Ten Years Ago Today
Evolution officially formed on Raw, setting off well over a year of domination of the show. The team, composed of Randy Orton, HHH, Ric Flair and Batista, represented the past (Flair), present (HHH) and future (Orton and Batista) of wrestling. To say the team was dominant is an understatement, as they held all of the titles at the same time and three members would wind up winning world titles.
Freaking old days! It was all real to me damn it.. when Evolution was on its soar high…
Evolution overall was a good thing despite people claiming it was all about Triple H. It made Randy Orton & Batista into Stars and Flair sorta being the glue that held it together was great stuff.
Without the brand extension they would have had a great roster in 03
I just remember a lot of Flair wrestling on Raw. Against Carlito.
Carlito didn’t debut until October of 2004.
Austin and Rock were going/gone, they needed to create some stars. They got Hogan, Goldberg, Hall etc back in too around this time. The ill-fated brand extension….for me, it became a lot less interesting and perhaps signalled the end of the ’99-’01 second Golden-Age of the WWE. Did the re-introduction of Flair, Shawn etc really do the WWE good or did it actually undo some good work and put things back a few years?
Hogan and Hall were a year earlier. Goldberg was about four months later. Guys like Flair and Shawn (well not so much Shawn but we didn’t know that at the time) were placeholders instead of stars.
What do you think of people saying the group did more harm than good? It did make Batista/Orton big deals and Orton is still here today helping. Then you got Batista who was a freaking HUGE star. It’s crazy how many people underrate who much of a star batista was in 05. Shame the injury killed his momentum so Cena took over.
Didn’t they switch brands before Batista’s injury?…
Cena was always going to be the bigger deal in the long run, hence the move to Raw. Batista was a huge deal before Cena though and there’s no denying that.