Hindsight edition: Raven vs DDP

 I came across a clip on Instagram of Raven attacking DDP during an appearance on MTV TRL (Before it was the juggernaut it came to be just a few short months later). That clip led me down the rabbit hole of an iconic feud in my opinion that was Diamond Dallas Page vs Raven.

The feud started over something simple, DDP being the WCW United States Champion and Raven wanting that title. In the spring of 1998 among Goldberg's rise, Booker T. Putting on stellar matches as the TV champion, Chris Jericho coming into his own as a performer, and the nWo civil war brewing. This feud flew under the radar which is honestly a damn shame.

Raven was added as a proxy so to speak as DDP and Chris Benoit had a brief feud over DDP's title, yet Benoit and Raven's beef wasn't settled. After a triple threat match at Uncensored Benoit moved on, while DDP and Raven continued to "hash" things out.

From there things got "personal", with Raven ever the promo king. Constantly mentioning their shared connection to Jake "The Snake", if I remember correctly he was supposed to appear at some point to help the story in this feud. His demons he fought at that time likely got the best of him, and a deal wasnt made with WCW.

DDP and Raven had some grueling hard hitting brawls at Spring Stampede and their "rubber" match Slamboree. Now looking back this feud was nothing more than WCW's version of the Tommy Dreamer/Raven feud. Not having access to ECW programming at that time I didn't know any better.

That doesn't take away from the fact that this was one well developed, violent and entertaining feud. I think it gets lost in the conversation because it only lasted three months. Before DDP became the go to guy for celebrity partners (Karl Malone, Jay Leno). While Raven went through a feud with the returning Kanyon and some internal battles with the Flock.

If youve never seen a match from this feud. Go back and watch their matches and you too will see just how good and underappreicated it is. Possibly putting it up there in the conversation with a Dusty/Horsemen Dreamer/Raven, DDP/Savage and Edge/Cena feud.

Quoth The Raven, nevermore.