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

different. I mean, the rides of Chris Bernou Wild to the World title is now possibly hard to look back on for obvious reasons, but it's also when Brock Leslie 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. W.W.E 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. stars 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 adage 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. So, 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 only 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 Tristrattas and Lita main eventing roar 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 were still fine 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, thank goodness they did. Some of the other choices that we made this year were utterly horrific. Number nine, the absolute bizarreness of the bad blood pay-per-view. Now look, this show is indeed main-evented by Triple Hitch and Shaw Michael's inner hell inner cells, 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, W.W. really wanted to push Tomko. Somehow, la resistance or 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,

locking in at seven 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 zero 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 lost 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 Schelligan's 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. Played and coachmen with them 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 and people's elbow to get the one, two, three. 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 to 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'd ever seen. But to be fair, it did make me go, well, I wonder what Dave Meltzer thought about it in the rest of the 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 were referred to Shelton Benjamin's Mike 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 Hayman should have been paired with Shulton, 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-deemed division, he continued to fly,

and those matches against Triple H and Chris Jericho from 2004 absolutely rule. One of those with Jericho happened on Cyber Sunday, too, when Shelter won the I-C title after the fans voted for it. And that should have been enough to tell management, oh, we better go and do something. Now, he didn't actually hold that bell 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 Vincent Mann didn't see it. I mean, it's his shot, 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 is 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 them up, but one thing is still true. In 2004, this gimmick got so over, it was crazy, and 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 Raw when The Rock saves him, or the 11th of

October show where we pretended Eugene and William Regal and won the tag team titles, honestly, Eugene was getting megapops 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. See him interact with top stars like the Rock Triple H and the rest of evolution is totally wild. It sort of feels like WW should have switched this gimmick to give Dinsmore 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 lead to Matt Hardy's storyline in 2004 is so bad, people have made countless videos

on just that subject to try and figure out what the Earth WWE was thinking.

To start, it 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 Lita was pregnant after Kane had forced himself on her.

As either not being appropriate for wrestling, imagine watching this and somebody else walking

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 Snitsy somehow got involved and yes, he punted a baby. WW then decided to try and make Kane the baby face in all of this, because Leekda suffered a miscarriage after Snitsky had knocked Kane into her. WWE actually wanted you to feel simply for the Big Red Machine,

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

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