Former WWE and ECW star Raven has looked back on his most famous match at WrestleMania, and how he was nearly responsible for cutting the power to the entire show.
Considered by many fans and critics as the best WrestleMania of all time, WrestleMania 17 took place in Houston, Texas in 2001. Along with other classic matches such as The Rock vs. Steve Austin, Vince McMahon vs. Shane McMahon and TLC 2, the Hardcore Championship was on the line as Raven defended the title against The Big Show and Kane.
The most famous moment of the match saw a golf cart briefly used before the ECW legend crashed it into a fence. In the years that followed, rumours circulated that the vehicle nearly drove over a cable that was a major power source to the arena.
While speaking with Chris Van Vliet, Raven confirmed that the rumours are true, and detailed what he wanted to do before the gold cart crashed prematurely:
“That’s true. I’m driving the golf cart, and Show’s choking me. I didn’t expect Show to be choking me, so I wanted to swerve a little bunch because I didn’t want to just drive straight, because we’re supposed to drive all the way around the Astrodome, make a full 360-degree drive. And that was my favorite spot of the match, and I totally ruined it because there was a fence, a chain link fence from ceiling to ground, and the sidewalk dropped off on the other side of the chain. So I went to bounce off the chain with the car, figuring I bounce off and swerve back on, and the wheel just went off the edge and just died right there. The car wouldn’t move, you know, to try the golf car wouldn’t move because the wheel was off the road, and so I tried to get it back on, and Show is going ‘No, no, leave it. Leave it.’ I’m like, I want to go. Kane’s going to chase us in the other golf cart. It’s going to be so cool. So then I just ran out in the traffic and got run over by Kane.”
“I Would Have Definitely Been Fired”: Raven On WrestleMania Botch
Continuing, the former Hardcore Champion noted that a member of the production crew informed him that he was close to cutting the power to the pay-per-view, which he believes would have resulted in his career coming to a premature end:
“Yeah, but I had do something to make in my mind to make up for the spot that I screwed up. But when I found out after the show, one of the production guys grabbed a hold of me, and he said, ‘You know you came within millimeters of cutting off the power to the entire show. You landed right on the wire that has runs the power to the show, if you would have cut through, you would have killed power to the entire event.’ That would have got me so much heat, I would have definitely been fired for that.”
Raven is recognised as having 27 reigns with the Hardcore Title, more than anyone in company history. However, the ECW legend believes that he actually has 39 reigns. When asked about the missing 12 reigns, Raven explained the disconnect:
“I don’t know. At some point, I go, Yeah, I wonder how many of these I’ve won. And so I counted back and then I counted forward after that, I got 39. But they get 27 so, yeah, but then a lot of times it would change hands three or four times in the night.”
In other WrestleMania news, The Undertaker and Kurt Angle debunked a previous rumour.
Featured image: WWE
