event title match. I cry foul of WWE’s tag team bookings (and the booking of all multi-man matches in general) so often because these are the environments where young guys learn how to tell a story, and, quite frankly, WWE has done dick to teach most of the young guys ring psychology. Traditional tags or six-man tags have built in formulas that, when executed properly, always get strong crowd reactions. Thanks to the already-in-place format that’s existed within pro wrestling for decades, Orton and Batista were able to learn on the spot and improve their game by playing the tried and true roles of the assholeish, strength-in-numbers-obsessed heel stable. Of course, the wide array of faces that Orton and Batista had to play off of didn’t hurt in their development or in the poptastic reactions to some of their multi-man matches, but remember that fans wouldn’t have been clamoring for Chris Jericho to make that hot tag if Evolution hadn’t been up to their less-than-noble shenanigans, double-teaming when possible and taking advantage of one of the many incompetent WWE officials.

So, long-winded stable rant made short looks like this: A heel stable provides an opportunity for a variety of multi-man matches, contests which can help remarkably well in establishing a younger, inexperienced wrestler both in terms of ringwork and storytelling.

Now … with all of this talk of heel stables and young, inexperienced wrestlers, you probably know where I’m going with this …

You got it. Let’s talk about TNA’s Hardcore Originals.

Drawing power personified!

I mean, wait … what?

Sorry, Tommy. Try not to cry any lame, Full House-esque man-tears. I was actually talking about the Nexus.

Wade Barrett, David Otunga, Michael Tarver, Heath Slater, Justin Gabriel, Skip Sheffield, and Darren Young are (current NXT class excluded) the greenest and most inexperienced wrestlers on the current WWE active roster. Each man has shown flashes of potential both in the ring and on the mic (some more than others), but the fact remains that these are not seven well-rounded “Superstars” in the mold that WWE most prefers. Debuting them as individual competitors over the course of the several months following the first season of NXT was the route most fans expected the WWE would take in establishing these young upstarts, and yet they have done the unthinkable by putting them all together as one ruthless and merciless gang of angry young men: WWE Creative has actually done something productive and displayed a trait that most IWCers have assumed is a foreign concept to the writers, that being foresight.

Eight, er, seven of WWE’s next top stars.

Obviously, you can’t compare Evolution and Nexus in the area of containing members with previously established reputations and namepower. There is no one in Nexus that comes close to Triple H or Ric Flair in terms of ring experience and a proven history as an interesting and exciting crowd-pleasing character. But the Evolution-proven method of throwing young heels together in multi-man matches in order to get everybody over is one that still very much applies to the seven former NXTers wreaking havoc on the Raw brand. Just as Orton and Batista learned on the spot and were constantly (sorry for this) evolving, so too can Wade Barrett and Company be shaped into the mold of the desired WWE Superstar by fleshing out their movesets and strengthening their grasp of storytelling in a series of multi-man matches.

Imagine if one week on Raw we got a killer six-man tag in the same style as this week’s Forgotten Favorite. They could have any combination of Nexus guys — Barrett/Sheffield/Slater, Gabriel/Otunga/Young, Barrett/Tarver/Otunga — going up against any combination of Raw faces, preferably three guys from the SummerSlam team but preferably not including Great Khali or Bret Hart. Give them thirty minutes of bell time with frequent tags and spaced-out eliminations and, win or lose, the Nexus team would come out looking worlds stronger than they did going in. Further than that, just as Batista learned from working the Tag Title scene against workhorses like Edge and Benoit, two members of Nexus could be paired up and thrown into a program with the Hart Dynasty. Nexus members are already in the process of getting themselves over as characters, but WWE needs to go the full nine and let these guys prove themselves in the ring if the audience is to completely accept them.

WHY IT ISN’T REMEMBERED

I almost feel like it’s too easy an out to simply fall back on the Benoit Effect when talking about this match’s forgetfulness (or rather, disregard by WWE), but I feel like the Rabid Wolverine’s erasure from wrestling history raises a serious problem that hasn’t been frequently explored within the IWC. When it comes to my own personal opinion, I have no problem (in theory) of WWE ignoring Benoit’s name and accomplishments at all costs, essentially writing him out of the history books for fear of looking like they are profiting off of the name of a murderer. However, the only problem here is that if you erase Benoit, you erase everything he was involved in.

It’s an issue that I wrote about in my discussion of Owen Hart a couple of weeks ago. One man does not a wrestling match make. It wasn’t just Benoit that claimed the Two Man Power Trip’s Tag Titles; it was Benoit and Jericho. It wasn’t just Benoit that put on a five-star clinic at the 2003 Royal Rumble; it was Benoit and Angle. And, if we look at this week’s Forgotten Favorite, it wasn’t just Benoit who brought the pain to the baddies of Evolution; it was all three members of the Canadian Triumvirate.

Is Benoit erasure fair to Jericho’s legacy?

As another one of many, many fans who were rocked and disillusioned by the biggest tragedy in wrestling history, I personally have very little desire to go back and watch any of Benoit’s one-on-one affairs. But the thing about Benoit, especially in 2004, is that he was involved in so many badass multi-man matches against Evolution, many of which were made by the involvement of people other than the Wolverine. 2004 saw an enormous amount of four-man, six-man, and eight-man tags that were supremely awesome and worthy of multiple viewings, and yet the large majority of them have become nonexistent within the E’s eyes simply because Benoit found his way into nearly all of them.

I am not a guy who will rally against WWE for erasing Benoit’s name, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel that it’s an injustice to the guys who were doing great work that just so happened to also include Benoit. If we completely erase Benoit from the history books, we erase all of the multi-man matches that saw Evolution develop into the dominant stable we’ve all come to remember it as. The IWC often scorches its shorts over the beauty of SmackDown between ’02 and ’03 (and rightfully so), but it’s often largely forgotten that Raw in 2004 was full of win in the match department. And the reason Raw ’04 is nowhere near as acclaimed as the SmackDown Six era (aside from the lack of Angle or Guerrero) is WWE’s refusal to acknowledge basically anything involving Chris Benoit.

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BONUS MATCH(!)

Raw – April 12, 2004
Triple H, Batista, Randy Orton, and Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley, Chris Benoit, and Shelton Benjamin

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Feedback! (or, the Backfeeding!)

Angle’s had a slew of badass tights over his career but nothing tops the gold-plated abs. Awesomeness defined.

The night-after-Survivor Series-double-turn for Austin and Angle is like the retarded yin to Bret and Austin’s WrestleMania 13 yang. It only made slightly more sense (and I do mean slightly) than if Vince opened the show alone in the ring and said, “Okay, let’s pretend nothing since, oh, WrestleMania has taken place. You can cheer Stone Cold and boo Kurt now. Deal?” Actually, that might have been better.

You forgot one little piece in the kayfabe Angle deconstruction: the poor bastard’s hair STILL won’t grow back!

Still the best column on the site. Postivity and great wrestling rule!

As do sodas.

Posted By: neverAcquiesce

It seems that the curse of non-growing hair has also struck CM Punk. Poor bastards, the both of them. Also, the positive, good vibrations of Forgotten Favorites are a direct result of the recent employment of my yoga-crazy writing coach who shall remain nameless. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing.

Wasn’t Big Show the very first person Swagger destroyed with the Ankle Lock?

Posted By: Guest#5520

He put the hurtin’ on him but it remains to be seen if Swagger can make a giant tap out in a match. There’s a big difference between the heinous beatdown and the official submission, and the latter could really establish Swagger’s Ankle Lock as a move to be feared.

I am the great and powerful…

Posted By: Firsty!

Yes. Yes you are.

The Big Show is a bear enthusiast? He likes learning about bears?

Posted By: marquisofqueensbury

hey, quick question for you Jim.

would you ever consider doing a column on a forgotten favorite for The Mania of Wrestlemania documentary (on Disc 3 of WMXX DVD)? I know it’s not a match, but that documentary doesn’t get enough credit/recognition, IMO.

Posted By: IWC Member #900001

I do plan to eventually branch out from doing something other than just matches from time to time, and I think this is a great idea for one of those columns. I’m a big fan of this documentary and wish that there were more productions of its kind by WWE. It gave a very authentic, sport-like feel that has been lacking in recent years from the Granddaddy of Em All. This documentary captured a special moment in wrestling history — Lesnar’s face culmination, Mr. WrestleMania’s return, Stone Cold’s last match — and watching the film really gives you the impression that this just may be the biggest wrestling event of all time. A great documentary and a much encouraged viewing.

He’s obviously had bigger, higher profile matches, but from a wrestling standpoint, I think this is Kane’s best one on one matchup ever.

Posted By: Nick

I’m sure there’s stuff I’m forgetting, so I don’t want to make any bold statements, but I’m ranking this one up there as well among Kane’s best showings. His WrestleMania rematch with Angle wasn’t too bad either, despite the less than pleasant finish.

hey, quick question for you Jim.

would you ever consider doing a column on a forgotten favorite for The Mania of Wrestlemania documentary (on Disc 3 of WMXX DVD)? I know it’s not a match, but that documentary doesn’t get enough credit/recognition, IMO.

Posted By: IWC Member #900001

Absolutely fantastic documentary, made even moreso by Ventura’s soothing bass tones.

Posted By: neverAcquiesce

I sleep wearing headphones that pump Ventura’s voice into my brain. I have wonderful dreams of the destruction of Pukeamania.

It’s a tremendous match with Kane, arguably his best except for the Bad Blood ’04 bout against Benoit, but usually it’s the decent but not as good WrestleMania Angle vs Kane match that gets the DVD treatment. It should definitely be more well known and enjoyed.

Posted By: Ryushinku

Good matches all around. I also consider his Unforgiven match with Michaels — former Forgotten Favorite(!) — to be among the Big Red Machine’s best. No surprise that his best matches came against Angle, Benoit, and HBK. He’s certainly not the only one who can say that of his career.

What I remember most about the WWF in 2001?

Stephanie and her fine fucking body. Jesus Christ, she was hot as hell back then.

Posted By: Zingy

She was (and presumably is) a very healthy young woman. Her body was nearly as beautiful as her singing voice.

as usual-there is a reason this match is forgotten:it isnt very good!!!!!

also agreed on ur invasion rant. the angle was great-ppl and their fantasy booking and shit is just pointless

Posted By: Guest#3252

I wouldn’t call the angle great, but I wouldn’t call it the abomination that many IWCers claim it was. And if that match wasn’t very good, I know not what a good match is.

that was unbelievable. so good!

and the rhyno / angle match wasnt bad either.

best column

Posted By: jd

I assume you mean that this was the best column in the history of columns rather than simply the best of all of my offerings. I assume this because it feeds my ego. Thank you, JD.

What a great article.
Kudos to you Jim Grimm. An excellent analysis with some very valid arguments.

Darling of IWC and finally after 13 years-champ, Kane tapping out to Swagga.. would be an immense debate. 🙂

Another random point: even Cena makes 400 pound guys like MArk Henry tap out of the pathetic STFU. =))
Compare it with Angle and Ankle Lock.
Wrestling is so retarded with Cena on top.

Posted By: guest

The thing that irks me about Cena’s STF is that, while it’s an established move, it has very little to do with the rest of his offense. The move has been established in that when Cena locks it in the other guy’s fate has pretty much been sealed, but it’s mad lameness in that everytime he pulls it out the move comes from nowhere, with little to do with whatever moves he’s executed beforehand. It feels like a move that he does when he simply doesn’t want to do the Attitude Adjustment, unlike Angle, whose entire match builds towards the success or failure of the Ankle Lock.

The fact that the Invasion angle produced great matches doesn’t change the fact that the angle was botched to all hell. I just had a shitload of mexican food before I took that shit on it.

Posted By: Daredevil

Oh, Daredevil. Those angry, pessimistic stereotypes of IWCers just can’t be true.

The fact that the Invasion angle produced great matches doesn’t change the fact that the angle was botched to all hell. I just had a shitload of mexican food before I took that shit on it.

Posted By: Daredevil

And the fact that the angle was so botched doesn’t change the fact that great matches were produced throughout it. Get a life.

Posted By: Guest#3412

Score one for the good guys.

Awesome choice this week.

Another important Kane-related match (should that still be a topic worth of mention) would be the Kane/Albert IC title match from Smackdown. Can’t remember if the HurriKANErana happened in the same match where he lost the IC title but, either way, I still remember those series of matches being surprisingly decent (and hence, Forgotten Favourites)

Posted By: mr_wishart

I haven’t seen any of the Kane/Albert stuff since it originally aired, and thus I am completely unable to comment on the quality of their matches. But for you, Mr Wishart, I shall explore all that YouTube has to offer.

What I remember most about the WWF in 2001?

Stephanie and her fine fucking body. Jesus Christ, she was hot as hell back then.

Posted By: Zingy

Ahmen to that, so fuckin hot

Posted By: Cody

This.

Hey man,

Quit hating on Dundalk all the time, if ye weeeeee-all. Arbutus is way worse. Like, a lot worse. HARD TIMES in Dundalk, if ye weeee-alll.

I’m gonna go get 17 chesseburgers now.

Posted By: Dusty Rhodes

Arbutus is nowhere near the miserable black hole that is Dundalk. Arbutus has things like soap and literacy. Dundalk has none of this.

On a roster with fellow faces like The Rock, Chris Jericho, and Undertaker, Kurt Angle became one of the most popular wrestlers in the company, oftentimes outpopping his do-gooding colleagues.

Angle was never more populat than The Rock.

Posted By: greg

I feel like sometimes people read the column with the sole intention of finding that one perfect sentence to argue with. Regardless, Angle got some insane pops for a brief period of time, ones that on certain nights rivaled the popularity of The Rock. I’m not saying that 9/11 didn’t have anything to do with it, but still … the dude was over like rover.

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That’s it for this week. As usual, stay safe and out of Dundalk.