This Day in Pro Wrestling History: The Rock-N-Sock Connection Win the Tag Titles

On August 30th of 1999 the WWE was in Boston, Massachusetts for Monday Night Raw. It featured the insanely over duo of The Rock and Mankind winning the Tag Titles from the usual suspects in the Undertaker and Big Show. It's long been a tradition of the WWE to take two huge wrestlers, in this case Taker and Show, and put the tag titles on them for little or no reason at all. At some point they just quit devoting time and energy to the tag team division. Which is a shame because when I was growing up the tag team division put on the most entertaining matches by far.

The Rock-N-Sock Connection was actually a brilliant bit of booking. The Rock was in the process of becoming the second biggest star in the company and Mankind was giving him more and more credibility. The 8.4 rating that the "This is your life" segment did on Raw is still one of the most watched segments in the show's history. It seemed like every other sentence out of Rock's mouth became a catchphrase. The match was decent at best but it's still amazing to me that the People's Elbow, for as horrific a move as it was, managed to get so insanely popular. You can see in the video below that just seeing the Rock set up for it makes the crowd go crazy.

By the way, when is the last time you heard the crowd pop that loud for the finish of a match? Some of the crowds the WWE was drawing during this time were amazing. Here is a video of the match from Raw.