Horrible / WWE - Other

While there were some... noteworthy things WWE did in its past, there's a lot of mistakes the company did during its time.

Important Notes

• If something bad was an isolated incident or simply stupid, it doesn't make the whole thing Horrible. Merely being offensive in its subject matter is not enough to justify a work as So Bad It's Horrible. Hard as it is to imagine at times, there is a market for all types of deviancy (no matter how small a niche it is). It has to fail to appeal even to that niche to qualify as this.
• No Real Life Examples, Please! While WWE's management of the COVID-19 Pandemic has been deemed questionable at best, it doesn't count as an example, as it doesn't pertain to anything Kayfabe but rather a Real Life situation.
• To ensure that the match/wrestler/etc. is judged with a clear mind and the hatred isn't just a knee-jerk reaction, as well as to allow opinions to properly form, examples should not be added until at least one month after release. This includes "sneaking" the entries onto the pages ahead of time by adding them and then just commenting them out.

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The Authority

One of the darkest chapters in WWE history was the reign of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon's faction The Authority. It lasted three straight years, generated nuclear levels of X-Pac Heat, and became so hopeless and overbearing that fans tuned away in droves, and all as a response to Raw and Smackdown getting an extra hour of airtime. Get some popcorn, troper; you’ll be here a while.

• The angle began at SummerSlam 2013, where Triple H guest-refereed a WWE Championship match between John Cena and Daniel Bryan. Bryan won the title, only for Randy Orton to immediately cash in his Money in the Bank contract, after which Triple H screwed Bryan over with a Pedigree and handed Orton an easy win. This quickly became a trend for the Authority: if it looked like a face would win, they'd get screwed over as hard as humanly possible.
• From there on, the angle became the premier modern example of how not to book authority figures. Every week, Triple H and Stephanie antagonized anyone they could, roped in nearly every major heel on the roster, such as The Shield, The Wyatt Family, The New Age Outlaws, Kane, and a revived version of Evolution, and always got away unpunished. In addition, matches where anyone associated with the Authority were participating would often end with their allies interfering and causing the match to either get thrown out or end in an Authority victory. Even worse, the first twenty minutes of Raw and SmackDown were usually spent on long-winded, annoyingly self-congratulating speeches, all while they made the extremely hypocritical claim of their actions being what was "best for business". As a result, fans began getting so tired of the Authority that they tuned out en masse, causing steep ratings drops.
• Bryan got buried week after week by the Authority at every chance to get the title, in what became a wild goose chase. He won it back at Night of Champions... but was stripped of it the following day, because Scott Armstrong, the match's referee, did a fast count.^note Conventional wisdom made it obvious to everyone that Armstrong was bought by the Authority to frame Bryan, but why he didn't just screw Bryan out of the title via the typical tactics crooked referees use, such as counting slow or not at all for Bryan and counting fast for Orton or ignoring Orton doing things that should get him disqualified, instead of having Bryan win in a screwy fashion as part of a plan to later frame him is anyone's guess. Making matters worse, other than making run-ins whenever it was convenient to the Authority, the "Armstrong as the Authority's crooked referee" angle went nowhere and was quietly dropped later on. Then at Battleground, his match with Orton ended in a no-contest because of a run-in from Big Show, who bounced back and forth between helping and hindering the Authority (but doesn’t he always do that?). Then at Hell in a Cell, Triple H had Shawn Michaels act as guest referee just to attack Bryan and cost him his match. And when Bryan finally won at WrestleMania 30, he had to vacate the title over two months later due to legitimate head and neck injuries, ending his world title aspirations for nearly five years and giving the Authority even more chances to bully the rest of the roster.
• During the aforementioned burials, shortly after Hell in a Cell, Triple H made the decision to unify the WWE Championship with the World Heavyweight Championship. This meant that the long and prestigious existence of the Big Gold Belt, which had gone from the NWA to WCW to WWE, would be coming to an end, all for the sake of continuing the angle. On top of that, the unification match also ended with an Authority victory, as Orton would beat Cena after using handcuffs to restrain him to the ropes. WWE continued to have the Big Gold Belt be used as a prop before retiring it, needlessly ending the existence of one of the longest running titles and arguably the most beloved title belt in wrestling history.
• The night after Battleground 2014, where John Cena won the aforementioned vacant title, Triple H went out to cut a promo… not against Cena, as it turns out, but towards the fans that had ruined all of Vince's plans by getting behind Daniel Bryan, saying that if the belt didn't make its way back to the Authority, he would tweet his displeasure and if whining about it didn't work, then "by God, me and my friend Mark will stop watching". Of course, insulting your own fans never goes well, and ratings immediately started declining. As it turns out, his friend Mark did stop watching.
• At Survivor Series 2014, Cena challenged the Authority to a five on five elimination match, with the stipulation that if the Authority lost, Triple H and Stephanie would never be seen on programming again. The team seemingly ended the Authority with a run-in from Sting — but five weeks later, on the last episode of RAW that year, Seth Rollins, who'd betrayed the Shield for the Authority, forced Cena to reinstate the faction anyway after outright threatening to murder Edge. This not only basically rendered the match pointless, but lead to a stupid feud where the Authority, as promised, fired Cena's teammates, and then Cena won their contracts back. Perhaps the wrestler who suffered the most for this was Dolph Ziggler. In the match, Ziggler was the last man standing on Team Cena after nearly everyone was eliminated, yet managed to defeat all four remaining members of Team Authority... but when Rollins forced the Authority back, Ziggler was shunted to the wayside and forgotten about.
• Speaking of Sting: he debuted properly in WWE against Triple H at WrestleMania 31. Of course, instead of paying respects to a 30-year veteran that had nearly ended such a terrible angle, WWE used the match to bury WCW yet again; even though the Monday Night Wars had long ended and nobody cared about WCW anymore, including Sting himself. In the match, Triple H and his cohorts of D-Generation X beat Sting and, bizarrely, the New World Order, whom Sting's "Crow" gimmick was created to fight against, and whom likely caused as much long-term damage to WCW as The Authority did to WWE^note While that's arguably true, it also made WCW profitable for the first time ever, and as soon as it started losing steam WCW was back in the red and would never get out. Meanwhile the Authority angle had been negative money from day one.. Sting's career in WWE never recovered from that match, and after getting a severe neck injury against Seth Rollins at Night of Champions, he quit the company and was forced into retirement for six years.^note Like most people fed up with WWE, he signed with All Elite Wrestling... who would go on and set the standard for future retirement runs, with his stint as the mentor and tag partner to young daredevil Darby Allin..
  • One thing to follow up on from the last point is that, in the leadup to Wrestlemania, Sting said outright that he signed with WWE to fight the Authority specifically because they reminded him of how WCW's ownership ran it in its dying years and he wouldn't sit by and watch it happen again. Despite his laying out that case, the commentary table, even the faces, spent the match at Wrestlemania burying Sting and claiming he signed with the company as revenge for WWE winning the Monday Night Wars. The whole thing gave the impression somebody high-up backstage didn't appreciate Sting's comparison or getting so real with the company's problems and had the whole thing rewritten on commentary to make him look bad.
• Later that night, Rollins won the WWE Championship after cashing in his Money in the Bank contract during the main event, in what, fittingly, was described as "the heist of the century". In his reign, Rollins became a frustratingly incompetent Dirty Coward that never won cleanly, and he repeatedly lost in non-pay-per-view matches, which made him look extremely weak; all but two of his defenses (the final two, no less) ended in a screwjob finish, the most ridiculous of which saw Rollins win after interference from Jon Stewart, of all people. He also gained the aid of J&J Security, which consisted of Joey Mercury and Jamie Noble, two mid-carder wrestlers who were well past their prime and who routinely interfered on his behalf, ruining what respect the fans had for them. The two ended up being written off TV for good after a beating by Brock Lesnar, but before Lesnar could get the title off Rollins, he was suspended after going on a rampage and attacking nearly everyone in a blind rage.
• Rollins ended up having to vacate the title due to an injury at a house show. Leading up to Survivor Series 2015, a tournament was held to crown a new champion... only for the Authority to recruit Sheamus, who, despite being eliminated in the first round of the tournament against future partner Cesaro, won the title after the final match with a third Money in the Bank cash-in, rendering the entire tournament one big "Shaggy Dog" Story. It didn’t help that in an attempt to make the cash-in shocking, Sheamus had been constantly losing matches, which made fans actively dread when the cash-in would happen, and that this was a blatant rehash of the instigating SummerSlam moment, right down to an almost identical amount of time the belt was held before the Authority-aligned wrestler got his hands on it.^note The especially stupid part is that Sheamus had twice tried to cash-in on Rollins already, with him being stopped both times, once by Orton, who had quit working for the Authority, and once by Kane, who was still working for them, so there was little reason as to why he would join a faction he was willingly fighting against. Tellingly, the following Raw episode had the lowest ratings in series history since 1997.
• Sheamus then founded his own sub faction called the League of Nations, which consisted of him, Rusev, Alberto Del Rio, and Wade Barrett. The League generally did not get over with the fans largely because of the circumstances surrounding its creation and the fact that they rarely ever won matches. They actually managed to outlast the Authority, but when Barrett's contract expired, he was kicked out of the group. The initial plan was for the group to be disbanded after being defeated by the Wyatt Family, but when Bray got injured, the plan was changed for the League to fall apart during a simple three on three match after a series of blunders on their behalf.
• After Survivor Series, Roman Reigns, who won the tournament and thus the title before the cash-in, assaulted Triple H at Tables, Ladders, and Chairs, and later regained the title by defeating Sheamus on the following episode of RAW.^note It says a lot about how despised both the Authority and the associated angle were at this point that Reigns — who was currently dealing with nuclear levels of X-Pac Heat — was able to get over as a face (albeit briefly) via all of this. In Philadelphia, of all places.The Authority however forced him into a stipulation that, at the 2016 Royal Rumble, the match would entirely be for the title this time, and went so far as to rig the drawing so that he would be the first entrant. Although Reigns did his best, the Authority once again further abused the system and had Triple H himself enter at the 30th spot and win the title, which for some reason the announcers seemed to think was a very good thing despite the fact that now the title was on someone who had spent the past few years being a tyrannical heel. They didn’t even express any anger at the Authority's flagrant cheating or even acknowledge Triple H's hospitalization.
• The angle was finally ended for real in one of the most confusing and anti-climatic payoffs in wrestling history. As Stephanie received an award for being truly evil, Shane McMahon returned to confront his family and demanded control of RAW to which Vince McMahon, who openly supported the Authority, forced him to face The Undertaker at WrestleMania 32. Not only did the Undertaker, by this point a long-time face, do Vince and thus the Authority's bidding with no apparent Face–Heel Turn or other explanation (aside from orders that if he lost, he would never appear in another WrestleMania, which probably would've hit a bit harder if he wasn't pretty much fully-retired by that point), but Shane ended up losing the match... and then was given control of RAW and SmackDown anyway due to "overwhelming fan support", despite it being clear that the Authority didn't care about the fans one bit. Plus, in-story for the entire angle up until this point, the Authority justifying all of their actions with "giving the fans what they want" and "best for business" were meant to be seen as nothing but excuses for them to do whatever they felt like, and willingly relinquishing their power apparently for no reason besides pure altruism after years of tyrannical rule over the company was such a sudden and out-of-character move that for many fans, this didn't even register as an ending to the angle at all, they just assumed the leave was part of the Authority's schemes and that they'd be back in a few weeks. Reigns also got the title back from Triple H, but that match, and indeed the entirety of the event, was panned by critics and audiences, actually winning that year's Gooker Award. And just to prove how sick fans were of the angle at that point, an official poll asking how Shane was doing recorded just 5% of the pollers wanted the Authority back.
• The angle damaged the reputations of everyone involved. The McMahons' already-checkered reputation was permanently tainted by their constant abuses of power; the faces that fought them^note except Daniel Bryan, who quit due to injury, though he would resume wrestling later had been buried too deep to get over; the wrestlers who allied with the Authority lost fan support^note Seth Rollins was the arguable exception, but even then he is not entirely blameless since his character willingly brought them back after their seemingly final defeat; and television ratings fell so hard they've never really recovered. The Authority was also nominated for a Gooker Award in 2015. While they didn’t win, they got over 500 votes, the fourth highest that year, while Wrestlecrap did induct their confusing and pointless feud with Big Show into its ranks along with their burial of Sting. Perhaps most damning of all, after Bryan was screwed out of the title after Night of Champions, one pay-per-view provider began offering refunds to outraged fans, which proved an obvious truth: the Authority, despite their claims, was the opposite of what was "best for business".
• By being unstoppable Invincible Villains like the nWo beforehand, The Authority all but effectively curtailed heel authority figure characters for good. They had been played well before, most notably by Vince McMahon, but the key difference was that those factions were frequently humiliated by the faces. Due to their contracts having a clause that effectively prevented them from suffering such humiliations — those being that Triple H cannot be made to look weak and Stephanie not being allowed to be attacked by male wrestlers — this never happened with the Authority, and whenever they did suffer any kind of humiliation, it was too little, and they bounced right back to being invincible in the next episode. As such, by refusing to let themselves lose and abusing their power, the use of the trope ground to a screeching halt. By the time SmackDown moved to Fox in 2019, the McMahon family stopped being involved in storylines and many rival promotions dropped the trope outright; while the General Manager position was brought back in WWE following the angle, it was irreparably damaged by the Authority's abuses of power, with the final nail in its coffin being Shane McMahon's 2018–2019 Face–Heel Turn. It took until October 2023 for general managers to make their return to WWE, and when Triple H was made an authority figure in 2024, the bookers wisely decided to portray him as a face instead of trying to revive the Authority in any way.
• Historically, The Authority was the tipping point for Raw's viewership decline. While ratings had been trickling out since 2001, that was chalked up to the end of the Attitude Era and the rise of streaming sevices. Raw ratings around the 2010s typically hovered around 3.0; but past 2013, when audiences realized the Authority was here to stay, ratings started dipping below the 2.0 mark. On the other hand, SmackDown, which typically had better matches and storylines, started to go head-to-head in the ratings for the first time since the Smackdown Six era over a decade prior.^note Smack Down would eventually become the de facto A-show in 2019, after it moved to Fox in the network's attempt to avert the Friday Night Death Slot. Whilst it would consistently rate higher than Raw, ratings were still relatively lackluster for network television, and Smack Down is due to return to cable in late 2024. It proved that low numbers weren't just an industry-wide phenomena: the quality of the program drove viewers away. On the subject of AEW, it's interesting to note that six of the wrestlers that the Authority tormented, those being Bryan, Big Show, Sting, CM Punk,^note  Who later returned to WWE almost a decade after his previous appearance Dean Ambrose, and Cody Rhodes^note Who left AEW and went back to WWE in 2022, all joined AEW long after the angle was over and WWE was starting to circle the drain, with Cody being in fact one of its founding wrestlers, and AEW has treated them much better than the Authority and the WWE booking team.
• Wrestling With Wregret has a highly comprehensive summary of the angle and its fallout. Host Brian Zane — who expresses frustration at the angle being padded out several times — ultimately admits that, while there were highlights, the vast majority of it greatly damaged WWE in the long run. By the end of the video, the show's in-universe version of Triple H — who is a supporting character in the series based of his portrayal in this angle and who often forces Zane to review bad WWE angles, with the Authority angle being one of them (in response to the previous episode where Zane discussed WWE failing to utilize six NXT callups such as Heavy Machinery) — outright admits that he had gotten so carried away with his power trip that he had forgotten what the purpose of the angle was to begin with.
  • This YouTube playlist has managed to gather together almost the entirety of the moments and matches from throughout the angle on a week by week basis. Watch only if you can handle the amount of bleakness the Authority puts everyone through. Be advised that this playlist is very long at 994 videos, which shows just how much this angle was dragged out- so don’t try to watch it all in one sitting.^note And that's keeping in mind, most of these are just short 2- or 3-minute highlight videos WWE posts on their official YouTube channel, many of the segments they're clipped from actually went on for around ten times that. The promos alone from the angle would probably go on for days if you compiled them all as they were originally broadcast.

The Brock Lesnar burials

Ever since his 2012 return, the need to make the Beast Incarnate look strong and unbeatable has led to many unjustifiable derailments and de-pushings during the New Era, with many noting it as a sign of WWE being unable to (or outright refusing to) build new stars, ironically mostly because they are fed to Lesnar. Here are some of the most baffling examples:

• As an omen of things to come, an usually overlooked victim of Brock's onslaught was The Undertaker's WrestleMania winning streak at WrestleMania XXX in 2014 so Brock could boost his credibilty. That wouldn't have been necessary had WWE not damaged Lesnar's aura with the one-two punch of a clean loss to John Cena in his first match back and another clean loss to Triple H at the previous WrestleMania. For the next two years Lesnar would be an unstoppable machine, capturing the WWE World Heavyweight Championship that summer and not being pinned clean until Survivor Series 2016 by Goldberg in a shock 86-second squash match. But more on him later.
• One of the earliest examples of Lesnar being pushed too hard came during the 2019 Money in the Bank event, where Lesnar appeared at the last minute and won the match, even though he had never been announced to be taking part in the match. It was soon discovered that Vince McMahon had, at the last minute^note Literally the last minute; originally planned winner Mustafa Ali was pulled aside and told right before he was about to make his entrance that plans had been changed, and that when it came time for him to climb the ladder and grab the briefcase, Lesnar's music was going to hit, so he had to freeze in shock with his hands on the case and not pull it down so Lesnar could stop him., decided to have Lesnar win in a bid to fix sagging ratings. Needless to say, this could have been booked differently, or Vince could have been ignored, and the action made all the other participants look stupid.
• On the October 4, 2019 edition of SmackDown, the show premiered on Fox for its first special episode. The match saw Lesnar deliver a single F5 to defeat Kofi Kingston and win his WWE Championship in 9 seconds. The way Kingston was absolutely crushed by Lesnar in the match led many to suspect WWE never had any faith in Kingston as champion, and in 2020, this lack of faith was revealed to be 100% true, as former WWE writer Dave Schilling revealed that Kingston being squashed by Lesnar had been the plan from day one of his title reign. This meant that WWE had absolutely no interest in making Kingston champion or belief in him whatsoever, and the well-received program Kingston had with Daniel Bryan was only to pop the fans for a "WrestleMania Moment". This link has the entire "match", though you may wish you didn't watch it afterwards.
  • All of the above was only done to introduce Lesnar's former UFC rival Cain Velasquez to the company, allegedly for a match at that year's Crown Jewel — and for more teeth-gnashing stupidity, rumors were that Velasquez wasn't even signed to a contract and had also been in negotiations with both New Japan Pro-Wrestling and new rival All Elite Wrestling, showing the company hasn't learned from their mistakes in signing people just to keep them from other promotions. This meant that, if a deal couldn't be reached, Kofi lost his title for nothing, and to add insult to injury, the Kofi/Brock match was over so fast that Rey Mysterio, Dominic, and a debuting Velasquez, who were scheduled to surprise and confront Lesnar, were left with plenty of extra time to stand around doing nothing, as the episode ran short. Fortunately, he was signed to a contract the whole time, yet the fact the rumors of it leaked suggest it was a Hail Mary move. In any case, that contract wound up only being of minimal actual work. Once again, Vince had suddenly pulled the rug out from under a champion to put the belt on Brock for a feud that didn't need a belt involved to be engaging; just like the Brock/Goldberg feud from 2016/2017, the Lesnar/Velasquez feud was a personal affair based around their past history and Brock going after Cain's godson Dominic Mysterio. It's like Vince doesn't believe that Lesnar is enough of an attraction in his own right unless he's a champion, despite the obscene amounts of money he pays for him.
• The eventual Lesnar/Velasquez match at Crown Jewel ended up being incredibly underwhelming; Velasquez was in serious need of surgery and incapable of working properly, so he and Brock worked a short and underwhelming 2 minute MMA-style match before Lesnar caught Velasquez in a Kimura Lock and Velasquez tapped out. Then Rey Mysterio had to run out to save Velasquez from Brock's beatdown and make the feud Brock vs. Rey again, making the whole stupid affair for nothing. As for Kofi? He was shuffled right back to the tag team division as his old, positive New Day self like the past six months of him being champion never happened, leaving a bitter taste in fans' mouths.
  • In some bizarre combination of Hope Spot and beating a dead horse, Kingston and Mysterio would both get the opportunity for revenge at the 2020 Royal Rumble. Lesnar, who voluntarily came out first, was running roughshod over everyone who entered, with minimal difficulty. Kingston entered at the end of the first third of the match, and lasted longer against Lesnar than anyone else in the match, in part because Lesnar was toying with him. Next came Mysterio, who also barely got into the ring before Lesnar embarrassed him, as well. But as Lesnar didn't actually eliminate either of them yet, Kofi's tag partner Big E came out 3rd, and gave the two a Heroic Second Wind as they hit combination moves on Lesnar only for Lesnar to throw them all out of the match and only start to get tired. No Rey Mysterio ironman performance. No Kofi Kingston miraculous save. No closure. "Your heroes are dead. Move on."
• Brock would hold the belt for six long months before finally losing it to Drew McIntyre at WrestleMania 36 the following year in a similar short match, the difference being that at least multiple finishers were used by both wrestlers, while Velasquez was released at the end of April having only worked one other match in his WWE career^note He's currently working for Lucha Libre AAA in Mexico. Brock would also never be seen for almost a year and a half until the 2021 edition of SummerSlam.
• WWE would repeat the same terrible booking call at 2022's Day 1 event by inserting Brock into the WWE Championship match while Kofi's partner Big E was champion and causing him to lose the title to Brock, even though Brock had been booked to wrestle Roman Reigns. Although the latter match had to be cancelled due to Roman testing positive for COVID-19, the logical thing to do would have been to just let it be instead of inserting Brock into the former title match he had no right to be in, and resulting in Brock becoming the same old boring Paul Heyman guy he had been for the past decade.
• Lessons remained unlearned at the 2022 Royal Rumble. Brock, still champ due to the events listed right above, loses the belt in a match with Bobby Lashley. Good sign, right? Well, let's look at the Men's Rumble Match... in which Lesnar came out at 30, and was only in the ring for a total of 2 and a half minutes with 5 eliminations (including fan favorite Drew McIntyre) before taking the win. Brock then announced he would face Roman, continuing a feud that had long overstayed its welcome.
• Then the booking team did a complete 180 and just put the belt right back on Brock yet again at Elimination Chamber 2022, first by removing Lashley from the match after he was kayfabe injured as part of a never-before mentioned "concussion protocol"^note It was later revealed that Lashley had actually suffered a legit shoulder injury during the Royal Rumble match against Lesnar. Instead of just vacating the title, they made Lashley look like a massive chump. and then having Brock squash all the remaining competitors, including former champions AJ Styles and Seth Rollins. Needless to say, fans were very, very angry.
• This ultimately meant that WWE had booked itself into a corner for WrestleMania 38, as the match was now a Title Unification match. They ultimately chose to go with Reigns winning both titles, though they are still deemed as independent after Roman's victory (at least for an entire year before they were unified)- but even then, they continued the pointless feud by having Brock show up and demand another match three months later for that year's SummerSlam. Again, Roman won this match, and, hopefully, this will be the last time Brock faces him in full top of the card active competition because it actually ended on a high note as one of the most memorable matches of the year, period.
• Lesnar would return to WWE yet again in October 2022, his first appearance since he'd reportedly nearly walked out of the company ahead of SummerSlam when Vince was ousted, to reignite his feud with Lashley again, setting up a match for that year's Crown Jewel event. This is particularly notable because it's the first time in literally over five years that Lesnar has been involved in any program that doesn't feature either the WWE or Universal Championships!
• However, in 2024, Lesnar’s career came to a screeching halt when he was implicated in the sexual misconduct scandal that had previously ended Vince’s career. Within moments of this, WWE began to scrub all record of him. Needless to say, many fans rightfully believe that they’ve seen the last of Lesnar.

Goldberg

Like Lesnar, Goldberg is one of Vince's wet dreams: a charismatic and intense brick shithouse of a man. And whilst Goldberg on his debuts was incredibly over, he was also subject to some of the worst X-Pac Heat too due to the vicissitudes of Vince's booking.

• The first notable misstep was, funnily enough, Goldberg's match with Lesnar at WrestleMania XX. On paper, it was a hoss fight for the ages. What could go wrong with a showdown between them? Well, Lesnar was ditching WWE to try out for the NFL, Goldberg's contract was set to expire and he wasn't renewing, and Mania was being held in Madison Square Garden, a location that skews towards the Smark section of the fanbase. Goldberg and Lesnar decided not to bother having a good match knowing each other's fate, and the viciously negative fan reaction certainly didn't inspire them to give a good performance. The end result was quite possibly the worst match in WrestleMania history, with Lesnar and Goldberg both using stalling tactics and low impact rest holds with both men not wanting to risk getting hurt. Guest referee Steve Austin was even getting visibly frustrated at the spectacle, and the only saving grace came after the bell when Austin gave both Lesnar and Goldberg a Stone Cold Stunner as a lovely parting gift. You know it's bad when the fans are getting a better reaction from one another than the match; the biggest pop went to a fake wrestling match between a Hulk Hogan cosplayer and a "Macho Man" Randy Savage cosplayer. One Smark recapper described "Brock Lesnar and Bill Goldberg vs. the NYC crowd" as "the greatest squash match in history."
• Thankfully, all was forgiven by Survivor Series 2016, where Goldberg squashed Lesnar in 86 seconds to a massive ovation. Again, on paper, the feud wrote itself; Lesnar wanted to finally prove that, no, where he was concerned there wasn't Always Someone Better. The feud itself was nothing to write home about, but the real crime was the way it absolutely killed the feud between Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho which, going into Fastlane 2017, was one of the hottest stories going. Goldberg squashes Owens in 22 seconds to become the new WWE Universal Champion, and both feuds go from white-hot to mediocre in an instant. Lesnar would finally get his W and go on a 504-day reign of terror, whilst Goldberg sat at home for two years, until…
• Super ShowDown 2019: While the event as a whole was negatively received by wrestling critics, The Undertaker vs. Goldberg match in particular had shaped up to be a depressing and unfortunate case of Be Careful What You Wish For due to the fact that both performers were well past their physical and athletic primes and that the match itself had come a good 15 years too late. Despite an impressive opening with a pair of Spears from Goldberg, it quickly became obvious to everyone watching that both men truly and undoubtedly lacked the stamina that was needed and required for a sustained match. Before too long, the match fell into a horrendous case of Nightmare Fuel for all the wrong reasons when a Tombstone Piledriver from Taker had ended with Goldberg's head impacting the mat and shortly after that, a botched attempt at a Jackhammer from Goldberg had just narrowly avoided a disastrous landing on Taker's own neck. A Tombstone Piledriver reversal attempt fell apart immediately afterwards as both stars were clearly too fatigued and exhausted to perform the spot, leading to an obviously-audible-called finish with a very flaccid Chokeslam from Taker, putting Goldberg down for the three-count and putting the match itself out of its own misery. Appropriately enough, it was inducted into WrestleCrap.
• Surely, you would think, Vince wouldn't make the same mistake as 2017 again. Nope! Coming out of 2019, Bray Wyatt's "Fiend" persona was on a tear in-ring, going unbeaten and capturing the Universal Title off Seth Rollins. But what Wyatt really needed was a decent title feud… which Goldberg didn't provide, squashing the Fiend in three minutes in Saudi Arabia. This was in an attempt to rehabilitate Roman Reigns after his own disastrous feud, but the COVID-19 Pandemic (and Reigns' immunocompromised status) would put the kibosh on that, with Bill unceremoniously dropping the title to Braun Strowman at a WrestleMania in front of no fans.

NXT callups

The 2014-2021 incarnation of NXT was called one of the best wrestling shows of the modern age, with matches and strong booking rivaled only by the likes of NJPW. But the politics-laden, heavily-scripted mess that Raw and Smackdown became in the latter part of The New '10s have proven to be graveyards for the careers of NXT stars that were called up to the main roster. Regardless of their accomplishments and talent, these wrestlers are often lost in the undercard instead of being properly utilized, and their loss in relevance has begun to increasingly hurt the integrity of the NXT brand, since if these guys can do the best work possible in developmental and still be reduced to jobbers in the main roster, why should audiences invest any time or emotion in them in the first place? Here are some of the worst cases:

• Reference videos and articles: Parts FunKnown's "5 best and 5 worst callouts from NXT", WrestleTalk's 5 botched NXT callups, What Culture Wrestling's "The 5 Best NXT callups (and the 5 worst)".
• Aleister Black went from one of the most dominant breakout stars of NXT with an intense yet compelling Satanist gimmick to barely even an afterthought once he was called up to the main roster in 2019. Initially paired with Ricochet, the duo were quickly separated due to the Superstar Shakeup. For Black's first singles angle, he sat in a room and waited for someone to "pick a fight" with him. This storyline lasted well over two months, where Black literally sat and did nothing but issue challenges before Cesaro answered him. Black would then go on to have a decent run throughout 2020, including a feud with Buddy Murphy, before disappearing from television for 6 months (later revealed to be because of creative simply not having ideas for him). This was someone whom many figured could be another legitimate successor to The Undertaker, and he now had less than nothing to do. Black would return once again in 2021 in dominant fashion with a new look and intriguing vignettes that set up a feud with Big E... only to be released by WWE two weeks later due to supposed budget cuts, making many fans and commentators question why he was given a build up after a long absence if he was going to be cut anyways.
  • What was even more bizarre was that instead of the usual 90-day non-compete clause for main roster stars, his was only 30 days due to WWE failing to update his original NXT developmental contract when he was promoted. This allowed Black to debut in AEW only a month after his release as Malakai Black, with pretty much the same aesthetics and continuity of the character he was using in WWE (as opposed to going back to his pre-WWE ring name of Tommy End as he was widely expected to). He was such an afterthought in WWE that not only was his contract not looked at or updated for 2 years, they didn't even check before they released one of their hottest stars, which meant that he was still fresh in audiences' minds when he debuted at the competition.
  • What made this even funnier was that WWE would realize this mistake shortly after releasing Black... and mistakenly call Buddy Murphy to ask if they could extend his contract. Buddy, who had been released at the same time as Black, had the standard 90-day non-compete clause, but mused in interviews why WWE would offer to extend a contract while also having 'budget cuts'.
• Ricochet has been wrestling for over 15 years at smaller but still successful promotions all over the world, with his most internationally recognized accomplishment easily being the gravity-defying match against Will Ospreay at the 2016 NJPW Best of the Super Juniors. Ospreay has gone on to become IWGP World Heavyweight Champion and by 2020 was considered one of the best wrestlers alive. Upon his arrival to the main roster in 2019, Ricochet had a three-week run as the United States Champion before becoming a regular on the C-show Main Event. He's since been used a little better (including being placed in a Big Guy, Little Guy team with Braun Strowman), while he's firmly in the midcard he's also regularly on TV and on PPV, which means he's fairing better than most people in this folder.
• Buddy Murphy had a well-received team with Wesley Blake and Alexa Bliss in NXT before becoming a highly-respected up-and-comer through his excellent performances 205 Live, including winning the new incarnation of the WWE Cruiserweight Championship in an event in his native Australia. Then he was called to the main roster in April 2019, with about the most relevant things he was put into being getting involved in the storyline of Roman Reigns being targeted by a mysterious attacker, which resulted in him getting stellar matches with Reigns and the man revealed as the eventual responsible, Daniel Bryan (and Murphy actually beating Bryan in their match), the aforementioned feud with Aleister Black, and being in Seth Rollins's Power Stable. Once said team was reduced to only Rollins and Murphy, they entered into a feud with Rey Mysterio and his family; the angle included "gems" such as the Eye-for-an-Eye match between Rollins and Mysterio, and Murphy's romantic involvement with Rey's 19-year old daughter Aalyah. After being released at the same time as Black, he admitted that the Aalyah Mysterio romance angle had made both of them extremely uncomfortable but they still went through with it for the sake of being professional.
  • In an indication of how lackadaisical Murphy's booking was, it was later revealed that him getting involved in Reigns's "mysterious attacker" storyline was entirely a fluke: during one of the incidents Reigns suffered, in which a stack of scaffolding fell onto him backstage, Murphy was seen in the background of the event. As it turned out, he was simply walking backstage, but his appearance caused so much speculation among fans on social media that WWE writers decided to just Throw It In!.
• One of the most egregious examples came when Karrion Kross, the NXT Champion who had been on an undefeated year-long streak, made his main roster debut on the Raw after Money in the Bank 2021. He came out for a completely random, unannounced match, having been stripped of his flashy, dramatic entrance and his valet Scarlett, which were widely considered a pivotal part of his act. His opponent, Jeff Hardy, who hadn't won a match in the entire year so far, beat him in less than 2 minutes with a roll-up, putting his feet on the ropes (an uncharacteristic heel move).^note Adding to the utter insanity, Kross had been told that he and Hardy would have 10 minutes for him to get himself a proper Establishing Character Moment and set up the scenario where Hardy would turn the match around on him, but it was only when he was literally already in the ring and waiting for Hardy that the referee whispered in his ear that, sorry, your ten minutes has been cut down to two. Kross tried to salvage the situation afterward by cutting a promo about how Hardy had made a huge mistake, but the damage was done - between the lackluster presentation and the appallingly lame match result, the fans didn't give a damn about him. Apparently, the long-term story (before Jeff Hardy was taken off the program after contracting COVID-19) was to have Kross lose twice to Hardy, before bringing in Scarlett and his flashy entrance, whereby Kross would reassert his dominance once again. So in case you didn't notice the subtext: the reigning NXT Champion, who once demolished every serious challenger he faced on the NXT roster, couldn't get past 2 minutes on the main roster without his entrance and his girlfriend by his side, only for the sudden absence of the other wrestler involved in the storyline meaning that this supposed long-term story had been instantly derailed in two weeks.^note Making matters worse, even if Jeff Hardy was still available, it was later reported that Scarlett later had to go on hiatus due to unknown reasons. Adding insult to injury, his gimmick was later tweaked to give him an outfit that drew unflattering comparisons to a gimp.^note And Kross would unequivocally state his displeasure with it following his release; in response to a fan on Twitter wondering if Kross would gift him the helmet he used with the outfit, he answered that nobody would actually want that.
  • It got better. On the same show as Kross' debut, former NXT and NXT North American Champion Keith Lee, who had been called up the previous year but then disappeared due to what was later revealed to be a very dangerous heart condition caused or exacerbated by COVID-19, returned after recovering to challenge WWE Champion Bobby Lashley... and lost in 5 minutes (likely so that Lee wouldn't be overstrained due to his condition). While many defenders have said that this match was at least more competitive than Kross', immediately after the match, Goldberg came out to challenge Lashley, thereby relegating Lee to an afterthought, which many fans had feared since he was called up. Furthermore, while Lee got praise on NXT (and on the independent circuit) for his impressive agility despite his massive size (while giving smooth-talking promos), following his main roster (re-)debut, he was saddled with a generic Wrestling Monster gimmick that saw him being renamed to Keith "Bearcat" Lee.^note While the gimmick had some defenders that pointed out that the nickname might be a reference Bearcat Wright, a pioneering African-American wrestler, and speculated that it might've been Lee's idea, Lee absolutely denied it being his idea after he was released. Some Black commentators had already predicted this, since Lee had never referenced nor is he related to Bearcat Wright, plus Wright was famous for being a career babyface, whereas Lee was portrayed as a heel during this time.
• The Undisputed Era also deserve a mention, as all four guys spent five years in NXT without getting called up at all, save for one-offs like Adam Cole randomly showing up in the 2018 Royal Rumble match. It's rumored that Vince had no intention of calling of any of them to the main roster due to their size (though Cole reportedly turned down being Keith Lee's manager) and Triple H knew this all along, he just signed them because he figured they would draw in the "indie fan" demo NXT was targeting and, to his credit, they did. It's widely believed that Triple H signing way too many of this kind of wrestler (i.e. white, under 5'10", very athletic and can do all kinds of moves, and with decent indie pedigree, but in most cases^note Cole being one obvious exception not particularly charismatic or good at promos) is why Vince sacked him as head of developmental. At any rate all 4 UE guys bolted for AEW as soon as they could (with Roderick Strong repeatedly asking for his release and never getting it), with Adam Cole making his AEW debut barely two weeks after leaving because, like Aleister Black, they totally forgot to notice his contract was already up and there was no no-compete period.
• The cherry on top? Karrion Kross, Keith Lee, Scarlett, along with Ember Moon (another failed NXT callup) and several others were all released from their contracts on November 4th, 2021 due to "budget cuts". For the record, that's 8 out of a total 18 NXT Champions who have either been released or left the WWE within the last 3-4 years (Adrian Neville, Bo Dallas, Andrade "Cien" Almas, Aleister Black, Keith Lee, and Karrion Kross, with Adam Cole and Johnny Gargano being the two guys who declined to re-sign a new contract), with AEW scooping up five of them (Neville/PAC, Andrade, Black, Lee, and Cole)^note In 2022, Karrion Kross, Johnny Gargano, and Bo Dallas are re-signed, and 2024, Andrade left AEW and returned to WWE.
  • That number grew to nine in January 2022 as Samoa Joe was also released again. After being originally let go in the previous April, he was quickly brought back by Triple H to NXT, only to be released again not long after Triple H was removed from power. That's over 30% of potential main event-level talent who have strong track records and brand recognition, who had money, time, and effort invested into developing and promoting them as the next generation of superstars, all unceremoniously dumped without making much, if any impact on the main roster. And that's not getting into the released NXT North American, Women's, and Tag Team champions. In fact, some people have suggested that the NXT North American Championship is cursed, as of the first eleven wrestlers who have held the title, only five are still with WWE,^note Ricochet, Damien Priest, Carmelo Hayes, Johnny Gargano and Bronson Reed; of the remaining seven, Adam Cole and Roderick Strong left when their contracts were up while the other four were unceremoniously sacked, Velveteen Dream was fired for misconduct, thought Bronson Reed has returned in 2022. And even for those four men, it took Triple H's ascension to the head of WWE Creative in mid-2022 to get any semblance of momentum.

Pay-Per-Views

• WrestleMania IX (1993) remains one of the worst WrestleManias in history. Poor booking, poor matches, it had it all.
  • In the dark match, Tito Santana defeated Papa Shango in his first 'Mania victory since WrestleMania I... offscreen. Some tribute to a guy who's been a part of 'Mania since the beginning.
  • The opening bout has Tatanka and Shawn Michaels fight in one of the only good matches on the card for the Intercontinental Championship, but everything reaches garbage towards the end: Tatanka hits his finisher on Michaels, only the referee refuses to count because, apparently, he had counted Michaels out beforehand.^note Tatanka had an undefeated streak going so they didn't want him to lose, but they also didn't want to take the title off of Michaels. Thus, a fuck finish Not only did this ending completely ruin what was a good match, it made neither man look strong as Michaels only retained the title by sheer luck and Tatanka won the match but not the Intercontinental Championship and would never receive another title shot for it again.
  • The Steiners were the only babyfaces on the show to win a fair fight, against The Headshrinkers.
  • Doink the Clown faces Crush; as Crush has his head vice applied, a second Doink ^note played by Steve Keirn, who prior to this was known as alligator hunter Skinner comes out from under the ring as the ref is distracted and hits Crush with a loaded prosthetic arm. Now, this could have been funny in a normal match, but not on WrestleMania. Oh and even worse: After the match, "Macho Man" Randy Savage tried to pass off the second Doink "as a figment of everyone's imaginations."
  • Razor Ramon meets Bob Backlund in one of the strangest matchups ever. Razor Ramon ended up being cheered, despite being a heel.
  • Lex Luger vs. "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig should've been a great match, as Hennig was one of the best wrestlers in the world and Luger was as good as his opponent was. However, neither seemed incredibly motivated and it led to a so-so match that didn't steal the show as it should have.
  • The Mega-Maniacs (Hulk Hogan and Brutus Beefcake) completely dominate Money Inc. (Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster) from within their Tag Team Championship match when Hogan hits both members of Money Inc. with Beefcake's facemask during the third ref bump of the night. It looks like Hogan and Beefcake win when another referee comes out and disqualifies them for using the facemask. When does this ever happen? It makes no sense considering how several matches have been won by cheating and no second ref came out to DQ the cheaters. What makes this especially notable is the fact that it looked like the typical Money Inc. finish — they flee the match to take the countout loss but hold on to the belts since titles don't change hands by countout or DQ — would be averted; Money Inc. started to head for the back only to have Howard Finkel announced that the referee had decided that if they did not return to the ring in time, the countout would basically be ruled a forfeit, and the title would indeed change hands.
  • The show goes from bad to worse with the next match: The Undertaker vs. Giant González. Largely hailed as one of the worst matches ever, Undertaker tried to pull a watchable match out of the irredeemably awful González. After seven-and-a-half painful minutes, Taker wins the match by DQ after González uses chloroform, in Undertaker's only match at WrestleMania to end with such a finish. Needless to say, there’s a reason this never gets brought up when discussing the Streak.
  • The main event between Yokozuna and Bret Hart for the WWF Championship isn't too bad until the ending: Bret goes for the Sharpshooter, despite showing prior that he's too smart to go for moves like that in the match, and Yoko gets out easily. Then, when Bret has Yoko in the Sharpshooter, Mr. Fuji throws salt in his face, which completely blinds Bret and sends him straight down to the wrestling mat instantly. Yoko doesn't even go for and hit his Signature/Finishing Move, the Banzai Drop - he just blithely grabs Bret's legs and gets the pin. While the ending was stupid, what happened afterward was far worse.
  • Hulk Hogan comes out, apparently to check on "his friend" Bret. He also issued an open challenge to take on the winner of the main event. Yokozuna and Fuji have no reason to accept, yet Fuji does just that. In a pull so cartoonish it might as well have been on Rock N' Wrestling, it takes only 22 seconds for Fuji to inadvertently throw salt in Yoko's eyes and Hogan to drop the leg, get the pin, and walk out the champion. Behind the scenes, Hogan convinced McMahon that a heel couldn't walk out of 'Mania with the title, but instead of allowing Bret to retain, he should run in and squash Yokozuna to steal the title.
  • Aftermath: Hogan is slated to drop the belt to Bret after the PPV, but refuses because he thinks it'll make him look weak. Then he skips out of the promotion to shoot movies (he was also caught on video badmouthing the WWF at a New Japan Pro-Wrestling event). Vince McMahon, understandably pissed off, has Hogan lose the belt to Yokozuna at King of the Ring 1993 as punishment, and it takes the better part of a year before any of the fallout from WrestleMania IX is finally cleared. Bret Hart is booked to win the King of the Ring '93 tournament as compensation, but the tournament itself meant nothing, to which both the fans and Bret himself knew it.
• King of the Ring 1995 was the absolute low point for WWF's mid-90s slump in ratings. It had an array of bad matches, including a match that ended by time limit draw, a match that ended by countout, a match that ended with outside interference, a match that ended with botched outside interference, and an inexplicable rise of Savio Vega (who was subbing for the injured Razor Ramon)^note Not helping is that two of the best workers in the company, Owen Hart and the British Bulldog weren't even on the card. The other two best workers, Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart, had their own respective matches, with Shawn working the aforementioned time limit draw match against Kama and Bret having the only good match on the card against Jerry Lawler in a "Kiss My Foot" match. Lex Luger was also given the night off for some reason. You can actually hear the air getting sucked out of the arena after The Undertaker gets pinned and eliminated from the tournament by Mabel in thoroughly underwhelming fashion, after a boot to the head by the interfering Kama and a legdrop by Mabel. This is the same Undertaker who'd No-Sell some of the most devastating moves the roster had to offer, and two midcarders dispose of him just like that. When Mabel was crowned the king, he had garbage thrown at him. Of course, Mabel's subsequent main-event push tanked, and slowly withered and died by the end of the year - appropriately enough, after losing a Casket Match to the Undertaker^note But not before giving Undertaker several facial fractures by botching a legdrop and more or less sitting on his face. This came off the heels of Mabel almost getting fired after nearly injuring Diesel with a move he had been specifically told not to do at SummerSlam 1995. After losing to Undertaker to blow off that angle, he was told his services would no longer be required at the end of January 1996.
• The Great American Bash 2004 was the crowning example of how not to revive one of WCW's most beloved annual shows. The Norfolk crowd was almost completely dead, though you can't really blame them with a card as bad as they got. The general feeling of the show is an episode of SmackDown for 3 hours, which is never a good thing.
  • The opening Fatal 4-Way for the WWE United States Championship between John Cena, Booker T, Rob Van Dam, and... René Duprée proved to be a surprising bore, with half the match at the start having both Cena and Duprée clashing while the other two just stand around.
  • Luther Reigns beats Charlie Haas in a match that shows why Luther never really became the next big star.
  • Kenzo Suzuki beats Billy Gunn in a match that'd be bad enough for SmackDown, let alone a pay-per-view, with Suzuki himself mostly doing chops and his finisher, and that's about it.
  • Mordecai beats Hardcore Holly in a snoozer. One month later, he would disappear and be brought back as Kevin Thorn in WWE's ECW.
  • The Undertaker fought The Dudley Boyz in a handicap match in the main event(!), with a nonsensical stipulation that if the Undertaker lost, Paul Bearer would be drowned in cement. Despite winning, the Undertaker himself drowned Bearer in cement anyways.
  • The only two matches that were decent for the pay-per-view itself were Rey Mysterio Jr. and Chavo Guerrero Jr.'s match for the WWE Cruiserweight Championship and JBL and Eddie Guerrero's Texas Bullrope match for the WWE Championship. The problem here is that both Rey and Chavo had battled in better matches before, and JBL and Eddie had battled in a brutal main event at Judgment Day one month before in a much better brawl, not to mention that their match here ended with JBL winning the match (and the WWE Championship) on a technicality.^note The match could only be won after one wrestler touched the ring's four turnbuckles in quick succession. In the end, each man had touched three turnbuckles and were vying for the fourth. Guerrero attempted to jump over JBL and touch the remaining turnbuckle, but was unsuccessful; he splashed himself and JBL into the turnbuckle. Guerrero was declared the winner, as it appeared he had touched all four turnbuckles first, but SmackDown General Manager Kurt Angle came out and reversed the decision, showing that JBL's shoulder touched the final turnbuckle before Guerrero's hand, and as a result, JBL won. "Dusty Finish" does not begin to cover it here.
  • Afterwards JBL started a world championship reign that grossly wore out its welcome, especially given he wasn't exactly the best wrestler going at the time, which is often compared to the equally disastrous title run of Jinder Mahal discussed on the other page, though it’s agreed that JBL was better due to his effective promos. Most of the wrestlers who were clearly being pushed in this show had turned out to be major flops and were either relegated to jobber status or sent back to development. Most tragically, the cracks in SmackDown's own prestige and relegation to the B show until the second brand split in 2016 begins to show. To make a point of how bad the show's legacy is, Adam Blampied made the case about the event being even worse than December To Dismember 2006, widely agreed to be the worst PPV WWE ever produced, in his partsFUNknown video about wrestling characters who were killed off in Kayfabe, while listing Paul Bearer's "death" at this event as part of the list.
• Speaking of December to Dismember 2006, the show was an unmitigated disaster that saw Paul Heyman fired and cast into the wilderness for half a decade. By this point, ECW was an In Name Only reboot, with very ECW Originals on the card, and those who were, Balls Mahoney was the only man who went over in the end. Whilst it started promising with a Hardy Boyz vs. MNM tag bout, the rest of the card saw the likes of… Shawn Daivari beating legends such as Tommy Dreamer in seven minutes. Not only was it a creative and wrestling disaster, it was also a business disaster, getting only 90,000 buys; even during the New Generation Era, the "In Your House" B-show PP Vs sold more.
• The 2018 Backlash was not well-liked by fans. It did not help that the preshow started at 7 pm Eastern and the show closed at almost Midnight on a Sunday. Watch Christian Maracle’s sin video on this show to hear how frustrated he got. The only good point was the opener for the Intercontinental Championship between The Miz and Seth Rollins. The rest of the event, however, was widely criticized for having extremely bland, predictable contests:
  • The somewhat well-received AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura match had suffered from a dull double-knockout finish.
  • Nia Jax's match had people doubting that she could be a draw as champion.
  • Both Randy Orton and Jeff Hardy had put on a snoozer of a match.
  • The lowest point was the non-title main event: Roman Reigns vs. Samoa Joe. It was a snoozeworthy match comprised almost entirely of rest holds and other bland spots ending with yet another contrived Reigns victory, at which point fans were already clearing the stands while those who remained showed their "enthusiasm" with a series of "beat the traffic" chants. The worst part is that Samoa Joe and Roman Reigns previously had a longer match on the New Year's episode of Raw that was actually rather well-received and showed both men had a lot of chemistry. Whether or not it was due to Joe having recently come back from injury or some other factor, the match that happened at a pay-per-view couldn't hold a candle to something broadcasted on weekly TV!

Angles

• In 1998, the WWF did a Brawl For All, a boxing tournament between various wrestlers. As per Russo's Leaning on the Fourth Wall style of booking, this was booked as a "shoot" i.e. the wrestlers were actually beating each other up. Aside from the complications this puts on the kayfabe for the rest of the show, the wrestlers then proceeded to have real fights that looked terrible and injuring each other. The angle was set up to get "Dr. Death" Steve Williams over as a tough guy for a potential "who's tougher" match with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. However, the very obvious variable of having unpredictable finishes in unscripted matches meant Dr. Death pulled a hamstring and was taken out in the quarterfinals by Bart Gunn. The bookers then put Gunn in a WrestleMania XV match with professional boxer Eric "Butterbean" Esch where Gunn was utterly destroyed in half a minute. Accounts differ as to whether Gunn was being punished for winning the Brawl For All when he wasn't supposed to, or whether Russo thought that Gunn would beat Butterbean. ^note Gunn himself claims he was offered a payoff to lose to Dr. Death, and that the Butterbean squash was his punishment, and Butterbean claims he offered to put over Gunn in a worked fight, but Russo refused it. Either way, Gunn was fired when he got back to the locker room. The angle led to no less than four injuries, a lot of animosity between the wrestlers who beat each other up, and the destruction of two promising careers. And, of course, the big selling point — that these were real fights — fizzled with the fans who either didn't buy that they were unscripted or wanted them to just wrestle instead. When interviewed on Dark Side of the Ring, Russo revealed that he came up with the whole thing just to shut Bradshaw up, as he'd been bragging to the entire locker room that he was the toughest.
• As bad as David Arquette: WCW World Heavyweight Champion was, it was just barely the worst angle that year. Over in the WWF, Mark Henry at the time worked a sex addict gimmick as "Sexual Chocolate", which saw him involved with female bodybuilder/D-Generation X enforcer Chyna, and then with her friend Sammy who turned out to be a transvestite. Then he got involved with Mae Young (then in her seventies) and got her pregnant. Three months later, Mae gave birth on Raw... to a disembodied hand, leading to the punchline: Vince declaring "Let's all give her a hand!" And let's not forget the way it opened: Mae flashing her audience in defiance of the "show me your puppies" gag. In WrestleCrap's annual "Gooker Award" voting, Arquette beat this by 0.5%. The whole shebang actually placed at #62 in What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, the only pro wrestling entry on that list. The only thing it was good for was an over-the-top Brick Joke, and even that doesn't cancel out them repeating the angle - only to have her give birth to Hornswoggle.
• 2019 was a year to forget for Roman Reigns. After being taken out of commission by a recurrence of leukaemia in late 2018, Roman returned just in time to give Dean Ambrose a decent enough send-off, and Roman seemed happy enough in the mid-card without the pressures of being the Face of the Company on his back for the first time in half a decade… and then came the King Corbin feud, for which WrestleCrap helpfully has the highlights. See, at the time, Corbin was under the impression that Roman wasn't the "big dog" at all. This lead to painful segments in which Corbin would humiliate Reigns in various ways, including bringing a man in a dog costume out to Roman's music to do tricks and handcuffing him to the ring-post to dump dog food on him. One would think that the "loser eats dog food"(!) match (after which Roman dumped an entire vat of dog food straight back on Corbin), but the feud eventually blew off in a mediocre "falls count anywhere" match at the 2020 Royal Rumble. This represented a nadir in Roman's career so bad that he actually considered quitting, and even rejected a run with the WWE Universal Title to stay home during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, it all shook out in the end, as Roman's return as a heel in September 2020 led to the massively acclaimed Bloodline storyline that helped turn WWE's fortunes around for the better, but still… there's a reason why, when commentary mentioned over the next few years the fact that Roman hadn't been pinned since TLC 2019,^note He finally got pinned in July 2023 in a tag match by his cousin Jey Uso, three and a half years later they didn't mention the circumstances behind the pin.
  • Really, the storylines given to all three SHIELD members – who represent some of WWE's most consistent and over performers – between late 2018 and the pandemic goes a long way to explain why WWE was in a slump in 2019 and AEW came out of the gates blazing hot. Dean Ambrose's heel turn was retooled into a terrible germaphobe gimmick, which actually did lead Ambrose to quit and jump ship to AEW. Meanwhile, Seth's 2019 got off to a decent-enough start – he won the Royal Rumble that year, after all – but he was unfortunate enough to be overshadowed by his wife Becky Lynch (who was so over she main-evented WrestleMania!), was shoved into a plodding feud with Baron Corbin for most of the summer, and by year's end, had lost a significant amount of stock due to his part in the Fiend storyline which led to the infamous Hell in a Cell DQ finish.
• In 2021 WWE once again brought back the King of the Ring tournament, and gave it a Distaff Counterpart, the Queen's Crown Tournament.^note Not "Queen of the Ring"; the common theory is that that was the name of a wrestling-themed adult film starring Chyna in 2012. WWE hasn't confirmed that this was why, but considering they had to pivot away from calling the Paige/Charlotte/Becky trio "Submission Sorority" for a similar reason, it's pretty likely. It was filled with women that WWE doesn't traditionally care about (i.e. no Horsewomen), and thus got zero time. The total bell time of all 7 matches in the bracket could fit in 19 minutes and 25 seconds, which was shorter than two of the matches at Crown Jewel, the site of the finals. Any reason for hardcore fans to care was dissolved instantly when both fan-favorite Liv Morgan and highly-fancied rising star Toni Storm were booted in the first round, the latter after a pair of excruciating, awfully-written promos by Storm and her opponent Zelina Vega, showing WWE's promo scripters at their worst.^note Storm would be gone by the end of the year to join AEW. By the time the finals came down to Vega defeating the equally-heatless Doudrop (while inexplicably playing the babyface), anyone who still cared was reminded of the demeaning Divas-era booking where short, meaningless matches were the norm.
• The Bloodline storyline in general has generally (if not unanimously) received good reviews, but there is one stop on the saga that WWE would like you to forget: the February 2, 2024 SmackDown, the first after that year's Royal Rumble. Already light on wrestling, Roman Reigns first came out for the segment and cut a promo that only served to bury Seth Rollins and the entire Monday Night Raw roster, and the world championship that Rollins was holding at the time. Then back-to-back Rumble winner Cody Rhodes — whose two year return in WWE to that point had been almost laser-focused on him finally being the first Rhodes to win the Big One — came out and... surrendered his WrestleMania title shot to the Rock.^note Who, it should be pointed out, had not wrestled a proper match in over a decade at that point. When it came out The Rock pulled strings to book this himself, the resulting backlash was so severe that the video of the segment became the most disliked video on WWE's channel and the Rock received tons of X-Pac Heat ^note It got to the point where fans were sending death threats to both the Rock and his daughter, Ava resulting in the latter deleting her social media accounts. WWE ended up changing course, having Cody take back his title shot at the WrestleMania press conference while slowly turning The Rock into a mix of a Vince McMahon expy and his previous "Hollywood Rock" persona. There was indeed a light at the end of the tunnel, as Cody finally won the title and the Rock got a well deserved choke slam from Undertaker.

Individual matches

• As bad as the Montreal Screwjob was, the "Original Screwjob" on Wendi Richter is even more egregious. One could charitably characterize Montreal as Vince McMahon being excessively paranoid about having his champion leave with the belt and dumping it in a trash can on WCW Monday Nitro; this screwjob, on the other hand, was around a time when Richter's contract was being renegotiated. ^note According to Vince, she had refused to sign a new contract. According to Wendi, she had been having disputes over pay but was still under the original five-year deal. If you go by Wendi's side of the story, her whole career with WWE was one big horrible moment. By her own words, her contract stipulated that she would earn a minimum of $25 per match and a lot of times that was all she got. She was also not paid for promotional events she did with Cyndi Lauper, spots she did on WWF's cartoon show Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling, and she was given no royalty checks for merchandise related to her. Considering for a while Wendi was almost as popular as Hulk Hogan and was allegedly making far less money, the contract disputes with Vince make a lot more sense. The critical moment was when The Fabulous Moolah, in the guise of "Spider Lady", gets Richter in a small package, at which Richter blatantly kicks out at one and has one shoulder obviously up at two. Even Gorilla Monsoon didn't initially notice that the three-count was made.
• A contender for worst Survivor Series match of all time happened at the 1993 edition of the event. The teams were Bam Bam Bigelow, Bastion Booger ^note in his only WWE pay-per-view appearance, and The Headshrinkers against, ostensibly, "four Doinks". After the better part of a year of Doink's shenanigans featuring himself and a second Doink, the implied payoff was to see four Doinks wrestling at once. However, this was during a period where Vince was fixated on catering to young children, and the original Doink, Matt Borne, was released from the company due to drug problems after SummerSlam '93, so instead, we got Luke and Butch of The Bushwhackers and Mo and Mabel of Men on a Mission wearing Doink greasepaint and green clown wigs. After a confused crowd started chanting "we want Doink" over the bait-and-switch, the resulting "match" contained scooters, water balloons, the heels messily eating raw turkey and bananas, and blatant double-teams by the faces that the referee does nothing about. The only redeeming portions of this match were Bam Bam and Bobby Heenan's commentary. And after the match, Doink finally appears on the video wall and cuts a promo that sounded like a six-year-old wrote it. This whole mess is a classic example of Vince being out of touch with his audience.
• Al Snow vs. Big Bossman inside the Kennel from Hell Match at Unforgiven '99. While it was an interesting concept, the match was just dull. Exacerbating this were the allegedly angry guard dogs, in reality, they were just the opposite. Rather than keep the wrestlers in the cage as intended, they urinated, defecated, and mated right there in the Hell in a Cell during the match, in front of the whole audience. ^note Hilariously, on Mick Foley's Hard Knocks and Cheap Pops DVD, he MSTs the match with Kevin Kelly, calling it as if it were a five-star classic.
• The Christopher Nowinski and Jackie Gayda vs. Bradshaw and Trish Stratus match from the July 8, 2002 episode of WWE Raw. Gayda blew a boatload of spots, including Trish Stratus' finisher, a bulldog from the top turnbuckle. She missed it by a mile - she didn't sell it until a few seconds after Trish hit her, making the whole spot look utterly ridiculous. Jim Ross famously declared it "bowling shoe ugly" and all but apologized to the fans at its conclusion ("Mercifully, it's over."). Most fans simply refer to it as "That Jackie Gayda Match". Bradshaw said that it was one of the worst matches he'd ever participated in.
• Triple H vs. Scott Steiner at Royal Rumble 2003. Steiner blew up a couple of minutes into the match, and had a foot injury that stopped him from being able to lift up his leg. As a result, his offense was mostly limited to spamming the belly-to-belly suplex, falling and nearly dropping Trips on his head while trying to do a Tiger Driver which became known as the "Double-Underhook What-The-Fuck-Was-That?", dumping himself and Trips onto the floor while attempting a ring apron powerbomb, which became known as the "Stumble Bomb", and hitting Trips on the head with the leather strap of the belt, to which Trips did a bladejob. At the same time, Steiner botched several sell attempts, including selling a Diamond Cutter by falling backwards, and completely failing to sell a facebuster knee smash. The only saving grace is that this was immediately followed by Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit, which many consider to be their greatest match against each other.^note Somehow after this debacle HHH and Steiner were given another match a month later, after another stinker (though not nearly as bad as this one) Vince finally gave up and turfed Big Poppa Pump shortly thereafter.
• Batista vs. Big Show for the ECW World Championship on August 1, 2006. Doesn't sound quite as bad as you'd think, and to give credit where it's due the match itself isn't horrible. However, it was held at the Hammerstein Ballroom, home to the wrong kind of audience for that exact sort of thing, as Hammerstein has traditionally been the original ECW's unofficial "Home Away From Home" and neither Batista or Big Show had any relationship with the original ECW whatsoever (Batista wasn't even in the wrestling business yet when ECW went tits up). When Big Show won the title from ECW Original Rob Van Dam, it was assumed that it was for the sake of Heel heat, but with this match putting two wrestlers who never wrestled in the original ECW for the ECW World Championship, many of the "ECW Mutants" became convinced of their fears that WWE seemed to try to scrub any trace of the original ECW out of their revival. See for yourself all the boos they got. Big Show, who considers the match a major blunder in his career, recalled his thoughts during the match in an episode of WWE Untold centered on the ECW relaunch, and he didn't mince words:
  Big Show: That's the worst feeling in the world, when people start, you know, shitting on your match, 'cause you've lost them somewhere in your match. Back then, I didn't know how to get them back. I didn't know to get them then. I was just like, "Oh, crap. Here we go. How much time do we have left? Ugh, can we just go home now?" Like, you're just embarassed.
• The January 8, 2007 edition of Raw featured an attempt to cash in on the brief media feud between Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell. Two poorly-disguised jobbers posed as the two and had a sluggish, no-effort, unbearable fight. It was so bad that the crowd, having gone past "You Can't Wrestle!" and "Boring!", began chanting for TNA right in front of Vince McMahon.
• Kaitlyn vs Maxine from Season 3 of the competition-based NXT. Neither of them had much time to train, thanks to a dawdling tech crew setting up a stunt for WWE SmackDown. The resulting "match" was so bad the announcers broke kayfabe and called it the worst match ever. Hell, Michael Cole even got up to take a phone call during the middle of it.
• Sheamus vs. Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania XXVIII for the World Heavyweight Championship, which lasted 18 seconds! Worse, it was WWE's attempt at beating a record that shouldn't have even been shot for — quickest match at WrestleMania — and came seven seconds short of even tying. Hard to envision a better way to utterly waste what could have been a good bout. This didn't really hurt Bryan (if anything it helped his "Guy who keeps getting fucked over by the office" persona) but it killed Sheamus dead, as he ended up getting the brunt of the blame from fans and received X-Pac Heat for years after. It took a move to the tag team ranks in order to resurrect his career, and even then that only lasted for a few years. Fortunately, even though Sheamus floated around aimlessly for a few years after returning to singles competition in 2019, his matches with Gunther in September and October 2022 finally saved him for good.
• Royal Rumble 2014: Daniel Bryan, who at that point was immensely over with fans, was a favorite to win the match, and with him having yet to make an appearance prior to the arrival of the last entrant, the crowd were on the edge of their seats for Entrant #30. Unfortunately, Rey Mysterio was #30, drawing nuclear boos from the audience; the only cheers were for his elimination. To make matters worse, the winner of the Rumble was none other than Batista, a guy who had been uninvolved with the WWE for roughly four years prior to this point, with the fans immediately turning on him for it. Even Mick Foley verbally bit off WWE's head over this fiasco, making a "Does WWE really hate their own audience?" tweet that got retweeted 20,000 times in 24 hours.
  
  This event is also notable for being CM Punk's final WWE appearance for almost a decade. Owing to great dissatisfaction outside of kayfabe, he walked out on the company the following day despite being still under contract, and retired from professional wrestling later that year until his 2021 return for rival promotion All Elite Wrestling. Punk's walkout also forced the company to change the WWE World Heavyweight Championship match at WrestleMania XXX, to stop it from imploding on itself.^note The original plans for WrestleMania XXX were for Bryan to face Sheamus again, with CM Punk to face The Authority. When Punk walked out, Bryan took his place and won the title, with drew universal acclaim. Of course WWE claims this was the plan all along.
• Royal Rumble 2015: Even after the 2014 edition, other cases of fans rejecting booking and backlash against Vince McMahon for claiming buried fan favourites "didn't grab the brass ring", WWE still thought it would be a good idea to misbook a Royal Rumble again, and this time in Philadelphia, Smark Central and the birthplace of ECW. The story was perfect for Daniel Bryan to face Brock Lesnar for the championship he never lost, and when he was announced for the Rumble, hype was high... until he entered at #10 and was tossed in 10 minutes.^note The next entry happened to be Goldust; seeing "SHATTERED DREAMS" immediately after Bryan's elimination just felt like rubbing it in. After that, the audience made their rage known, booing throughout as so many fan favourites were eliminated by Kane and Big Show like they were nothing. Roman Reigns, the obvious anointed winner, received most of the ire, to the point that fans outright cheered monster heel Rusev when he became the last wrestler standing in Roman's way. Even an appearance from the Rock, endorsing Roman, couldn't turn the crowd; you can see Rock's visible confusion as to why this crowning moment is being booed. This extended even beyond the arena: WWE staff were made unable to leave due to a fans' blockade, and the web page to cancel WWE Network subscriptions crashed due to overwhelming traffic after over 300,000 subscriptions had been pulled. WWE tried to salvage things by having Bryan challenge Reigns for his title shot at the next show, Fastlane, but this did not help and they'd eventually have to call an audible on the day of WrestleMania 31 to have Seth Rollins use Money in the Bank to insert himself into Reigns vs. Lesnar and win the title. This ultimately doomed any attempts to use Roman Reigns as a top babyface forever, with everything he did being rejected by fans, and yet WWE continued with this course for four painful years. Only a legitimate leukemia diagnosis could stop fans from treating him like he'd killed their pets in front of them, and since his 2020 heel turn, he has finally shaken off go-away heat.
  Adam Blampied: See, at its absolute simplest, what happened to Roman is that at a very specific point in time he wasn't Daniel Bryan, and WWE fans have never forgave him for it.
• The Bayley vs. Alexa Bliss at Extreme Rules 2017, a Kendo Stick-on-a-Pole Match that might as well be named the Bayley Burial Match. First of all in the build, we had the awful Bayley "This is Your Life" segment which gave the feud lots of Go-Away heat as crowds chanted "Boring" and "DELETE" as awful actors attempted to make people hate Alexa. Bayley would "run in" at the end of the segment...and by "run in" we mean she pouted down the ramp as her music played, stood there waiting for everyone else to leave the ring, then rushed into the ring and immediately got the boots put to her by an expectant Alexa, making her look dumber than Eugene and making people hate Bayley for forcing them to sit through this awful segment with no clear retaliation as payoff. Alexa then beat the crap out of Bayley, making her look weak and making the whole thing pointless if the intention was to get Bayley more over, as instead it did the opposite. During the match itself Bayley had the kendo stick and was chasing Alexa when she had her cornered, but hesitated until the last possible second to hit Alexa, who was able to take it from Bayley, making her look even stupider. The match ends after Alexa hits Bayley repeatedly with the Kendo stick and hits the DDT for the win. Finally, this match was somehow shorter than the one at Payback, breaking the cardinal rule of not having the face be dominated by the heel in the final match. Remember how Bayley was supposed to be the female John Cena? Because not even the Cena vs. Brock Lesnar match at SummerSlam 2014 was this one-sided.
• Payback 2017 and the infamous House of Horrors Match between Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt. What sounds interesting on paper instead becomes one of the most boring and idiotic matches that year. The entire "match" is pretaped and there's nothing to explain even how it works. Keep in mind they decided to do this on a live PPV, which only helped to hide the crowd's shouts of "BORING" while they watched it. The entire match was just creepy imagery with Orton and Wyatt brawling in the house... for a few seconds before dragging out even more creepy images. It ends with Wyatt toppling a fridge on top of Orton and leaving for the arena... and taking a whole other 20-minute match before arriving. Somehow, Orton manages to be there at the arena without any explanation and attacks Wyatt for a very short match, only for Jinder Mahal (with whom Orton was scheduled to defend the WWE Championship against at the following PPV, Backlash 2017) to come out with the Singh Brothers and cost Orton the win. As stated in Jinder's WWE Championship run section on the other page, this match was so bad that not only did RD skip waiting a year to induct it into WrestleCrap, but along with the entire Wyatt-Orton feud in general, preemptively called it as the winner for the 2017 Gooker Award before Jinder's WWE Championship run turned out to be even worse.
• The TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2019 main event, a TLC tag team match for the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship between The Kabuki Warriors (Asuka and Kairi Sane) vs. Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch.
  • The match quality began to dip as it approached its ending, as Kairi had suffered a legitimate concussion halfway through the match. It was clear she was in trouble given her body language, though Charlotte apparently didn't seem to catch the signs. Whether she knew Kairi was in no condition to work or not, Charlotte began roughing her up a bit, even going for a spear, to which Kairi couldn't sell properly. Charlotte seemed frustrated at that point, cursing Kairi out and even slapping her, before powerbombing Kairi through a table.
  • When it came time for Charlotte and Becky to use chairs, Kairi uncharacteristically ran away from Charlotte, and it took Becky to finally catch on and check on her, rolling her under the ring for her own safety and directing Asuka to go on to the finishing spot to end the match. Asuka would go on to win it solo, but had only celebrated it for mere seconds before the cameras panned away towards a group of male wrestlers brawling outside the ring as part of an ongoing story. Most wouldn't call this match outright horrible, but the danger Kairi was in, in addition to the recklessness of Charlotte, made it really uncomfortable to watch and it's inexplicable why an audible wasn't called backstage to protect her.
  • Just months later, Kairi would depart from the company, having recently married and wanting to return to Japan, though some reports emerged that she was looking to get out due to repeatedly being injured by unsafe workers. It also didn't help that Nia Jax injured Kairi twice in a span of a few weeks, one from a powerbomb and another spot where she threw Kairi into the steel steps before she could set herself.
• The Women's Elimination Chamber match in 2020 was a disaster that somehow managed to be all three of boring, damaging, and pointless. Of its six entrants, only Asuka and Shayna Baszler were even remotely credible, so naturally the first ten minutes consisted of Natalya, Ruby Riott, and Sarah Logan doing basically nothing of significance and waiting for Shayna to enter. Shayna proceeded to enter, squash everyone in her path, wait for fourth jobber Liv Morgan to come out, and take her out in seconds too. According to the format, it would take four more minutes before Asuka was allowed to enter, but WWE refused to skip the countdown and left Baszler just to stand around, mean mugging for the crowd while Asuka taunted her from the pod. And it turned out to be four minutes waiting for nothing as Asuka would get squashed too! This buried five women (many of them former or future world champions) and an entire match format in order to get Shayna over, but it didn't even do that; she lost easily to Becky Lynch at her eventual WrestleMania match, in a match where Becky actively wanted to put her over, and shouldn't have won as she would relinquish the title for maternity leave a month later. Shayna's Badass Decay began there, and by 2021, she was in a deeply unpopular team with Nia Jax, entering a romance angle with a sommelier, and acting scared of Alexa Bliss' doll. No one got any benefit from this.
• 2021's WrestleMania Backlash, arguably in contention for WWE's best pay-per-view of that year, yet you wouldn't know that due to its most baffling match: The Miz vs. Damien Priest in a lumberjack match... where the lumberjacks were zombies. A match so terrible that The Wrestling Observer Newsletter gave it the award of 2021's "Worst Match of the Year" and was inducted into WrestleCrap in 2022 where Art Donovan remarked:
  Art Donovan: Like a scaled-down version of their deal with the Saudi royal family, WWE gladly accepted a huge sum of money to put on a match no one wanted to see. The end result was a glorified commercial for murderous, bloodthirsty ghouls (the zombies).
  • Before we can get into the match itself, let's get into both the buildup and why there are zombies there. The match took place after the critically acclaimed Miz and John Morrison vs. Priest and rapper Bad Bunny at WrestleMania 37, a match that was widely praised in all sides. With Bad Bunny out of the way, however, this pay-per-view was sponsored by Army of the Dead, so it started by putting some zombies on some screens of the Thunderdome (the match took place during the COVID-19 Pandemic), then some backstage segments featuring zombies, which is a bit corny, but WWE has done much worse than that, and much worse than that, WWE would do, as the lumberjack match (which Priest requested to be made so that the Miz couldn't just run away) would feature zombies as the lumberjacks without any sort of clue that's what was going to happen.
  • While the in-ring action is okay by itself, there were two issues it had: the first was that the mindless brain-hungry zombies conveniently remembered to follow procedure and not invade the ring until the match was over. The second was that Miz had a major injury (an ACL tear caused by Priest mistiming a top rope move and accidentally landing on Miz's legs) for the first time in his then-seventeen year-long career, causing him to be out of action for a few months. Combine that with WWE's infamous crowd sweetening while the Thunderdome screens were changed into a dingy city-scape, and the match becomes more awkward.
  • And then there was the fact that the wrestlers had to pretend to be afraid of the zombies also to fight them. Before the match started, Miz, Morrison, Priest, and even the commentary team had to act like the wrestlers in admittedly solid prosthetics were actual zombies as they lunged for them. Miz pulled a fake scared face as he tried to escape the zombies by going under the ring into the other side... in a fucking lumberjack match. Miz and Priest put aside their differences for a bit to fight the "zombies"... before going back to fighting each other once they got back into the ring. Morrison did his best with his signature parkour spots, but was no match for the zombies. Miz was pinned and the zombies remembered that they're zombies so invaded the ring to eat the Miz and the Miz only as Damien Priest pointed to the ceiling tron so that the logo would pop up. The acting like the lumberjacks were zombies ended up making everyone look bad and overshadowed not only the match itself, but the whole pay-per-view.

Wrestlers/Gimmicks

• In 1988, Terry Taylor, then known as a stellar worker and up-and-coming star, debuted with Bobby Heenan as his manager, who claimed he could make any "red rooster" a champion. Eventually, Taylor broke away from Heenan, but continued being the Red Rooster, complete with a red fauxhawk, clucking during matches, and a "small fan base" of plants known as the "Rooster Boosters". While not offensive or repulsive, this gimmick ruined Taylor's career - everywhere he went, he got "rooster" chants and could Never Live It Down.
• The Gobbledy Gooker, perhaps the template of Horrible gimmicks. Has its own page, but in a nutshell: A man dressed in a turkey costume hatches from a giant egg at the 1990 Survivor Series and dances in the ring with "Mean" Gene Okerlund, to a chorus of boos from a disappointed audience. The gimmick even inspired the "Gooker Award" (for the year's worst gimmick/storyline) at the WrestleCrap website.
• Mid-1993 saw one of the company's biggest flop gimmicks to date with Friar Ferguson, played by the late Mike Shaw. Ferguson was a wrestling monk, complete with a bottle of holy water and a big brown cloak. And he danced. In Friar's one match, the fans had no idea whether he was Heel or Face, but the match, with jobber Chris Duffy, was such a plodding, tedious waste of time that fans stopped caring (at one point, Friar picked up his opponent before a count of three, and you can audibly hear fans turning on the segment right there). Vince McMahon was the only one entertained by the gimmick, and it was probably one of the first big disasters of Raw. ^note (Mike Shaw did get another chance with the company, and his next gimmick wound up being Bastion Booger, whose gimmick was that he was a smelly, disgusting slob. This one was also stupid, but veered a bit closer to So Bad, It's Good.)
• Mantaur, making his debut on the Jan. 7, 1995 episode of Superstars. Apparently all the Wrestling Doesn't Pay gimmicks had been handed out (it was early 1995 after all) so we get a half human half bovine hybrid that seems to be loosely based on Big Van Vader, if Vader wasn't over and completely sucked in the ring. But the most interesting thing about that clip is the crowd, who immediately reject it and sit there in stunned and somewhat irritated silence, capped off with a sort of "I don't know what the hell I just saw but I'm pretty sure I do not want to see it again" expression on the faces of most of the crowd (the rest are laughing at how stupid it is.) After making Jim Cornette manage him as a prank (on Cornette) Mantaur was sent back to the pasture shortly after making his lone Royal Rumble appearance, though because quite a bit of footage was already in the can for the C-shows he'd continue showing up on WWF programming through that March.
• The saga of bad gimmicks given to Chaz Warrington (Mosh of The Headbangers) in 1999, which, as the examples shown below indicate, may have affected more than just the WWE.
  • First, there was Beaver Cleavage, a parody of Leave It to Beaver, complete with both a beanie and a sailor uniform, shown in a series of black-and-white vignettes. The vignettes showed the exploits of Beaver and his mother (Marianna Komlos), who'd respond with sexually suggestive remarks. ^note (Beaver falls into a puddle: "Oh no, Harry Beaver's all wet!") After only two weeks and hostile fan reaction, Vince McMahon ordered the character axed, and Warrington never had quite a career after this. Oddly, despite the gimmick ending with Chaz supposedly breaking character and walking out of a skit, Chaz himself was reportedly amused by the skits.
  • Chaz and Marianna didn't make out much better in the follow-up storyline, which took them from creepy and dumb to offensive and horrific. Chaz and Marianna carried on under their own names, ditching the gimmicks and simply being themselves on TV. Which was fine, until they suddenly broke up, which turned into a domestic violence angle where Marianna would keep showing up on TV with bruises on her face, accusing Chaz of beating her. This caused the WWF to turn against Chaz to the point that his fellow wrestlers shunned him and the referees would refuse to count his pinfalls, which isn't ridiculous in itself, but this was going on at the same time when Jeff Jarrett was hitting women in the head with guitars and putting them in the figure four leglock during live broadcasts, to a fraction of the criticism. And in a typical WWE Reveal, the angle concluded with Headbanger Thrasher revealing that Marianna made the whole thing up for some reason; she was arrested and never heard from again while the Headbangers reunited and proceeded to do absolutely nothing. Man, it sucked to be Chaz Warrington in 1999.
• Vince McMahon was convinced that flippy cruiserweights couldn't draw right up until he hired Rey Mysterio Jr.. Once he learned that they could, he decided he wanted another one, and so he hired Último Dragón. The problem was, Vince didn't bother to watch any Dragon matches before hiring him, and Dragon wasn't particularly flippy. After watching Dragon wrestle, Vince became enraged, declared that Dragon's style was absolutely incompatible with everyone else on the roster, and depushed the guy as hard as he could get away with, even going so far to edit out the cheers Dragon got when he appeared on Velocity and Heat.
  • As a follow-up, WWE, wanting to get rid of Dragon, said something about releasing him and then rehiring him without the Dragon gimmick, under his real name Yoshihiro Asai. Asai even unmasked in Japan in preparation for this. Then it didn't happen. Asai ended up taking the Tiger Mask gimmick. After that, he opened the promotion Dragondoor. He booked the main angle around his mask-related ordeals and multiple impostor Ultimo Dragons and Tiger Masks. Imagine the Undertaker/Underfaker angle with a half-dozen Underfakers instead of just one. Dragondoor ended up having a six-show lifespan - the only good that came out of it was that the mask issue got muddled enough that Asai was able to resume using the Último Dragón gimmick afterwards.
• 2012 was a very, very long year for Zack Ryder. After becoming popular in 2011 thanks to Z! True Long Island Story and extenstive social networking, he ended the year as the US Champion. Too bad for him Creative was really not happy he managed to get over by himself. Within a month into 2012 he is regulated to being John Cena's perennial rescuee. Because Kane wants Cena to give in to The Power of Hate, he keeps on using Ryder as his personal Fay Wray. He then loses his US Title (unceremoniously) along with his girlfriend, Eve Torres, who turned out to be a Gold Digger. The end result was a broken Ryder who never recovered from his attack and subsequent burial. While Cena on the other hand shrugged off the attempt to corrupt him and went on his merry way. To sum it up: Cena: Not Even Once◊
  • A few years later, Zack Ryder finally seems to catch a break at WrestleMania 32, where he gets inserted into a ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship as a replacement for the injured Neville. In a true shocker, he takes advantage of The Miz prematurely celebrating a little too long to push him off the ladder and grab the belt himself. This ultimately leads to nothing, as he drops the belt back to The Miz the very next day.

Other

• Tough Enough 2. Head trainer Al Snow, in just about every Confession Cam segment, was agonizing over how poorly the training was going. In fact, "These kids aren't ready" was practically the Catchphrase for the entire season. The four finalists ended up being Kenny Layne (decent wrestler with no charisma), Jake Sokoloff (great look, awful in-ring), Linda Miles (see Jake, times two), and Jackie Gayda (had literally nothing except being sexy). When it was time to select the winners, they deviated from the "one male winner, one female winner" thing at the very last split-second, to the point that the person announcing the winners was audibly confused. The first winner announced was Linda, and the second winner was Jackie. Jake was visibly furious; tellingly, he never returned to the wrestling business. Linda disappeared into developmental after an incident on Sunday Night Heat where she tried a missile dropkick that went nowhere near her opponent. When she came back a year later, it was as the dominatrix character Shaniqua. Doug Basham and Damaja (later renamed Danny Basham as Doug's "brother") were repackaged as her gimps known as the Basham Brothers, to which their careers never recovered. Jackie on the other hand, got pushed heavily on the main roster straight away, and went on to have one of the most infamous bad matches of all time as already mentioned above in the "Individual Matches" folder, where she and Christopher Nowinski took on Bradshaw and Trish Stratus. Notoriously, Jackie forgot to sell Trish's flying bulldog. In 2013, this was inducted into the annals of WrestleCrap. At least Kenny did alright for himself in the long run, continuing his training on the indy scene and having some success in TNA and ROH as Kenny King.
• The 2003 WWE/Girls Gone Wild PPV special. Viewers were promised all sorts of R-rated hijinks that the networks would never allow. The audience got one shot of Torrie Wilson almost flipping her skirt at the crowd. The main attraction was supposed to be the crowing of Miss Girls Gone Wild 2003; what happened was a glorified Diva Search sketch, with an occasional flash of skin. Even when the "contestants" would start to get frisky and start doing what girls traditionally do in a Girls Gone Wild video, Jonathan Coachman would literally jump in and break things up. OSW Review took a look for themselves. (They were not impressed, though they had a blast roasting it)
• The entire ending sequence to NXT Season 2 was such a trainwreck it may have stopped several careers in their tracks. It started off with Kaval winning, which was about the only thing that went well here. After the announcement was made, runner-up Michael McGillicutty was handed the mic and cut a very Narmy promo where he trips over his lines. In that promo, he basically promises a Genesis of the career of Michael McGillicutty.^note As it turns out, although he didn’t become a “big time player”, McGillicutty found steady employment as lower-midcarder Curtis Axel, and then as a producer; Kaval, on the other hand, was released after a few months and after a short stint at NJPW which ended with him being fired for no-showing, ended up bouncing around minor promotions for the next decade. Then he leaves the ring. Kaval tries to cut a celebration promo, but is cut off when the rookies eliminated in the previous weeks come in and attack him. The WWE Pros try to intervene, and we get what ends up being the very antithesis of what made The Nexus work. Even the people in the nosebleeds could have heard the spots being called and the refs yelling instructions to the angry rookies. After that promo, only Kaval and Riley would find themselves appearing on television in the weeks that followed, and the end of NXT Season 2 was never mentioned again. McGillicutty and Harris would finally resurface at Hell in a Cell, costing John Cena his match against Wade Barrett and acting as unofficial Nexus lackeys, before being officially inducted into the group a few weeks later. If there were plans for a Genesis stable involving NXT Season 2, they were quickly axed.
• By 2021, it's become obvious that Vince McMahon is tired of even pretending to have any "sports" in "sports entertainment". After the December 3, 2021 episode of SmackDown, it was pointed out that the entire show had less actual wrestling than just the main event of that night's 1-hour episode of AEW Rampage.^note A tag match between Death Triangle (Pac, Pentagón Jr. and Fénix) and FTR, which went over 20 minutes. The main event was Roman Reigns vs. Sami Zayn for the Universal Championship, which Roman won in 15 seconds because Brock Lesnar attacked Sami before the match. In total, it was less than nineteen minutes of in-ring action on a two-hour show — way less than the infamous episode of WCW Monday Nitro (mentioned in WCW's page) that Kevin Nash booked to have no wrestling in the first hour.
  • The July 8, 2022 episode set a new record low, with barely 13 minutes across the entire 2 hour show, with the longest match (Shinsuke Nakamura vs Ludwig Kaiser) lasting about 5 minutes. Anyone who attended the show hoping to get to see some wrestling basically got robbed. Any hope that WWE is even trying to get better rather than worse in this regard would've been dead if it hadn't been for Vince's retirement about a month later due to a sexual misconduct scandal, and Triple H taking over booking.
  • And then Vince came back. The April 3, 2023 episode of Raw contained roughly a half-hour of wrestling. Which would be a problem by itself, but was made worse by being the first Raw after WrestleMania. It also saw Cody Rhodes, fresh of a loss to Reigns that felt off-kilter, get buried by Lesnar yet again, putting a major dent into his credibility. Vince would continue to have final say on creative plans during the process of WWE's merger with UFC, at which point he was promptly Kicked Upstairs around September 2023 before being forced back into retirement in January 2024, due to further sexual misconduct coming to light.

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