WWE has had some stinkers over the years. Here is a countdown of my top 10 most disappointing matches.
10. John Cena vs The Rock @ WrestleMania 29
Cena and Rock went one-on-one in the ‘once in a lifetime match’ just one year prior to this match. This in itself was enough to put many people off this match. Cena won the Royal Rumble match and the Rock ensured he would walk into the grandest stage of them all, by defeating CM Punk to retain the title at Elimination Chamber.
It started off on the back foot as CM Punk had to drop the title to Rock at the Royal Rumble PPV, and Punk was hot with the crowd at the time. Vince liked his big matches at Mania to have a title on the line.
Cena defeated The Rock for the title, getting a victory back after The Rock won in the match the year before. This is possibly the time period when CM Punk became disillusioned with WWE, as he missed out on the WrestleMania main event match that he had always wanted.
9. Undertaker vs Big Bossman @ WrestleMania XV
This match took place at WrestleMania inside a Hell in a Cell. Bossman was more character-focused than he was for being great in the ring. Disappointing? Yep, this was more than disappointing. It was one of the worst Hell in a Cell matches of all time. The feud probably didn’t need a cell match to finish it and the ending of the match was very controversial as Undertaker hooked up Bossman to a noose and proceeded to hang him from the cell.
8. Randy Orton vs Bray Wyatt @ WrestleMania 33
This was an incredibly disappointing feud. Wyatt is angry at Orton. They go at each other. Orton joins Wyatt family. Orton wins Royal Rumble. Wyatt wins title at Elimination Chamber. Orton gives up his title shot. Orton burns down Wyatt’s creepy house and then beats AJ Styles to win back his title opportunity.
Then the match. Wyatt projects lots of creepy images onto the ring mat throughout this match. Then gets beat. 1,2,3. End of title reign.
7. Goldberg vs Brock Lesnar @ WrestleMania XX
This is widely regarded as one of the most disappointing WrestleMania matches of all time. It was well known before he match that both were leaving the company so the fans hijacked the match. You could see Goldberg and Lesnar were pissed and just went through the motions. It was only the fact that Stonecold was serving as the referee that saved this a little.
JR revealed on his podcast that despite only working around 15 minutes, both men were paid $250k for their nights work.
6. Undertaker vs Goldberg @ Super Showdown 2019
Another big Saudi PPV so out come the big guns. Undertaker vs Goldberg was booked, and even though both were part-timers, there was a little bit of excitement around seeing these two face off. However, the match was utterly dreadful.
Goldberg was concussed pretty early on and struggled to recover. When getting Undertaker up for the Jackhammer, he botched it, and dropped Taker on his head. Undertaker was visibly pissed, and this very nearly put the deadman in the ground. Another disappointing match!
5. AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura @ WrestleMania 34
When AJ Styles became champion, and then Nakamura won the Rumble, the internet went crazy! This is the match that the fans dreamt about, and thought would never happen with Vince in charge.
So onto WrestleMania and surely the dream, five-star match? Well, not sure what happened to these incredible performers, but it just didn’t click. These two can put on bangers in their sleep, but for some reason, this match was a dud. Disappointing from these two. Some argue it is the WWE ring style that the performers need to adhere to, others say it was just the sheer expectations that were on this being an incredible match.
4. Undertaker & Kane vs HHH & Shawn Michaels @ Crown Jewel
Another Saudi PPV so here come the big guns, and who bigger than a returning HBK? Surely this couldn’t be disappointing? Right?
Well, even though HBK hadn’t wrestled a match in 8 years, he was actually the best performer in this match. HHH tore his pec and Taker and Kane were just slow and sloppy. The Saudi paycheck is clearly a large one for all of these men to put on this match. HBK had resisted many calls to come out of retirement until this Saudi event, resisting such matches against Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles.
All four men, despite having decent intentions, came out looking a lot worse than when they entered.
3. Roman Reigns vs Undertaker @ WrestleMania 33
Roman Reigns declared WrestleMania ‘his yard’ now and inflicted The Undertaker’s second WrestleMania defeat.
Reigns eliminated Taker at the Royal Rumble, thus setting up this huge WrestleMania match. Undertaker discussed why he thought the match would not work;
“I was extremely beat up. I’d toyed with the idea of hanging it up. I knew that year when I got to the Rumble, that I wasn’t going to be ready for ‘Mania but I had already committed to the program. I didn’t know what we were going to do yet, I just knew that I was going to work with Roman.”
After the match, Undertaker left his hat and coat in the ring, in a sign that he was retiring. He went on to have hip surgery in the following weeks and this played a major part in why he struggled in the match.
Undertaker did come out of ‘retirement’ to have a few more matches, with his last being against AJ Styles at WrestleMania 26 in the boneyard match.
2. Seth Rollins vs The Fiend @ Hell in a Cell 2019
Bray Wyatt had returned with the firefly fun house and The Fiend character in 2019 and had been attacking legends left, right and center. It led to this match for the Universal title against Seth Rollins, inside the Hell in a Cell. Just, well, because it was the Hell in a Cell PPV of course.
The Fiend was this unbeatable, vicious character and this would create problems when booking matches. The match played out under the horrible, red lights that made it quite difficult to see what was going on.
Towards the end of the match, Seth piled weapons and chairs on top of The Fiend and then proceeded to hit them with a sledgehammer. The ref then inexplicably called for the bell. A DQ finish. In a Hell in a Cell match!
The crowd were absolutely furious and made their feelings known with chants of ‘bullshit.’ What made things worse, The Fiend got back up pretty quickly and destroyed Rollins. So the ref didn’t need to stop the match.
Seth Rollins, speaking on The Broken Skull Sessions Podcast, revealed that he nearly strangled Vince for booking this match. He said, “My vision for what that match was going to be was a lot different than what we had to go out there and do. We went out there and did what we were told to do to the best of our ability.”
One of the worst Hell in a Cell matches of all time.
1. 2015 Royal Rumble Match
This is quite possibly the worst Royal Rumble match – ever!
Roman Reigns was the main event babyface, being pushed to the main despite the fans feeling that he was being pushed down their throats.
Daniel Bryan was the insanely popular babyface who the fans absolutely adored, and was being held back in favour of others (like Reigns).
The two were booked for the Rumble match and this is the first mistake. The crowd wanted Bryan to win. Vince wanted Reigns to win. So the plan was hatched to have Bryan be eliminated early on so that the crowd would get all of their frustrations out and then get on with the latter part of the match.
Daniel Bryan entered the match at number 10 and went toe-to-toe with Bray Wyatt, who was also looking strong in this match. Then, after just 10 minutes, Daniel Bryan was eliminated. The crowd was stunned and started chanting ‘bullshit.’
The crowd took over the rest of this match with their chants. Things weren’t helped by the fact that Big Show and Kane, who were well past their best, were being presented as major threats and they were eliminating everyone, one by one. This was horrific booking.
Then, we were left with Kane, Big Show, Reigns and Rusev. When Reigns eliminated Kane and Big Show, the crowd went wild as Rusev slipped back into the ring, as they thought just maybe, Reigns isn’t winning this.
However, superman Reigns threw Rusev over the top rope and won the match. The crowd was so aghast at this match that Vince sent out The Rock to try and calm them down and bring them onside a little, but this didn’t do the job.
What do you think of this list? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading. You can catch more Top 10 articles here.
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