Three Minute Warning
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- For the Canadian Football League rule, see Three-minute warning (football).
Three Minute Warning (also called 3 Minute Warning) was a heel tag team on World Wrestling Entertainment's RAW brand consisting of the tag team Rosey and Jamal who would later be managed by Rico.
On the July 22, 2002 edition of Monday Night RAW (Eric Bischoff's first official night as RAW general manager), Bischoff ordered a match between D'Lo Brown and Shawn Stasiak, informing them from the ramp that they had "three minutes" to entertain him. At the finale of the match, Jamal and Rosey appeared from the crowd and attacked Brown and Stasiak. They would come to be known as "Three Minute Warning", attacking random wrestlers each week at the orders of Bischoff. The most notable events during this gimmick came when they attacked two lesbians, after they began to bore Bischoff (the name Three Minute Warning came from how long it took Bischoff to become bored), and when they crashed Billy Gunn's and Chuck Palumbo's wedding. Both events drew criticism from gay & lesbian rights groups. After the wedding incident Billy & Chuck's manager/stylist Rico jumped from SmackDown! to RAW to manage Three Minute Warning. The team broke up in July 2003 when Jamal was released from WWE, leaving Rosey to turn face and to pursue a new tag team career with the Hurricane.
In 2005, Jamal re-signed with the company, and Rosey was betrayed and abandoned by his last partner, The Hurricane, which pointed to a return of Three Minute Warning. The team would compete together in dark matches in late 2005 but on March 21, 2006, WWE released Rosey from the company, ending the chance of an on screen reunion. Jamal would go on to be repackaged as "Umaga" and debuted on the April 3, 2006 edition of RAW.
[edit] Trivia
- The team of Rosey and Jamal were first known as The Island Boyz in the independent circuit.
- For a time Three Minute Warning used the 2 Skinnee J's song 3 Minutes as their entrance music. According to 2 Skinnee's guitarist, Lance Rockworthy, the band did not receive any compensation for use of the song.[1]
- The name Three Minute Warning is a reference to when Bischoff used to run WCW. He would begin Monday Nitro at 7:57PM ET, one hour and three minutes before RAW came on. Bischoff would use the three minutes to tell the viewers what was going to happen on RAW (hence the name "Three Minute Warning").
