DVD Review: The Best of Raw 15th Anniversary 1993-2008

A few things strike me odd about this DVD review before I even get started. First of all the cover dates "1993-2008" would be technically accurate NOW even though I bought this set in 2007 and it has a 2007 copyright date on the back. The cover also largely features people who aren't on Raw or haven't been on Raw for a long time. I know that should be expected given this set covers a 14 year span but check this list out from left to right - Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Stone Cold, John Cena, Triple H, The Rock, and The Undertaker. 3 out of those 7 are all but done with wrestling, one was off TV for 1/4th of the year, one was off TV for almost half, and one wasn't seen on Raw for 2/3rds of the year. That leaves only The Undertaker unmentioned, who for most of the 21st century has been featured exclusively on Smackdown. It almost feels like the cover should come with two stickers - DOES NOT ACTUALLY INCLUDE ANY RAW FROM 2008 and WARNING: WRESTLERS ON COVER DO NOT CURRENTLY STAR ON RAW. With that out of the way let's move straight into disc one, which comes in its own shrinkwrap INSIDE the box, and features a picture of HBK along with the date range "1993-1997."

The disc opens with the obligatory ads for WWE 24/7, WWE Mobile and WWE Home Video which you can't skip even if you want to. After that they feature an ad for "Legacy of Stone Cold" without announcing any release date, Triumph and Tragedy of World Class Championship Wrestling noted to be "available now" and the Shawn Michaels: Heartbreak and Triumph DVD set. It would be nice if you could at least fast forward through these commercials but as always "this operation is not available here." Even after seeing it 100 times I'm still obligated to watch "Please DO NOT try this at home." Isn't it curious that they always say PLEASE? How about just once we inject a little attitude into it and say "NEVER try this at home EVER under ANY circumstances." Thankfully the video finally starts and we get the classic Monday Night Raw opening music along with an accompanying video playing in the lower-righthand corner. Playing the main feature results in a montage of the entire span of Raw though including comments from all the superstars. The narrator for the set is Todd Grisham. WHAT? They couldn't have gotten J.R. or The King to be the voice of 15 years of Raw? No disrespect to Todd Grisham but looking at him you might think Raw is older than HE IS.

The Raw superstars are interviewed about where they were the night the first Raw aired on January 11, 1993 and most say they were in high school or college at the time with the notable exceptions being Triple H (just breaking into the business), Booker T (just starting on WCW), William Regal (had just come to the states) and Shawn Michaels (was in the Manhattan Center that night on the first Raw). We see footage of Bobby Heenan trying to sneak into the Manhattan Center to be part of the live show and then get highlights from Raw two weeks later with Ric Flair taking on Mr. Perfect. It's classic wrestling sets like this one and Flair's own from WWE Home Video which go to show how much the Nature Boy has aged - he's gone from tanned and toned with a full head of hair to old, wrinkled and rapidly diminishing follicles in the last decade and a half. You don't really notice when he gets a little bit older each year but this throws it into stark contrast. This match is also a little eerie to me since it features Mr. Perfect, who I believe was the very first wrestler to die I took specific notice of back in February of 2003. Unfortunately he'd be far from the last. This was a "Retirement Match" called by Vince McMahon (back when he was a babyface announcer) and Bobby Heenan (doing double duty as a heel commentator and Flair's manager). Unfortunately comedian Rob Bartlett was also on the announce team, fortunately for us he almost never speaks. Mr. Perfect hooks the Perfectplex for 3 to win the match, which in theory would send Ric Flair packing from wrestling, although in reality he'd just jump back to WCW.

Next we see HBK and Mr. Perfect getting into a brawl outside the Manhattan Center in May of the same year, where it's alleged in a pop-up box that $3,300 of damage was done to Howard Finkel's car. The next match is Razor Ramon a/k/a Scott Hall vs. The Kid b/k/a Sean Waltman or X-Pac. The Kid got a huge upset win over Ramon in this match. Next up is what Grisham alleges is "Match of the Year" from 1993. According to Wrestling Observer that was Manami Toyota and Toshiyo Yamada vs Dynamite Kansai and Mayumi Ozaki, while this is Shawn Michaels v. Marty Janetty, which DID win the award from Pro Wrestling Illustrated in 1993 for MOTY, so I suppose Grisham is HALF right. Still it would be helpful if they'd acknowledge WHO picked it as Match of the Year if they're going to throw out blanket statements like that. Personally I'll say the match is good enough to at least get **** out of 5 if you judge on that scale. Shawn was the cocky arrogant Intercontinental Champion, Janetty was the babyface wanting revenge on his former partner, and Mr. Perfect was the special enforcer at ringside who wouldn't let HBK walk away and take a countout loss to retain his belt. The crowd was red hot for this match - so much so you can barely hear McMahon, Heenan and 'Macho Man' Randy Savage on commentary. This one has tons of near falls, drama, cheating, Sweet Chin Music, and Perfect helping Janetty by "throwing in the towel" in a fashion. It's actually somewhat amazing they gave away a match this hot on free TV. After that is an equally fun moment with Gorilla Monsoon throwing Bobby Heenan off the air in December 1993.

When we return to action in the middle of 1994 the commentary team is Savage and good ol' J.R. and Bret Hart is wrestling The Kid, now known as the 1-2-3 Kid. After a long and grueling match with a ton of near falls, Hart won with the sharpshooter to retain his WWF Championship in a match that should and could have elevated the Kid to superstar status - Hart even helped him up and gave hima hug after the match. Unfortunately the mid-1990's was also something of a down period for the promotion, marred by an inability to create superstars and a bunch of goofy celebrity appearances, illustrated by back to back Raw segments with Leslie Nielsen and William Shatner. It's not surprising looking at the back cover of disc one that only two chapters are credit to 1995, but at least one of them is a classic between Shawn Michaels and the late great Owen Hart from November of that year. Things pick up a little in 1996 as the Attitude era starts to emerge with Vader beating up Gorilla Monsoon, Goldust giving Ahmed Johnson mouth to mouth, and Brian Pillman pulling out a gun on television to defend himself when 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin breaks into his home. According to the pop-up box the USA Network was so upset by this footage that WWE had to apologize to them or Raw would have been taken off the air. At this point the war with WCW was in full swing so when Jerry Lawler describes the Undertaker v. Mankind match from the end of 1996 as "no holds barred, anything goes" he was also describing Vince McMahon's burgeoning competition with Eric Bischoff.

Not surprisingly a large part of this first disc is focused on 1997 when the Attitude Era got into full swing, with almost half the chapters on the back cover having '97 dates. We see the famous segment where Shawn Michaels "lost his smile," Chyna making her debut attacking Marlena (Terri Runnels), ECW invading Raw, Bret Hart going heel by cursing and yelling on the air at Vince McMahon, Stone Cold giving Vince a stunner in Madison Square Garden, the infamous Vince promo about how "Bret screwed Bret" and Christmas with D-Generation X. Oddly not a lot of classic matches are featured, although so many of them may have been saved for PPV that there weren't many left to show from free TV, although Owen Hart v. British Bulldog is definitely worth watching more than once. If you pick up the Wal*Mart edition of "Best of Raw" the first DVD also comes with a bonus disc featuring the entire first episode of Raw sans commercials from January 11, 1993. This makes the first box over three and a half hours of classic footage from Raw and since I picked up the entire set for $20 I'm already fairly satisfied with the volume of material. Nonetheless more matches in general and less stuff we've already seen on other sets, particularly the stuff featuring Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold and The Rock.

The second individually shrinkwrapped DVD inside this set covers 1998-2002, and at least on this one we're only forced to endure the "don't try this at home" promo and not all the other commercials for WWE products. I didn't start watching Raw "live" until late 2000 or perhaps even 2001, and didn't start watching it religiously until 2002, so as a result most of what I know about the storylines is the backtracking I did by buying used tapes or DVD's of past WWE PPV's, or the moments showcased from this era on TV or video. For me at least this disc has the potential to be show me a lot of Raw moments that I missed out on completely. Unfortunately the Raw segment where Stone Cold tells off Mike Tyson isn't one of them - I've seen this one a MILLION times and it's the first one on this disc. The same goes for the "Standards & Practices" promo from DX that follows.

Next up is footage of the New Age Outlaws pushing a dumpster with Mick Foley and Terry Funk (unfortunately referred to throughout as Chainsaw Charlie) off the stage. It's at this point that a lot of the video footage ends up blurred thanks to the panda-loving fuckwads at the World Wildlife Fund, including the corner turnbuckles, signs and merchandise in the crowd, even the chyron graphics that state who the champions are. Even the top of the entrance ramp has to be blurred out when Triple H introduces the new D-Generation X to the crowd, which includes the return of The Kid. Oddly we only learn that the New Age Outlaws became members of DX through a pop up, even though it occured the same night as Sean Waltman's return. The Stone Cold v. Vince McMahon match which follows should be very familiar to WWF/WWE fans as this was the one where Austin had one hand tied behind his back, literally, before Dude Love interrupted and beat up Austin.

I'm getting less and less convinced I'm going to see any Raw moments that I haven't seen before when for the umpteen millionth time I end up watching DX try to invade WCW, followed by the DX skit where they pretended to be the Nation of Domination, followed by Stone Cold driving a zamboni down to the ring to interrupt the WWF Title presentation ceremony where Vince had the title in a glass case and the Brothers of Destruction in the ring with him. Would you be surprised to learn that Mr. Socko and Stone Cold in Vince's hospital room comes next? I know I wasn't. Disc one is looking better and better all the time as at least half or more was moments and matches I hadn't seen before. They could have picked some that haven't been showcased a hundred times on TV, home video and WWE 24/7 hundreds of times. I suppose the moments here are literally the "Best of Raw" as they are all funny and entertaining, but perhaps there are some fans out there who saw Raw that remember moments NOT showcased in this set.

Mankind beating Rock for the title in January of '99 - seen that. Stone Cold driving the beer truck - seen that. The Rock's mock funeral for Stone Cold and SCSA driving a monster truck over his car in response - seen that. The first thing on all of disc two I don't remember having ever seen before is Mean Street Posse v. The Stooges, a horrendously bad battle if I've ever seen one. This match is devoid of almost any wrestling value yet the pop-up statistic tells us that this was the highest rated Raw ever, an 8.1 with over 8 million viewers. Even the editors of the DVD could only take so much of this bad match as it's shown in clipped form. Patterson and Brisco pick up the win as Hulk Hogan's own "Real American" music plays, while Lawler quips to J.R. "Where have I heard that music before BROTHER!" If that isn't bad enough Patterson takes off his shirt to do Hogan's pump flex and ear cup. UGH.

Next up is the "Higher Power" angle, one which my wife was a huge fan of, to the point that which when she accidentally taped over the Raw from that month she had me search all over the internet to try and download those same episodes with Undertaker, Stephanie, Vince and the new CEO of WWF, Stone Cold himself. So unfortunately I've seen this one too. Todd Grisham shows up again to talk about the "mysterious millenium countdown" which means for yet another time I get to see Chris Jericho come out and interrupt The Rock to cut a promo. It's pretty shocking just how much of this three hour disc I know intimately given I wasn't regularly watching wrestling of any kind - ECW, WCW or WWF - when the majority of the Attitude Era occured. I remember thinking something similar though when reviewing ANOTHER three disc DVD set - the History of the WWE Championship. Disc one had some genuinely interesting matches, while discs two and three were almost entirely title matches that had been shown on other WWE tapes, DVD's, and recent PPV's. I suppose that's the downfall of being a dedicated wrestling fan - even if you only started watching wrestling since 2000 and only watched TV or home videos created since January 1st of that year you'd know EVERYTHING on this second disc. Trips "marrying" Steph, Jericho "not" winning the WWF title, Shane "purchasing" WCW, Kurt Angle's milk bath, Trips returning to WWF after rehabbing his FIRST quad tear, and the nWo coming to WWF close out the disc. It all comes pretty close together in chronological order except for the very very last moment that jumps five months ahead to July of 2002 - Eric Bischoff coming out to accept a hug from Vince McMahon.

Disc three jumps ahead even further to the "Rock Concert" from March 2003, when The Rock was building up his match with Stone Cold at WrestleMania 19. There's one thing I've noticed both from watching disc two and now from watching disc three that I need to comment on - many of my favorite moments from watching WWF during this era when I was watching it live, whether on Raw or on a Sunday night PPV, involved Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit or Kurt Angle. Now I can understand there are various reasons for not including any moments from any of these three despite this entire set being 10 hours + in length, so let's briefly get into the pros and cons.

In Eddie's case the WWE would probably not want to relive the memory of his death, and would also like to avoid the subsequent drug and steroid issues related to it. Even though he was clean and sober at his demise, the damage from those years of hard living had already taken their toll, and WWE would be at least partially responsible for employing him during some of those issues. Then again I would think the fact that WWE fired him when he got too bad and made him clean up before returning would also largely absolve them of any responsibility. Still you've got to think it's somewhat criminal to call this three disc set the "Best of Raw" when you don't include the Intercontinental Title match where Eddie defeated both Chyna and Kurt Angle (Sept. 4, 2000) or Eddie's ladder match with RVD for the IC title (Raw on May 27, 2002) among others. I'd certainly call those two matches the "Best of Raw." WWE may argue that Eddie was on Raw for a short period of time before moving over to Smackdown to become the star of that show, but it was his appearances on Raw that made me a huge fan of Latino Heat in the first place. The bottom line is I don't think they can be absolved for not including him anywhere in disc two or three.

Now in Chris Benoit's case the argument for not including him is almost completely self-evident, as he's singlehandedly responsible for the worst moment every wrestling fan experienced in 2007, and what I could arguably call one of the worst days of my entire life. Nevertheless, and I'll take whatever heat I'm going to get for saying this, you can't genuinely define the "Best of Raw" without including Chris Benoit in it. Much like Eddie Guerrero, it was Benoit's tenure on Raw that made me fall in love with wrestling all over again after having not watched WWF since childhood. When I think of the best moments since I started watching Raw, I immediately think of Benoit defeating RVD to win the IC title (July 29, 2002), seeing him beat Batista before WrestleMania LIVE IN PERSON in Omaha (February 23, 2004), and Benoit defeating Jericho in a submissions match in Japan (Feb. 7, 2005) among MANY other moments. I know we'd all like to shun our memories of The Crippler, his Toothless Aggression, and those famous flying headbutts that undoubtedly caused brain damage which made him mentally unstable, but trying to pretend Benoit was never on Raw if you watched TV the last 7 years is like trying to pretend the sun won't come up tomorrow when you damn well know it will. Regardless given that they could be accused of trying to profit off a cold-blooded murderer, even though none of the matches he had before his last days indicated to us the monster he'd become, I'll give them a pass on not including him in this set in any way.

Last but not least though is Kurt Angle. Now Angle hasn't been entirely shunned from this set as we noted the "milk truck" incident that was included, but given how much time Angle spent on Raw before jumping to Smackdown there's a serious amount of classic material that's been omitted. Let's keep in mind Undertaker is on the cover of this three-disc set, and I would argue HE is much more of a Smackdown star than a Raw one (then again 'Taker is barely featured in this set himself). Nonetheless Angle v. Michaels from June of 2005 immediately comes to mind, as does the WWE Homecoming match they had which ended in a 2-to-2 tie, or even the first blood match on the very first Raw of 2006 where Angle defeated John Cena. Out of all these moments only the iron man match from October 3rd at the WWE Homecoming is included. I can only assume WWE has some bad blood with Angle for jumping ship to TNA when they mutually agreed to part ways, or else Angle would have a much more significant presence on disc three. I can understand their sentiments but as I already gave them a pass on Benoit I'm not going to give them one here, especially when so much of disc three features so many unnecessary segments like Eugene's "musical chairs match" or Edge and Lita having a "live sex celebration" on TV. I'd rather have had a few more Angle matches instead.

The long and the short of this review is that "The Best of Raw 15th Anniversary 1993-2008" does have some redeeming value at a bargain price of $20 or less, and ESPECIALLY if you get the Wal*Mart version with the bonus disc including the first Raw in its entirety. In fact what this set actually makes me want to do is pull out some of my Raw episodes from 1999-2002, tapes I dubbed off to DVD by either borrowing them from Abismo Blanco or my wife, or ones I had recorded on VHS myself before buying my first DVD recorder (you'd be amazed how much less space discs take up than tapes). I'm going to go back through them and look for all the moments that I felt were the best of Raw that WWE for whatever reason saw fit not to include. Now to be fair even in 10 hours they couldn't fit in all of those moments considering Raw must total well over a thousand hours worth of footage altogether. On the other hand a 14 disc set with the best of EACH year of Raw would have been far more satisfying and comprehensive at say 2-3 hours each. A 30 hour set too much you say? Well they've released box sets of every WrestleMania and every Royal Rumble already, and they're planning one for SummerSlam as we speak, so why the hell not! I can't give this set a clear unmitigated thumbs up - thumbs in the middle at best, tilting slightly up if you only started watching Raw in the last 12 months and somehow avoided seeing any of this material before.