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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →A go-home Raw is the final episode before that year’s WrestleMania. The strongest substantiated pick in the available episode-specific sources is the March 17, 1997 Raw before WrestleMania XIII: Sycho Sid beat Bret Hart in a steel cage match, and a retrospective review identifies the bout and closing angle as the episode’s defining material. The available evidence does not support naming five best and five worst episodes responsibly, so this ranking distinguishes that verified candidate from claims that remain unestablished.
How to judge a WrestleMania go-home Raw
A high audience rating is not a quality score, and a memorable Raw segment is not automatically from the final episode before WrestleMania. A fair comparison should check four things for each year: whether the featured matches matter and deliver; whether the show advances the WrestleMania card clearly; whether its closing segment creates anticipation; and whether it leaves important stories flat or confusing.
The date matters. WrestleMania’s schedule changes, so the go-home episode has to be verified against the specific event rather than inferred from a memorable Raw in the same month.
Best-supported pick: Raw, March 17, 1997
This episode was the final Raw before WrestleMania XIII. The results archive records a steel cage match in which Sycho Sid defeated Bret Hart. A retrospective review also identifies the episode as the go-home Raw and treats the cage match and closing angle as its defining material; the episode results archive corroborates the match result.
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Those details make the episode a defensible best-show candidate by the criteria above: it featured a major match tied to the WrestleMania story and closed with a consequential angle. That is a reasoned editorial judgment, not a claim of consensus or a comparison against every go-home Raw in the show’s history.
Why the March 3, 1997 Berlin Raw is not the go-home show
The Berlin episode aired two weeks before WrestleMania XIII. The March 17 episode—not the March 3 broadcast—was the final Raw before the event. A secondary history account describes the Berlin broadcast as poorly produced, reports a 1.9 rating, and characterizes its matches as cold. A separate retrospective review offers a more favorable view of a match on the card. The disagreement is a reminder that a poor reputation, an audience figure, and a critical judgment are different things.
Rank #2
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Ratings are context, not a best-or-worst list
A 2012 411MANIA compilation credited to PWInsider lists these historical ratings for go-home Raws. They are figures reproduced by that article, not an independently verified audience dataset, and they do not establish episode quality.
| Go-home Raw date | Rating listed by 411MANIA (2012), credited to PWInsider |
|---|---|
| March 22, 1999 | 6.4 |
| March 27, 2000 | 6.6 |
| March 26, 2001 | 4.7 |
| March 26, 2007 | 3.9 |
| March 27, 2012 | 3.0 |
WWE’s Raw milestone history and ranked Raw match history supply broader context about the show’s legacy, but neither establishes that a particular episode was a WrestleMania go-home Raw or that it belongs in a best-or-worst ranking.
Rank #3
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Why there is no defensible five-worst list here
The episode-specific material supports one strong positive candidate, not a sourced comparison of five best episodes and five worst ones across Raw’s full history. Naming nine more episodes and assigning them reasons would imply verification that the evidence does not establish. In particular, the Berlin Raw cannot fill a “worst go-home” slot for WrestleMania XIII because it was not that event’s final Raw.
Accordingly, the March 17, 1997 episode is the clear pick among the substantiated material, while a complete top-five and bottom-five ranking remains unestablished. The distinction matters: an editorial ranking can be subjective, but its dates, match results, and reasons still need episode-specific support.
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Rank #4
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