I, for some reason I can't explain, put on an episode of Raw during the Invasion. 6 days before Summerslam 2001.
The first 20+ minutes is Steve Austin brow beating and completely burying various Alliance members, including actually beating Tazz.
The first match is about a half hour in with the commercial break, it lasts under 3 minutes and has outside interference on both sides. It's also WWF vs WWF
There are multiple backstage segments with Alliance members looking to Austin for guidance and motivation and Austin obviously not knowing who they are. Everyone he motivates or brow beats gets their asses kicked by Kurt Angle at some point in the show.
Taker/Kane absolutely eviscerate Palumbo and O'Haire in a cage match to build how they're going to do exactly the same thing to Kanyon/DDP at Summerslam. And they do. Undertaker refuses to sell for ANY member of the Alliance that wasn't already a WWF guy for the entire duration of the angle. He actually went out of his way to make all of them look bad and specifically singled out Mike Awesome and basically ruined whatever career he could have had in WWE because he was the tallest guy from WCW and Taker didn't like how he worked. They worked with each other in 4 matches total, 2 weekends of house shows. He did the same thing to DDP and Kanyon as well.
I think this was the last time Palumbo and O'Haire ever teamed again on TV beyond a 10 man tag the next week and I believe it was the last time either were on the main shows until being repackaged. I think O'Haire was actually off TV completely after the next week until the summer of 2002 when he started doing occasional matches on Heat. Palumbo gets moved to secondary and tertiary shows and gets fired from the Alliance shortly before Survivor Series or something, then starts teaming with Billy Gunn initially as a straight face team who then turned heel then turned gay then fake gay then faces then broke up and neither really did anything again
Chris Jericho spends about 7 minutes making fun of Stephanie's boob job. It's literally middle school shit. He has an upcoming match with Rhyno but ignores him to say BOOBIES. Booker comes out, then Rock comes out, calls Shane (who isn't even out there) both a pussy and a motherfucker (neither are censored on Network, motherfucker was on TV I believe, Steph missed her cue on both to cut him off
), then stops just short of calling Booker a distinguished mentally-challenged fellow. Jericho saying "boobies", literally, got a bigger pop than anything you've heard in years besides maybe Bryan at his absolute PEAK of YES Movement.
Kurt Angle dominates RVD in a hardcore match, and also is able to beat the asses of Raven/Dreamer/Awesome in the same match, while allowing Jeff Hardy to swoop in and pin RVD for the hardcore title.
Rhyno/Booker defeat Jericho/Rock in the longest match of the night (which was under 9 minutes) due to interference from Shane AND Stephanie, as well as 4 refs being involved. Booker hits Rock with two Book Ends, one on a chair. On Smackdown, he does a full promo as The Book. Note, at this point his entire character is "that WCW guy who is jealous of The Rock", so they have him literally doing a Rock promo but saying The Book instead of The Rock. He then goes on to lose the WCW Championship at Summerslam to The Rock, do nothing but job for a month, then get put in a team with Test where he "feuded" with Kane and Taker (aka got to look like shit against Taker for 2 months).
If you're one of those nerds that reads the Observer rewinds on Reddit, you'll know the Invasion was exactly the clusterfuck behind the scenes as it came off on TV. Plans changed from week to week (original plans were full brand split situation, with WCW getting Raw. TNN said nah, so it changed to a late night Saturday show, this never got approved either. Then they were going to wait months to do anything. Then give WCW TV time and build interest for its own show. Then all plans were scrapped. Then they had Lance Storm start the invasion with no plans of what to do next. Then the ECW thing came about and they kept using ECW name and logo on TV despite now having the rights to do so and eventually had to stop but kept doing it off and off anyway because no one else was interested in buying ECW's assets
) with no plans for where the angle would go or how it would end, it was just a show to show situation. Originally they thought WCW would be the faces, then the Booker/Buff match shit the bed and fans turned on the whole thing so they scrapped whatever little they had planned and added ECW. One week Vince decided he didn't like most of the WCW guys and sent them to developmental, then decided there weren't enough stars/talent at all in the Alliance which led to all the WWF guys jumping. Once it was clear TNN had no interest in giving a time slot to WCW, there was no end game planned out for any of this, they just rode it until they couldn't any longer, then reset so they could do the brand split they had wanted to do a year earlier.
It's baffling Vince thought it was good to bury half of his roster every week on TV and expect them to not be damaged goods when the angle was over. Except he didn't have plans for the angle or when it was over, so he wasn't thinking or giving a shit that everyone in a WCW or ECW shirt besides RVD, Rhyno, and Dudleys (who had been now long established as WWE stars) looked like absolute jokes. Every single member of The Alliance had to be rehabbed, have a complete repackaging, or they just left to do nothing on Heat/Jakked. It took Booker a full year to almost get back to where he was at the end of WCW. RVD arguably never was as over again as he was in the summer/fall of 2001. Rhyno in a way lucked out by having to get neck surgery before the end of the angle so he missed getting completely berried and got to come back without any of the stink of it on him. DDP spent the entire time having his character assassinated, getting berried by Taker (and his wife), then getting a comedy gimmick and feuding over the lowest title WWE had at the time before retiring shortly after. This was after taking a large pay cut to get out of his Turner contract so he could go to the WWF. And he was the biggest star that came over.
But what the real point of this long post is that all of the problems in current WWE can be traced to the Invasion. Immediately following the demise of WCW (and ECW), storylines stop mattering or making sense. The Invasion is a 6 month angle about WCW and ECW joining forces (despite ECW going way, way harder at WCW/Bischoff than WWE and Vince was giving Paul money and talent for years and even offered to send HHH to work some shows towards the end) to take down the WWF once and for all, but in actuality it's all about the McMahons and didn't have any of the true WCW stars, yet they still did the biggest non-WM PPV buy rate of all time. The buildings were still sold out. The crowds are still hot for everything, no matter how stupid (seriously, Chris Jericho acting like a 7th grader was more over than anything today). Vince was still being rewarded for putting out an incoherent, lazy ass product. And this went on for years and years and years. It took 20 fucking years for things to level out from the Attitude Era's spike. By that point Vince had long been set in his ways that he could put out lazy nonsense. Long promos that go nowhere, endless rematches (although the matches themselves were much, much shorter back then), angles and talent just being dropped from TV for no reason, guys getting berried for no reason. It's also wild how many people from this show 18 years ago are still around in prominent roles.
Paul Heyman: New creative head of Raw in 2019
Chris Jericho: Top star of AEW
JR: Voice of AEW
Stephanie McMahon: Still occasionally an on screen character, was a main character up until 2-3 years ago
William Regal: HHH's right hand man basically the second in command for the entire developmental system, on screen character for NXT
The Undertaker: Occasional on screen character, apparently to be featured more often in 2019
Kurt Angle: Regular on screen character until 3 months ago
RVD: Current talent for TNA
Rhyno: Current talent for TNA, just coming off an inexplicable 4 year WWE run
Tommy Dreamer: Current freelance talent for TNA, head of his own promotion, worked MLW and AEW this year as well
Jeff Hardy: Injured but current WWE talent
Lance Storm: Helping with TNA creative
Dudley Boyz: Bubba is headish of ROH creative, D-Von a high ranking backstage official for WWE
Michael Cole: Voice of WWE
Shane Helms: Has worked on screen and behind the scenes with TNA and ROH recently, currently an agent for WWE
Shane McMahon: All over Raw and Smackdown, currently feuding with seemingly the entire face roster
Charles Robinson: Still a WWE ref
Mike Chioda: Still a WWE ref
