Raw #204 - April 7th, 1997

Mankind’s flash-paper fireball attack on the Undertaker from last week is this week’s cold opening, complete with dramatic music and slow motion. Tonight, Vince says that Shawn Michaels is going to “get a load off his chest.” Whose load it is remains unclear. Owen Hart and the British Bulldog come to the ring with their respective flags to wrestle a non-title tag team match. Owen Hart grabs the mic and praises his brother Bret for filling his family with love, then calls the audience, “haters”, years before the word would be run into the ground by social media.

Raw #201 - March 17th, 1997

The last Raw (is War) before Wrestlemania is live from Syracuse, home to the nine thugs who aren’t responsible for Shawn Michaels forfeiting his title (this time). The Legion of Doom enters for the opening match while Vince welcomes us to “The Warzone” for “Monday Night Raw” before reminding us that “Raw is War.” That’s a lot of TV show titles to fit in a single sentence. Crush and Savio face off with the LOD, with both Faarooq and Ahmed banned from ringside. LOD starts fighting NOD outside the ring before the bell, kicking off several minutes of chaotic brawling among all four men. While the referee tries to establish order, Ahmed cuts a promo on the split screen about how in the Chicago Street Fight, we might see something we might not want to see. He doesn’t specifically mention his butt cheeks, but that’s what we’re all thinking. Faarooq responds with an inset promo of his own that he delivers in “Ebonics” so that Ahmed can understand. Through the magic of split-screen, we also see the finish to the Ahmed-Faarooq match at MSG last night, which ended when the NOD interfered to break up a pin.

Raw #200 - March 10th, 1997

The first episode of “Raw is War” (and the 201st episode of Raw, sort of) gets off to a less-than-auspicious start as the in-arena noise is audible during the opening seconds of the intro, allowing the viewers at home to hear Howard Finkel instruct the live crowd to make noise. A new intro sequence plays to the strains of Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People,” used without permission. Thus begins Raw is War, one of the strangest titles for a wrestling program in history. You didn’t see Nitro re-naming itself Nitro is Awesome, now did you? Or Nitro is Ortin? The WWF’s flagship program would retain this self-referential title up to and including the September 10th, 2001 edition.