WWE Monday Night RAW 25th anniversary: Ranking the 25 biggest stars

22. Lita & Trish Stratus

Here’s my first cop-out. But seriously, you try and include one without including the other. With all of the other names that HAD to be included on this list, I couldn’t justify putting one in and not the other, so here we are.

The current state of women’s wrestling is probably better than it’s ever been. The first women’s Royal Rumble is about to take place. There has now been a women’s Hell in a Cell match, a women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match, a pay-per-view that featured three women’s matches and multiple main events on Monday Night RAW and SmackDown. However, there can only ever be one “first” in sports and/or sports entertainment, and Trish Stratus and Lita hold the distinction of being the first women to ever compete in the main event on Monday Night RAW. What’s better is that they were given nothing. They earned that spot and ran with it.

The fact is that these two women will forever be linked. They inducted one another into the WWE Hall of Fame and their careers mirrored one another for years. Both debuted as valets, with Trish starting off with T&A (Test and Albert) and Lita with cruiserweight Essa Rios. After leaving Rios, Lita joined up with The Hardy Boyz to form Team Xtreme and her career skyrocketed from there. Team Xtreme soon feuded with T&A, sparking the rivalry between Trish and Lita that would last for years.

Lita was the first to gain the WWE Women’s Championship, winning the title on RAW during the Aug. 21, 2000 episode by defeating Stephanie McMahon. She held the title for more than two months before dropping it to Ivory that November. From there, she actually got into a feud with Dean Malenko, even defeating him in a singles match and would challenge for the WWE Light Heavyweight Championship at one point.

Trish and Lita teamed up for a while as part of the Invasion storyline in 2001, defeating multiple teams in the process in different types of matches. Trish was still honing her craft at this point and wasn’t nearly as athletic as Lita, but she continued to work and work and finally won her first title later that year in a Six-Pack Challenge at Survivor Series, a match that also involved Lita.

Over the next few years, both women won multiple titles (Lita won four and Trish won a record-breaking seven) and put on some of the most entertaining matches in the history of the women’s division, including that main event on Monday Night RAW on Dec. 6, 2004, a match that not only broke barriers but also almost broke Lita’s neck after a crazy suicide dive to the outside.

Both retired from in-ring competition in WWE in 2006, and their rivalry will go down as one of the best in WWE history. See, you try picking just one.