Stephane McMahon Discusses Her First Appearance On Raw, Her Favorite Raw Moment
Stephanie McMahon has had a storied past on Monday Night Raw.
Speaking to The Mirror, she talked about her first ever appearance on the program. It was on the November 30, 1998 episode of the long running program as an extra who had to tell Stone Cold Steve Austin where the Undertaker was. She recalls how it all went down:
Well as often happens at Monday Night Raw and at WWE television it's a lot of run-and-gun, because it is live. What I mean by run-and-gun, it's a production term, where you have your crew basically they are on the fly, they are on the go, they are on the move. And we needed an extra, for Stone Cold to ask where The Undertaker was.
So really I just happened to be at the right place at the right time and I got thrown into that scene. It wasn't a strategic decision for Stephanie McMahon, Vince's daughter, to make her debut on television. I was really just an extra in the moment. And it was incredible. I mean to be a part of the show, with Austin? That was certainly a memorable moment for me.
When talking about her favorite moment on the program, it was actually something that went down just weeks ago — her announcement that women superstars would be getting their own Royal Rumble. Although some thought it was weird how everyone suddenly dropped character during the announcement, it was designed that way.
My most favourite moment is when I had the opportunity to announce the first ever women's Royal Rumble match. And I think one of the reasons why is because I had the chance to acknowledge the women in the ring, the women on Monday Night Raw, the women on SmackDown LIVE, the women on NXT and any woman to ever step foot inside a wrestling ring, regardless of what promotion they worked for, because they are all a part of this moment in time, they are all a part of making it happen.
The women in the ring didn't know what I was going to say. We were chastised by some fans because we broke character and I told the women earlier in the day – they knew I was coming out but they didn't know what I was going to say – I told them react naturally, don't feel like you have to be in character, it's okay for you to react however you want to react, to whatever I'm going to say. We all broke character that night.
When that 'yes' chant broke out, I had goosebumps from head to toe.
Raw 25 goes down tonight, both at the Barclays Center and the arena where the first ever episode was held, the Manhattan Center.