The first half of 2001

[NeanderCarl]

Triple H was out injured until January, when the Invasion was over... he missed the entire thing.

Rock was part-time and working on The Scorpion King. He could have maybe turned heel upon his return around SummerSlam time, but I suppose they wanted to keep him face to help the promotion of the movie.

Originally Posted by Tedious In order to actually believe that you have to pretend that Rock and Jericho didn't exist at the time.

Well, Rock was always over anyway so I'll concede that, even though he was barely around for a lot of 2001... but I'd say RVD was more over than Jericho (or equal to, at least) during the "honeymoon period" of his arrival, through to around the time of the feud with Goldust which kinda killed him a bit for a while in early 2002. Jericho was leaning towards a heel turn anyway at the time, having reached the heights of his face run in his feud with Austin, which he lost, before RVD even arrived.

Check out No Mercy 2001, in which RVD is in a WWE title main event just a couple of months after his debut, and is the most over guy on the card with that night's crowd.