History of WWE
The two top stars of the Attitude Era, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, eventually left the company in 2003 and 2004 respectively, while newcomers such as Brock Lesnar, who would become the youngest WWE Champion and Randy Orton, who became the youngest World Heavyweight Champion, saw huge success. Triple H would also be featured prominently during this time, winning several of his fourteen world championships, as would The Undertaker whose WrestleMania win streak started gaining fame. Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Edge, Brock Lesnar, Randy Orton, John Cena, Batista, John "Bradshaw" Layfield, and Rob Van Dam were also given main event opportunities and all ended up becoming multiple-time world champions. From mid 2002 to 2003, WWE brought several prominent WCW stars to the company, including Eric Bischoff, Scott Steiner, Goldberg, Kevin Nash and Ric Flair. The Great American Bash, originally a WCW pay-per-view event, made its debut in WWE.
Evolution (professional wrestling)
Triple H received one final shot at the World Heavyweight Championship, on the July 26, 2004 episode of "Raw" in an Iron Man match. Earlier that night, Orton won a number-one contender battle royal for the World Heavyweight Championship so a title match between Triple H and Orton could have taken place at SummerSlam. However, Eugene interfered in the Iron Man match and helped Benoit take the lead and retain the title in the final seconds. As a result, the main event of SummerSlam was a title match between Benoit and Orton. At SummerSlam, Orton pinned Benoit to become the new World Heavyweight Champion and the youngest World Champion in WWE history to date. On the August 16, 2004 episode of "Raw", Orton was kicked out of Evolution following a successful defense of the title against Chris Benoit. Batista hoisted Orton on to his shoulders in what appeared to be a celebration, but following the thumbs down from Triple H, the group proceeded to attack Orton. The next week on Raw, Triple H demanded that Randy Orton "make the right decision" and give him the World Heavyweight Championship belt. In return he would forget Orton ever existed. Orton refused and then spat in Triple H’s face. Afterwards, backstage Triple H was livid and demanded Eric Bischoff resolve this. Bischoff said he would and promised Triple H a match against Orton at Unforgiven for the World Heavyweight Championship.