10 Things You Learn Binge Watching Every WWE Raw From 2004

2004 is such a mad WWE year to look back on because every day seemed to give us something different

I mean, the rise of Chris Burnett to the world title is now impossibly hard to look back on for obvious reasons

but it's also when Brock Lesnar decided he was going to leave the company. Those two are somewhat connected

It kind of opened the door for other superstars to step into the limelight. WWE was still obsessed with pushing the envelope, which resulted in some terrible TV too

And really, it's just one big hangover from the attitude era. What do we do? Who do we push? And what direction are we heading in

There's a lot more we can take from 2004 as well, though. Hello, my friends. I have watched this a lot, and I am Simon Miller

Let's see where we were at. Number 10, the game-changing main event. So it's totally fair to say that the women's division in 2004

was not being treated in the right way. A lot of the stories for the females were terrible

which is why Trish Stratus and Lita main eventing Raw was absolutely massive. It was the 6th of December, so it just snuck in, and it is historic

It's mad WWE took forever to finally change this, but at least it was something

Trish and Lita went out there and put in the work. It's kind of funny to watch now because it's likely not of the level you'd expect from today

but that's the whole point. You need the OGs to walk so that those after can run

You have to figure that they will still find back against all this backstage too. Some women in 2004 were being told that they weren't allowed to punch each other

So we get on the main event of Raw. I mean, that is such a massive 180. You do have to watch it through the eyes of the time though, but still

No one else even came close to this and that is why they are legends. They fought for what we have right now and thank goodness they did

Some of the other choices that we made this year were utterly horrific. Number nine, the absolute bizarreness, the bad blood pay-per-view

Now, look, this show is indeed main evented by Triple H and Shawn Michaels' inner hell, inner cell

so it's not all bad. And you also see Randy Orton versus Shelton Benjamin for the WWIC Championship

which is a decent match. And the very strange, Chris Jericho versus Tyson Tonko

2004, WWE really wanted to push Tonko. Somehow, a lot of resistance are even on this event, which goes to show you how old that it is

And in the pre-show, Batista defeated Maven. So you can kind of see all the pieces of the future coming together

What will really make your eyebrow raise, and we are going to talk about Eugene later, is that slap bang in the middle of this, looking in at 7 minutes and 38 seconds

is Eugene taking on and defeating Jonathan Coachman. That's why the Jonathan Coachman, who was on commentary

Just to give you an idea of how this was received, some people rated it a whopping 0 out of 10 stars

And after a few minutes, an unknown woman in a bikini walks to the ring, and she wants to give everybody some cookies

Jonathan is into this, and he says, oh hi Eugene, maybe you would like a sugary sweet

when of course this woman launched Eugene out of the ring, and Coachman slammed Eugene's head into a cookie tray

I'd love to be making this up, all of it did happen in 2004, and I saw it with my own eyes

Eventually Lance Cade comes out to join in the shell again as well, and yes, naturally he's holding a stuffed animal

which had sentimental value to Eugene, so because Cade was a heel

he ripped up said animal. Cade and Coachman were then going to beat up Eugene, but of course because they are the heels

eventually they ran into each other, which allowed Eugene to hit the rock bottom of people's elbow

to get the 1-2-3, so I just kind of felt like it needed to be in this list

When you are binge-watching and all of a sudden you get into a match like this, you kind of stare off into the distance and ask yourself am I actually choosing to use this wonderful thing called life to its most beneficial And the argument with this is probably no It was one of the worst things I ever seen But to be fair it did make me go well I wonder what Dave Meltzer

thought about it in the Wrestling Observer newsletter. And he just didn't bother to rate it

because he thought it was terrible. Kind of sums it up. Number eight, we didn't really use Shelton

Benjamin properly. Anytime you mention this, people will refer to Shelton Benjamin's mic skills

For starters, they were more than fine, but it's also 2004. So you could say the same about one

Brock Lesnar, but we went and put Paul Heyman with him. Not saying that Heyman should have been paired

with Shelton, but there would have been other options. He was just such a great athlete and

could do such amazing stuff in the ring that he was deserving of a proper push. Even when he left

the tag team division, he continued to fly. And those matches against Triple H and Chris Jericho

from 2004 absolutely ruled. One of those with Jericho happened on Cyber Sunday too when Shelton

won the IC title after the fans voted for it. And that should have been enough to tell management

and, uh, we better go and do something. Now, he didn't actually hold that belt for 244 days

so maybe it's fairer to say it's what didn't happen in 2005 that derailed him

But it also felt like the opportunity was there, and Vince McMahon didn't see it. I mean, it's his show, I suppose, but it does feel like a mistake

I mean, look at the 2025 world. Benjamin is kicking ass simply because match quality is of such importance

All we had to do was copy that 20 years ago, but we did not. I do want to point out Shelton Benjamin has still had a great career

He has been busy essentially forever. if you want to go back to that 2004 period

don't you tell me we didn't kind of hold him back a little bit. Number seven, the difficulty with Eugene

The Eugene character is not good. You never do it today, which sums him up. But one thing is still true

In 2004, this gimmick got so over, it was crazy. Surely nobody expected it

Frank D was dubbed as Eric Bischoff's special nephew, sort of summed it up

But be it the 17th of May, or when The Rock saves him, or the 11th of October show

where we pretended Eugene and William Raygo had won the tag team titles. Obviously, Eugene was getting mega pops all over the place

And once again, please don't get me wrong, the motivation for this have to be questioned

but Nick Dinsborough, the man behind it, somehow made it work far beyond what anybody could have thought was possible

Seeing him interact with top stars like The Rock Triple H and the rest of Evolution is totally wild

It sort of feels like WWE should have switched this gimmick to give Dinsborough a proper opportunity to fly

because he's the guy that did it. Instead, sooner rather than later, it sort of cut his legs off from underneath him

2004 was an absolutely mad time. Number six, the worst of the worst

Kane Leita, Matt Hardy's storyline from 2004 is so bad, people have made countless videos on just that subject

to try and figure out what the earth WWE was thinking. The start was self-explanatory

Goes back to what we always talk about, which is Vince McMahon thinking shock TV was the way to get better ratings

Issue with that is the bar continues to be raised when you get to stories like this

The implied notion that Leita was pregnant after Kane had forced himself on her

Aside from not being appropriate for wrestling, Imagine watching this and somebody else walking in who wasn't a fan

It is utterly embarrassing. The real what the hell are you doing moment came a few months after, however

Once Matt Hardy picked up a knee injury and had to leave TV, Gene Snitsky somehow got involved and yes, he punted a baby

WWE then decided to try and make Kane the babyface in all of this because Leita suffered a miscarriage after Snitsky had knocked Kane into her WWE actually wanted you to feel sympathy for the Big Red Machine

even though he had done one of the worst things that anybody can possibly do

I mean, it really is just beyond distasteful and has aged terribly. So when you go through 2004 and this keeps popping up, man, you just want to turn it off

Remember, wrestling is meant to be a distraction from life. This was anything but. Number five, the Raw Diva Surge

And we had put this one back to back for the same reason. and it is exactly the same mentality

Surely people will tune in for disturbing stories, and everybody else will be super excited for sexy women in lingerie

I tell you, man, the actual era didn't actually die until WWE went PG

Because as much as Trish and Lita wanted to help push the women's division forward, actually it was kept rooted where it was

On the 24th of May, in front of a briefcase filled with thousands of dollars, Vince McMahon announced the Divas search to find the next big female star

The next steps would be a reality show based on Raw every single week. Like, man, dudes are not good

It was a second year in a row WWE had done this, so it wasn't a massive shock

But seeing the contestants tasked with challenges such as go and seduce the male wrestlers

and that's awful. And even the fan voting got called into question. Nobody believed this was actually legit

There's also the Diss the Divas segment on the August 30th Raw, which has to be seen to be believed

It got so obscene, half the thing has to be bleeped out. Christy Hemi won

but a lot of these women got hired anyway, so it is just a giant waste of time

And as always, just to underline that as usual, you would never get away with it today

Number four, there actually is a lot of good wrestling. After the Adjadera had come to an end from a date perspective

there was actually one really decent change. If shenanigans had been the choice for many of Raw

all of a sudden we were at least going to try and get back some good in-ring action. I suppose it probably started when Paul Heyman took over on SmackDown years before this

but in amongst that madness, so many guys went out there and reminded you what the name of the game was

Chris Jericho and Christian have an awesome steel cage match in A before Jericho is back again in August

and he has an absolute banger with Edge. You should watch anything with Shelton Benjamin and Triple H too

as we've talked about the Benjamin push may not have been sustained, but this is still really good

The game also bumps his ass off of William Regal off the back of the Eugene stuff, so if you do like some good wrestling

thank goodness you can find it. It's not all run-ins and disqualifications. You can even see Shawn Michaels smashing out TV bouts as if it's nothing

Always feels like when you look back on time, he reserved all his best performances for pay-per-view

It's not true. So this roster just deserves more credit, as I think they knew they had to get back to basics

I mean, I wouldn't go as far to call them mini classics, but there are some damn good fights you should care to see

Got to have your way to find them. Number three, the use of Stone Cold. Given it had been a year since Steve Austin hung up his boots

most fans started to realize this wasn't being done for laughs. If Stone Cold was going to wrestle again, they wouldn't have eeked it out this long

He really was too injured to continue. Now we know today Austin was struggling with this disconnect too

even though he was still involved on screen. On the 8th of March Raw, for example

he's reminding Brock, Leather and Goldberg, he's the special guest referee for their match at WrestleMania

But I don't know, man. He just seems a little bit checked out. He even stumbles over his words at one point

That is something the rattlesnake rarely did. I don want to say he wasn excited about this but I do kind of think with Mania around the corner it probably a little sad that he couldn compete I suppose it all comes down to the question of how Steve Austin should have been used I get why WWE would want to feature him

he was still the guy, but maybe a shift to the next generation would have been more correct

It's a lose-lose, I guess. People did still want to see him. Of course, it's not as bad as the latter end of 2003, but then again, long after this, Austin was back refereeing that Jerry Law

and Michael Cole match that you should never watch from WrestleMania. So it really was just a

roller coaster for a good chunk of time. And you can kind of see it all popping through the cracks here

Number two, the July Iron Man match. So I cannot watch Chris Benoit matches anymore

I always feel the need to get that out there. And you can figure out why. If you can still sit through them, more power to you, however

It's most definitely a personal decision. When going through Raw in 2004, though, you eventually get to the 26th of July show

where Benoit and Triple H do a one-hour Iron Man match. It, of course, was continuing on the feud from WrestleMania 20

but many people still consider this one of the best Iron Man matches WWE has ever done on TV

So to get that on a free service was mad 20 years ago. The pay-per-view model was still so strong, so usually that's where you kept your heavy hitters

Triple H is also in full on mega-hill mode, so let's not forget there was a time where he was the best at this

And by 2004, fans were desperate for guys like Benoit to be given proper pushes

That's exactly what happened for a while anyway, and if you do go out there, you will find this match on a lot of best-ever Raw matches lists

So you do have to mention it. In many ways, it does seem to be unforgotten about, although you can understand that

And if not, just think about it for one second. Number one, the Edge. So Edge returns to WWE in 2004

and it becomes obvious super quickly that he needed a refresh. Even though he had been away

fans decided the character felt too similar to what we had done before, and this man gets booed

You can pick most roars from after his comeback, and the audience just isn't having him, which is mad

Edge was one of the best talents WWE had at that time. Now, thankfully, the company doesn't ignore it either

which is pleasant because by the end of the year he is starting to embrace his heel ways. And of course, when we pulled the trigger in 2005, well, there was no looking back

It was great for Edge's career because he flew to the main event. But just go and find footage of the Intercontinental title reign from July to September

I suppose fans were just desperate for something new. So man, do they give it to Edge

This actually turned out for the best because the rated R superstar character he would go on to find

was the perfect antithesis to many of the babyfaces WWE had. And thank goodness we did do that

Because do you know what probably happened in 2025? All of this would have been ignored

You shut up, fans. We don't want to listen to you. It's just another telling reminder that most of the time

you should go with the audience because they're telling you what they want to see. And nine times out of ten, there's actually a reason for it

It is pretty cool to see it evolve in real time here as well. And my gosh, has Adam Copeland just embraced that

He probably wanted to be a bad guy because once again, there was a massive hole for these

And before long, he would be feuding with John Cena for the World Championship. So if you ever wanted to see the seeds planted

for the Rated-R Superstar, well you've probably got to start in 2004