Dethroning Moment / Pro Wrestling

aka: Professional Wrestling

"Fuck This Company!"

— Jim Cornette in response to one of many moments like these.

While maybe professional Sports can't be used as a Dethroning Moment of Suck, the fact that pro wrestling always has a predetermined outcome means it is also subject to the same moments of suck as its media cousins. Good thing, too, since these moments deserve to be thrown out of the ring.

Keep in mind:

• Sign your entries
• One moment per work to a troper, if multiple entries are signed to the same troper the more recent one will be cut.
• Moments only, no "just everything he said," or "This entire show," or "This entire series" entries.
• No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
• No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
• Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment Of Suck.
• No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.

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WWE

• JIKTV: Shawn Michaels's "I Lost My Smile" speech from the February 13, 1997 WWE Raw, Thursday Raw Thursday. After regaining the WWE Championship from Sycho Sid a month earlier at the Royal Rumble, and facing the prospect of dropping the belt back to Bret Hart at WrestleMania XIII, in return for Bret having done so for Shawn a year earlier, Shawn takes the coward's way out and forfeits the belt with a bogus excuse. All because he didn't want to do the job and he missed his three asshole friends who were stinking up the joint in WCW. Despite this, Shawn would remain employed, go on to win the WWE World Tag Team Titles in the summer with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin (which he would vacate, of course), win the title for a third and final time and eventually go on to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011 as if this and all his other moments of political bullshit had never happened.
  • Saiyan Warrior 006: You're only delving into a small part of it. Shawn at that time was arguably the biggest prick in the Wrestling world with how he acted. Threatening to leave or no show if things didn't go his way. Refusing to put wrestlers over (If he did lose it was by DQ or count-out) and a whole lot of other things including throwing a tantrum backstage and demanding he wins The European title at a show in Britain against British Bulldog (despite Davey Boy having it in his contract he'd never lose in his home country.) and afterwards gloating and dedicating the win to Bulldog's sister in the front row who had cancer and shortly died afterwards. Shawn would do nothing with it and drop it to his buddy Triple H making it all pointless. If it wasn't for the fact he was one of their bigger stars and it was a difficult time as they needed all the stars and marketable people they could get, his ass would've been fired long ago for the stunts he pulled.
• Blueranger: Melina vs Alicia Fox at Summerslam 2010. Whether or not you liked Alicia as champion, the way Melina completely buried her in that match is inexcusable. Melina can't help how she's booked (winning the match), but she can help the way she wrestles. Alicia was only able to get basic offence in that match and looked incredibly weak. Things got worse in their rematch for the title - Alicia got no offence in whatsoever. For three minutes, all Melina did was beat the crap nonstop out of Alicia, burying her once again. These days Alicia is being used as a jobber while Melina got a push of her own and is still being booked strongly.
• Rickysayshi: Survivor Series 2006, Lita's farewell from WWE. Who honestly thought this up? After years of dedication, she gets sent away by having Cryme Tyme give a "Ho Sale" and sell her "belongings", which include her panties, tampons, and a dildo. And you want to know the kicker? Before the segment starts, you can see a security guy confiscating a "Thank You Lita" sign from a group of people in the crowd.
  • Tropers/tsstevens: I would second this, and by rights, this should probably be considered worse because of the disrespect shown to Amy Dumas as a person rather than the character she played. However for a moment put this shameful act in the context of Lita being a slut heel, that was the villain she was. What brought this on to a degree was the Kane angle where she is kidnapped and raped. Think about that for a moment: they try and sell a character by using rape. Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil is very much a Real Life trope. It deserves to be treated as being that heinous for real. If the WWE wanted to market Kane or Glenn Jacobs again, this would be a major issue or should have been. Instead, the whole idea seemed to have been forgotten or buried. To make it worse, this seems to be a bout of punishment against Amy Dumas with other incidents such as male abuse and humiliation, all for saying that recreating the kiss she had with Matt Hardy would ruin the magic. And to make things even worse they had an angle with Gene Snitsky where he caused Lita to have a miscarriage of a baby she did not want in the first place and ran with this angle for years. In the words of Jim Cornette, who has spoken out against such ideas, fuck this company!
• L 3 X Jam3s: The Straight Edge Society. First off, it started off simple enough. It was CM Punk and Luke Gallows saving random indie wrestlers in the audience, and shaving their heads to get a "New Start". After a fantastic feud with Rey Mysterio, the company didn't care that they were the hottest act in the company and paired them The Big Show as a rival. What happened next was the subsequent burial of all the talents. Joey Mercury joined for no reason, Serena was gone from the group from Raw 900 and never got mentioned again, and Luke Gallows turned Face for a while, and then he was released. And Punk? He became a color commentator on Raw for 3 months. But Big Show... He was busy killing Wade Barrett's new stable, and would do so to the New Nexus, only this time with Kane.
• gurudyne: Snooki debuting in Wrestlemania 27. Wrestlemania, as in the crown jewel of WWE's PPVs, is the event that exists as a hallmark of each participating wrestler's career. Sure, it's never been completely free of gimmicks or special guests, but I honestly can't remember someone less deserving of screentime at Wrestlemania, let alone a match. Bryan Danielson was bumped off the card for Snooki's match. To make matters worse, this reeks of something TNA would pull.

  • SNL 95: While on the topic of WrestleMania 27 let's add the Corre being squashed in 90 seconds at Wrestlemania. Already having a squash match in a Pay-Per-View is horrible but it gets worse due to the fact that Wade Barrett was the Intercontinental Champion and Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel were the Tag Team Champions leading to both titles losing most if not all of their prestige. It's especially bad that there was a rematch the next Friday on Smackdown that actually let them come out strong, which begs the question of why they didn't use the Smackdown match for Wrestlemania and if there was any point to them being squashed.

• Lionheart 0: Booker T vs Triple H at Wrestlemania 19 for the World Heavyweight Championship. Up until this point, Booker T is crazy over, the crowd is rooting for him and it looks like he'll finally win the big one. The entire build-up has Triple H verbally burying Booker, insulting his skills, and saying a person like him could never be WHC. Come Wrestlemania 19 you fully expect Booker to finally win the match right? Right? No dice. Booker T gives Triple H everything he's got, but Trips wins after a single Pedigree. So not only did Triple H get to verbally bury Booker T, he ended being proven right at that.
• The_Reptile_: This one needs a bit of explaining. After the 2011 Draft, Randy Orton was put onto Smackdown, the apparent plan there to make him the top guy there, much like John Cena was on RAW. To do this, they needed to put the belt on him as soon as possible. Okay, fair enough. The problem is that fan favorite Christian got the belt to keep it on Smackdown after Alberto Del Rio got drafted onto RAW. Now, it's been well documented that not just Vince McMahon, but pretty much the entire booking committee behind WWE doesn't think too highly of Christian as a Main Event player no matter what fans may say to the contrary. So how do they get the belt off of Christian? Have him keep it until Over the Limit, which is only about two weeks away? Nope! They have him lose it on the Smackdown afterwards to Randy Orton!
  • Voidekat: To make things even clearer, that long-awaited title that Christian truly deserved? His first-ever one? The one that made everybody happy? The heartwarming moment? All scrapped in less than two days.
    • Gravityman: Christian did win the title back a little while later, but, unfortunately, they apparently decided that Christian isn't allowed to look competent or anything. To put the belt on him, they put them in a match where if Orton gets disqualified, Christian gets the belt. The match then ends with... Orton randomly kicking Christian in the junk, a move so bizarrely out of character that it comes off as nothing but incredibly forced.
• Jables 6: John Cena and Alberto Del Rio failed to stop CM Punk from escaping MITB with the championship. In response, Vince holds a tournament of eight superstars, and none of them is Cena. Rey Mysterio Jr. and The Miz enter the finals, but their match is postponed by Vince, who wants to fire Cena in front of the entire WWE universe. Cue HHH. He walks in, not only to stop Vince from firing Cena but to fire Vince as well, with HHH taking his place. Fast forward one week. Mysterio beats The Miz to obtain not only the first post-McMahon championship but also his first WWE Championship. Now all that's left is to see how long it will be before Del Rio cashes in his MITB. Then, Triple H pulls what many sports analysts call a 'dick move' and forces Mysterio to defend his title against none other than John Cena on the same night. In less than two hours, Mysterio lost his championship, and not even CM Punk walking out with the real belt around his waist to his old indy theme, Cult Of Personality, blaring through the speakers could end the fan rage felt that night.
• Kilgore Trout: I took a break from WWE starting in 2003. There was stuff on the show that made me uncomfortable, such as the infamous Katie Vick stuff, and a sketch involving the Hurricane and Rosey where Rosey tried to rescue a cat from a tree as part of his superhero training and ended up killing it, but I kept watching...until the Iraq War began and Vince McMahon decided to crank the Patriotic Fervor up to eleven. I distinctly remember Jim Ross talking about how great it was that the U.S. was invading that country, taking time out of a pay-per-view to do it no less. And then came the debate between Scott Steiner and Christopher Nowinski. Which, as I recall, was preceded a week earlier by Christopher Nowinski walking out with a mic to talk about how wrong it was for the U.S. to invade Iraq, prompting Steiner to run out and kick his ass on behalf of all "true Americans". And then came "La Resistance", who were heels because they were from France, which had objected to the invasion you see. There was only so long I could continue to watch a show that kept on vilifying people with my beliefs and creating Strawman Political heels for the babyfaces to destroy. I really felt like Vince's message was "If you're not behind George W. Bush 100%, then you also deserve an asskicking like Nowinski's getting and like La Resistance are getting."
  • President Al Bundy: At least it gave us the classic "I wrestled a lot of countries" line.
• Goldeneye 101: I'd say the CM Punk / Cena Feud after Money In The Bank 2011. Not only did the aforementioned tournament happen, but at the actual match, Kevin Nash attacked Punk after he won, and Alberto Del Rio won the title by cashing in the Money in the Bank. Cena gets pissy because he and Punk work their asses off to end in THAT. There then is a No. 1 contender matchup, where Nash interferes again by distracting Punk. Cena, completely contradicting his actions last week, capitalizes on it to win.
• clownishchimp: The whole Triple H as the COO angle. Before that, the angle was about CM Punk shooting on Vince McMahon and WWE, taking shots at their behind-the-scenes activities and their attempt at a PG public image. As a result, Vince suspended him and decided to give someone else a shot at the title until John Cena confronted him and demanded that Punk get his shot or he would walk out. Vince agrees but says if Cena fails to beat Punk, he is fired. So Punk gets his shot, and despite Vince's attempts at another Montreal Screwjob, Punk wins and escapes with the title. At this point, WWE is getting a ton of praise over the angle and people can't wait to see what happens next. The following night, they hold a tournament to crown a new WWE Champion, while Cena is about to be fired by Vince, making people wonder if Vince would actually do it or not. Then the angle goes downhill when Triple H shows up completely out of the blue and announces that the Board of Directors has relieved Vince of his duties (even though Vince McMahon is the majority owner of the company ^note Though Real Life business laws do let a board and/or the other shareholders file a legal injunction against the majority-holder's power (just not his profits) if he's too reckless - which presumably Kayfabe-happened offscreen.) and that he is the new COO. There's also the fact that this is Vince McMahon, the man who's been running WWE since the '80s and brought wrestling to the mainstream and boom periods such as the Rock N Wrestling and Attitude Eras, and who has played the Big Bad of WWE programming since the Montreal Screwjob, and yet he's just kicked out of his own company out of nowhere and dropped and forgotten about like a bad date just to stop him from firing Cena. It gets worse when Cena simply gets the title back the next week and Punk shows up right after he wins it. This has led to an extremely confusing angle in which HHH and Punk are feuding, yet neither wants to do a Face–Heel Turn, making it hard for the fans to figure out who to root for. Then at Summerslam Punk beats Cena to be the undisputed WWE champion, but is then attacked by Kevin Nash so that Alberto Del Rio, a heel whom WWE had pushed to the moon despite his lack of overness with the fans, can become the new champion. So Cena is now busy feuding with Del Rio for the title, while the angle turns into a three-way feud between Punk, HHH, and Nash (who is the one playing the heel), two of them being semi-retired from in-ring competition. There's a whole mystery over who sent the text to Nash, but he then reveals he sent it to himself, so HHH fires him. HHH and Punk finally face each other at Night of Champions, which has interference from The Miz, R-Truth, and Nash, and HHH winds up winning the match, thus burying Punk. He then fires Miz and R-Truth and makes a Triple Threat match for HIAC between Punk, Cena (who beat Del Rio cleanly to win the title), and Del Rio for the title. It ends with Del Rio winning the title despite just losing it weeks ago when Miz and R-Truth attacked Punk. This incident leads to the entire roster becoming threatened by an "unsafe workplace"(yeah, they are afraid of the MIZ of all people), and pretty much everyone on the roster walks out since they do not have confidence in Triple H and want him to step down. Yes, almost the entire roster pulls a Face–Heel Turn because they do not support HHH, who is being portrayed as the sympathetic face of the storyline. And there's no end in sight for this angle. To make things even worse, they are playing up John Laurinitis as the the person, or one of the people, behind the conspiracy, meaning that potentially the angles payoff of this whole storyline is a semi-retired Triple H fighting one of his father-in-law's former stooges for control over WWE. Alternatively, it could also lead to yet another feud between Triple H and his wife Stephanie McMahon for control over their father/father-in-law's company. What would make the latter potentially worse is that it may extend to Wrestlemania 28, in which the Wrestlemania ten years earlier saw the last feud between HHH and Stephanie, which was terrible, and the match that the feud was building up to, HHH vs Chris Jericho, somehow got to be the final match on the card over The Rock vs Hollywood Hulk Hogan, one of the biggest matches of all time. And Wrestlemania 28 has Rock vs Cena as the scheduled main event. Which means WWE could be repeating history by booking HHH and Stephanie's marriage problems over one of the biggest, most anticipated matches of all time. So basically it looks like this whole thing is just to make HHH the center of attention once again. And as big as this rant is, it still probably doesn't fully cover how bad this is, but I will leave that to anyone else who has something to say about it.
  • ryu238: I was alright with the whole angle up until Kevin Nash opened his mouth on the Raw after SummerSlam. (Though they really should've held off longer on CM Punk's return till at least after SummerSlam) The whole angle died right there and then despite the WWE's attempts to revive it with Miz and R-Truth. And then it died again once Nash said he sent the text. How does that make sense? And while the vote of no confidence angle was compelling, Fridge Logic took some of the excitement away, and then WWE screwed that up by making the angle null and void, and shit, by resolving it the next week by having everybody just come back in because Trips was replaced by Laurenitis. And Vince McMahon, who we really never expected to see again, announced it by interrupting an exciting match. Epic Fall doesn't begin to describe how badly the whole thing was handled.
• On Soaring Wings: 11-22-11 Daniel Bryan cashes in Money in the Bank against a knocked-out Mark Henry, and wins the World Heavyweight Title only for Theodore Long to come out and declare that since Henry was unable to compete, the title change was null and void. I'm sorry doesn't that completely fly in the face of almost every single money in the bank cash in ever!? Negative Continuity should not be used to justify screwing a face over, especially an Ensemble Dark Horse like Bryan
  • Fusenger Shadow: Worse yet, Michael Cole was annoying enough insulting Daniel Bryan before he was the champ. Cue Bryan winning the WHC. Does the insulting stop or even diminish any? It sure doesn't! You do not have your featured commentator bury one of your champs! It's like WWE is going out of its way to deliberately sabotage Bryan's run at the top. However, Cole has transitioned into being a full Bryan supporter now, as a heel commentator should be. It just took two months longer than it should.
• Das Nordlicht 91: At WrestleMania XXVIII, Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus for the World Heavyweight Championship opened the show. You would expect a back-and-forth and hard-fought match to get the crowd going for what could be one of the best Wrestlemania events in recent memory, right? Nope. Sheamus squashes Bryan in 18 seconds flat with one Brogue Kick to become the new WHC. I mean, wow. You've got two guys who were bumped off WM27 the year prior in a big title match, and it ends in eighteen fucking seconds. Wow.
• Tropers/Renelia: Going back in time, it has to be The Invasion and what went wrong. It was supposed to be the biggest angle in (then) WWF history. Now, I understand that some of the wrestlers they couldn't get a hold of because of contractual issues. The main problem was that it had a lot of potential and it ended up utterly wasted because of unknown reasons. What causes this to be even worse: the wrestlers that were "too expensive", with the exception of Sting, ended up wrestling in the WWF/WWE in the (then) near future! However, what made this a real wall banger: The so-called WWF vs. WCW battle royal match in November 2001...the last two wrestlers were from the WWF during the Attitude Era. It may have been a deliberate plot for WWF to screw over what was left of WCW, but the entire angle was poorly planned and it's no wonder why it's remembered as one of the worst angles in WWE history.
  • Cynical Bastardo: And, of course, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin suddenly turning heel (again) and joining WCW because "they appreciate him." Anyone who knows Austin's career and how he badly was treated in his WCW run, essentially began moving their heads in the direction of the nearest wall. ^note  At this time, Austin's character had been changed from the tough SOB anti-hero who kicked ass and Stunned people left & right, to basically a whiny Manchild who was gay for Vince and competed with Kurt Angle for his attention. In the promo he cut after joining the Alliance, he cited Vince supposedly grooming Angle to be champion and calling on The Rock (who was on Kayfabe "suspension") to help against the Alliance as proof Vince didn't appreciate him.
• KantonKage: John Cena vs Damien Sandow. Sandow first practically destroys Cena's injured arm and cashed in his Money In the Bank and still loses and is buried in the process. In their second encounter, Sandow is treated like chopped liver, meaning no televised entrance, Cena gets introduced first despite coming out last, and Sandow doesn't get introduced at all.
• O-Zone: So does anyone remember when WWE introduced the Anonymous Raw General Manager back in 2010? Where they were represented by a computer (evidently complete with GLaDOS voice during one night). And then after about a year of putting up with it, the company decided just to do away with it all together without even revealing whoever it was? Yea...well, you know how WWE has been bringing back past General Managers to run both Raw and SD!? Guess who was back on July 9th, 2012 Raw? yep, the computer, complete with Michael Cole reading the emails and all. Oh but wait, there's more! At one point, King and Cole were arguing later that night and Cole accidentally throws a drink in King's face, which led to the GM booking a Wrestlemania rematch between the two...so yea we get a rehash of that match, like we really needed it...Booker and Josh come out to commentate it and after Cole tries to escape beforehand, Booker throws him in the ring, and Jerry Lawler pins him in about 10 seconds....but then, the GM reverses the decision because Booker interfered (as in simply throwing Cole back in the ring, how is that considered interference?) and declares Cole the winner (Yes, just like at Mania). But wait! Here comes the "Best" part of all! Santino Marella, who has been doing detective work (complete with Sherlock Holmes hat) throughout the night to try and find out who the Raw GM is, comes out and declares that he's "solved the case" or something like that; he determines that the Raw GM is under the ring (and you base this on what?) cue the annoying "ding" and the email says there is no one under the ring...of course, Santino goes under and...it's, ready for this, Hornswoggle (yes, the Little Bastard/Illegitimate Child of Vince McMahon....The Anonymous Raw GM, introduced about 2 years ago, then just disappeared, is finally revealed to be Hornswoggle all along... Remind me again, why do people think TNA is the worst company?
• Cynical Bastardo: Wrestlemania IX. Yokozuna beats Bret Hart and is shown to be an unstoppable monster heel. That is, until Hulk Hogan comes down and challenges Yoko for the title and beats him in no time at all. Furthermore, Hogan didn't defend the title again until King of the Ring (and refused to job to Bret).
  • Krendall: To make things worse, the original plan was for Hogan to have one more run with the title and then drop the belt to Hart in a "passing the torch" moment at King of the Ring or Summer Slam. Hogan then decided to take a three-month vacation immediately after WrestleMania (not even making TV appearances), pissing off management so much that they demand he drop the belt at KotR and leave the company. Even then, Hogan refused to put Bret Hart over, only agreeing to drop the belt back to Yokozuna.
• Armando Payne: 2013 Royal Rumble. Punk V Rock. Rock winning with 2 fucking moves. It's like David Arquette being the WCW champion all over again.
• Smapti: At Summerslam 2013, Daniel Bryan faced John Cena for the WWE championship. Going into this feud, Bryan was massively over, to the point that Cena actually ended up working as a heel during the nearly half-hour-long wrestling clinic of a match that ensued. In the end, Bryan pinned Cena and won the match, being one of the few people to ever score a clean title victory over Cena, and the crowd went wild. You'd think that would be Bryan's crowning moment of awesome, wouldn't you? Bryan's reign lasted three minutes. No sooner had his celebration finished than guest referee Triple H gave him a Pedigree which instantly knocked him unconscious (despite his taking much worse punishment from Cena during the match itself), allowing Randy Orton to come out, cash in his Money in the Bank contract, and pin Bryan in the shortest world championship match in WWF/E history (breaking the 8-second record set by Bob Backlund and Diesel in 1994) to win the championship and set up Orton, HHH, Vince McMahon, and (for some reason) The Shield as a rehash of the Corporation stable from the Attitude Era. It becomes even worse when you consider that the entire reason HHH had inserted himself as guest referee in the first place was to prevent Vince from having a crooked referee fix the match against Bryan. The entire audience wanted to see Bryan become champion, and instead, he got squashed and buried, completely ruining what could have been the defining moment of his career, in order to reboot an angle from fifteen years prior.

• ChrisDV: The WWE's inability to develop new stars and constantly relying on Cena & Orton. With the Attitude Era stars finally retiring, the WWE has a severe lack of star power & has become increasingly reliant on Cena & Orton. Even though they have pushed some superstars to the main event - such as CM Punk, The Miz, & Daniel Bryan - the only one you can argue is truly still a main eventer is Punk, with the likes of Miz & Bryan being immediately shoved back down to mid-card status after their world title feuds have finished, and that's largely because of how long Punk was champion & that he went from the WWE champion to a feud with the Undertaker. If Orton & Cena both suffered lengthy injuries between now & WrestleMania, the WWE would be forced to rely on mid-carders & part-timers for their biggest show of the year. And part of the problem is that when someone (Like Zack Ryder, Dolph Ziggler or Daniel Bryan) gets over on their own, the WWE take it upon themselves to give them a moment in the spotlight before throwing them back down to an even worse spot on the card than before, seemingly because they didn't choose that superstar to be pushed.
• HeavyMetalSnail: Batista winning the 2014 Royal Rumble. There are so many reasons why this sucks. First, Batista had not worked with the company since 2010 and has only been back for around a month, making it absurd that he were to win something so big after being with the company for such a short amount of time. Second, he won the rumble by eliminating young Roman Reigns after Reigns broke Kane's elimination record in a rather effortless and anticlimactic fashion, completely derailing the momentum that he built up in the match. Third, the match was stacked with several people who had not only worked for the company longer, had not won the rumble before, and have shown themselves to be far greater talent than Batista (CM Punk, Antonio Cesaro, The Shield, The Wyatt Family, Big E Langston, and Dolph Ziggler being the most notable examples). Fourth, Batista is guaranteed a title match at Wrestlemania over several more over wrestlers, including the beloved Daniel Bryan (who was not even in the match), signifying that WWE would rather have a match featuring a 45-year-old has-been rather than one of their more popular, younger, and better wrestlers who would actually benefit from a rumble win and a world title match. This finish was so bad that it seems like WWE was trying to piss off their fans and alienate their viewers. It is proof positive that WWE hates its fans and does not want to listen to them. Why else would they not push any of the wrestlers that the fans actually like? It was an abysmal finish that shows that WWE wants to keep rehashing the same old shit instead of actually trying to run a wrestling company properly. This is the kind of garbage that you expect from WCW.
  • KiraBlaize: Batista made his return six days earlier. He stated he was going to take Randy's title before the segment was over. What makes it worse is how PREDICTABLE this was. Once CM Punk was eliminated (By KANE, who was eliminated earlier no less) and the crowd realized that Bryan would NOT be in the rumble, they turned on EVERYONE. The rage was so great that after Batista won (adding to the rage, I might add) he was so pissed at the crowd that he flipped them off. Mind you, Dave is FACE here.
  • GX Next: Looking at it from a booking perspective was a real crap moment. Look at the Legends panel; the COO's hero growing up and his bestie. Who wins the tag titles? COO's Dgeneration X stablemates the New Age Outlaws, a tag team with a combined age of 94. Who is still the WWEWHC? COO's Evolution stablemate. Who is the surprise legend entrant into the Royal Rumble? Kevin Nash, not Diesel as he had been a mere three years prior, Kevin Nash. Finally, who is the winner of the Rumble? COO's other Evolution stablemate. Any one or two of these would have been okay and honestly, Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair on the Legends panel was more than justified, but all of that together makes me think this should have been called Kliq-a-mania rather than the Royal Rumble.
• Totaldramawwe: One of the things I didn't like about WrestleMania XXX (don't get me wrong, I like it) was when John Cena beat Bray Wyatt with the AA. My problem is not because he defeated Bray but because this was the time when Cena could have developed his character with the whole storyline he and Bray had been through the past few weeks and what became of it? Nothing, just nothing. Luckily for the Wyatts, they beat John with Sheamus and Big E on the day after the event, but it was still a waste of a good plot and some great character development for John.
  • Tropers/[Zerombr]: Agreed, and even more so was this stupid 'will Cena give in to......evil?' shtick. Where the REF was the one telling him that 'he's better than this'. And Cena panicking so atrociously. It was horrific. Bray says "I know how to beat you now" and....nothing comes of it, nothing at all. Just horrible use of my man Bray Wyatt in a match that goes absolutely nowhere.
• Cole Yote: Back in time a couple of years, John Cena vs The Miz I Quit match at Over The Limit 2011. The match was a half-hour 2-on-1 beatdown of John Cena which "ended" with a rehash of the Rock/Mankind recorded "I quit" dirty finish. Except the referee decided to be smart for once, checked it out, and restarted the match. John Cena then no-sells half an hour of injuries and literally wins with four moves, one of which was ducking a title belt to the head and another of which was a bit of pants belt whipping (which, as a masochist, I can say is hardly crippling). I cannot overstate the absurdity of it. I mean, I am not exaggerating when I say it was half an hour of The Miz beating on John Cena only for John to completely forget about it as soon as the match was restarted.
• WWE Raw - 8/25/2014: After he got absolutely demolished by Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam, we were supposed to hear from what should've been a "walking wounded" John Cena and his crazy reasoning for why he wants to rematch Brock right away at Night of Champions. Instead, we get a do-nothing "Hall of Famers" conference with Hulk Hogan kissing up to Cena, Cena comes out, selling absolutely nothing from his beatdown by Lesnar other than "Oh, I got my ass kicked" and instead of the same impassioned promo we heard from him before Summer Slam, just flatly says he's going to beat Brock Lesnar's ass, doing absolutely nothing to sell his destruction at Summer Slam or even sell the rematch at NOC, which we can only hope is not WWE's cheap way of popping the belt back on Cena to tie Flair's world title record and take even further refuge under their ever-thinning security blanket that is John Cena.
• falcon2484: For me, the introduction of the Gobbledy Gooker at Survivor Series 1990 came very close to destroying all my enthusiasm for wrestling. Was Vince McMahon on drugs?
• Totzthe Plaid: For me, it's not a stupid character or plot twist that comes to mind as the WWE's D.M.o.S. (though there are many that are mind-numbingly bad), but rather a brain-dead moment where the very rules of a match were completely forgotten by every single person involved. All five wrestlers (John Cena, Dean Ambrose, Randy Orton, Kane, and Seth Rollins), the referee, and all three commentators (JBL, Michael Cole, and Jerry Lawler) completely forgot that a Street Fight is basically a no-holds-barred-all-weapons-allowed-free-for-all brawl, not a handicap tag-team match. This lasted for at least ten minutes of tagging in and out, everyone staying in the ring, the referee breaking up holds and counting on "illegal" actions, with everyone acting like it was normal. The WWE's had many moronic things happen since I started watching, but the main event of the October 20, 2014 Raw is the only time I rage-quit a match so far. (I've read that it broke out into chaos later in the overrun, but that's what the match stipulation promised from the start, not well-ordered idiocy.)
• Zepkhan: Survivor Series 2014... the match was going alright, Dolph Ziggler was kicking out at 2 for everything but apart from that it was ok. Then The Big Show took out John Cena leaving Ziggler in a 1 on 3. You could basically predict the rest from there. Ziggler eliminated Luke Harper by no-selling a powerbomb and Kane. Then Triple H took matters into his own hands by stopping 2 pins on Rollins and bringing in Scott Armstrong FTW? Nope. Some relic from an angle cancelled a long time ago comes in for his debut as Armstrong's on 2 and Armstrong completely forgets how to count... to cap this off, the crowd not only approves but cheers.

• Tropers/saltyoven: The 2015 Royal Rumble was already a terrible PPV with only the triple threat championship match standing out as a good match, but the big dethroning moment occured at the actual Royal Rumble. After Daniel Bryan was eliminated, people realized quickly that Roman Reigns was going to win it. Okay, this is going to need bullet points on why this was a terrible idea from the get-go. 1. This would mean that Wrestlemania 31 will only be Roman Reigns's 2nd singles match in a PPV and he's already in a match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, it makes Brock Lesnar Look like a complete and utter chump with his push to being the champion. 2. After Daniel Bryan was eliminated, people still kept chanting for him and were booing every other entrant afterward. 3. Towards the end of the match, there were "We want Rusev!" Chants. Yes, people would rather see an anti-American Heel win than the babyface. 4. By sheer location at which the royal rumble was held: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. To give an idea, that is pretty much smark HQ. And because everyone was booing there, casual fans will buy into the booing and dislike the result as well. After that night, within 24 hours WWE Network lost 300,000 subscribers, the #1 trending Hashtag on Twitter was #CancelWWENetwork, and they lost subs so quickly, the website actually crashed trying to keep up with the cancellations.
• Nazirul Takashi: Okay. As a long-time WWE fan, I've endured a lot of stupid things that I could easily put on this page. But I'm not going to put them easily due to the fact that I could only put one stupid thing on this page only. But after the 23/2/2015 edition of RAW, I've finally found something to be written here. In that show, there's a Divas Match between Emma and Paige against the Bella Twins. What makes me put that match as a DMOS? The way WWE treated the match of course! First of all, Paige makes her entrance before going to the Commercials and showing a Sting promo. In other words, Paige is in that ring for 10 minutes while those things are happening (while at that time, Emma does a Jobber Entrance). Then the match starts... which instantly ended in 30 seconds with the Bellas winning the match. So let me get this straight? WWE RAW is 3 hours and yet they can only give the Divas 30 seconds worth of screen time? The way the Divas Division was handled was pretty insulting towards the fans of said Division to the point that #GiveDivasAChance were trending No 1 on Twitter, hoping that the Division improves someday! If that doesn't change the WWE's view in handling the Divas Division, I don't know what will.
• Gravityman: The entire Roman Reigns push has been pretty bad, so there are a lot of things that could be added. His Royal Rumble win was really awful, but it was actually topped later. For the new Fastlane PPV, WWE made it look like they were throwing the audience a bone by booking Reigns to defend his title shot against Daniel Bryan, who never really lost his title. Everything is fine with that, the match itself was pretty good, and then Reigns went over, despite what the crowd wanted. This in itself isn't horrible, but on the Raw the night afterward, WWE had Bryan cut a promo where he put Reigns over, and by "put over" I mean he all but got on his knees and begged his fans to like Reigns (many likened it to "verbal fellatio"). It seemed more than anything like Bryan himself was simply giving up and accepting whatever WWE was going to give him. The entire thing was a pretty clear message from WWE that what the fans actually want doesn't matter at all and many fans completely gave up on the company after this whole thing.
• Someone Else 17: I have been around for a lot of shit. In over 16 years as a wrestling fan, and even having watched further back than when I started, I have seen asinine booking decisions, start/stop pushes, horribly executed fails, and more. Many of the moments listed on this page, I've seen and I totally agree. In fact, until now, I was on the page simply backing up one of these with a follow-up based on it that sucked. However, none have made me so thoroughly done with a character despite my utmost respect for the performer than what the 9/28/2015 RAW did to Kane. After several cringeworthy backstage segments between Kane, Seth Rollins, and a Human Resources director named Ashley who was "evaluating" Kane's ability to remain Director of Operations after an "anonymous complaint" came in, we were treated to a long and tedious in-ring promo about her "report" that far overstayed its welcome. The whole thing made a total mockery of WWE's HR department and managerial structure, making one wonder how these people manage to run a near-billion-dollar company all the time. But that wasn't the worst yet to come. When Seth finally confronted Kane in the ring after Ashley somehow judged KANE to be sane, kind, and professional enough to remain Director of Operations, Seth attacked Kane with an awkward Pedigree and then proceeded to beat on his leg with a chair, re-breaking his ankle and sending him back into an ambulance. But then the ambulance stopped on a dime, red weed smoke could be seen flashing from it, and Corporate Kane became Demon Kane, first hobbling out of the ambulance, then suddenly popping the leg back to normal with a stomp, making a beeline with flames towards Rollins, and no-selling chair attacks to the leg. 18 years in the company being Mr. Hellfire and Brimstone^note as Kane; Jacobs has been wrestling overall 23 years, hundreds of losses, several times out with injury, the reason he's after Rollins is partly because of an injury Seth made worse on purpose which forced him out for months, ^note the other part being the months Seth spent being a dick to Kane beforehand, yet I'm supposed to believe NOW that he's got this outstanding supernatural Healing Factor complete with Zenkai. There's Acceptable Breaks from Reality. There's Canon Discontinuity. There's even the Idiot Ball. And then there's such a level of story-booking incompetence that it will outright break my Willing Suspension of Disbelief by throwing out all rules and boundaries involved with an act. This is where we are right now with Kane. As much as I respect Glenn Jacobs, he needs to finally retire and move on to work backstage, because the character has officially crossed over into being completely stupid and unreliable.
• Nyame: Survivor Series 2015: This PPV had a lot of stupid moments, but I'm just going to mention the main event to cut time. Okay, your original world champion was injured and you're having a tournament to determine a new champion. You've got Roman Reigns, the original number one contender, and Dean Ambrose, best friends and self-proclaimed "brothers" in opposite blocks of the tournament, making it blatantly obvious who's going to the finals (especially since Seth Rollins, the third of their number who betrayed them, was the champion who got injured). Predictable? Sure. But this was what the fans, including me, wanted, especially if they weren't going to get the Rolleigns match. Then comes the actual match. Which is nine minutes long. Nine minutes. For a world title match. It's not like the performers lacked chemistry or intensity, and sure, they may have wrestled the semi-finals earlier in the night, but would it have killed them to be given five or so more minutes? And then there's after the match. Where Sheamus, a heel who has been booked into nigh-oblivion since he returned and has been regarded as irrelevant for years now, cashed in and won the title off of Roman Reigns, in a blatant rehash of SummerSlam 2013 two years before. Reports came in the next day that the only reason this happened was that Vince didn't want Reigns to be booed when he won, and it was booked hours before the show started. There were so many missed opportunities to do something new and exciting in this PPV, and they absolutely blew every single one of them. Just because they're so desperate to get their chosen guy over as the next John Cena, they put the title on a guy that no one, not even the company itself, wanted on top. Just another event that proved that WWE doesn't give a damn about what their fans think and is more willing to overwear a long since outdated formula rather than do something spontaneous and new. It shouldn't have been surprising that the ratings for RAW the next night dropped to the lowest rating for a non-holiday episode in the last eighteen years.
• Jon Milne: One of the most distasteful things I have ever come across as a wrestling fan is the exploitation of real-life deaths of people connected to wrestling for use in storyline angles, which tends to happen via the heel characters mocking the face characters about the death of said wrestling personality, but such efforts only tend to succeed in bringing really cheap heat from fans and smack of incredibly lazy and bad taste storytelling - Paige bringing up Reid Flair to Charlotte, and CM Punk bringing up Paul Bearer to the Undertaker being notable examples in recent years. But to me, the absolute nadir of this kind of thing was the "Eddie-sploitation" of 2006, in which the death of Eddie Guerrero was repeatedly utilised in truly disgusting storylines and angles, not least Randy Orton being scripted to tell Rey Mysterio that Eddie was "in hell", and that Rey had as much chance of beating Orton as Eddie had of coming back to life. Mark Henry would get in on the act, telling the Guerreros that he would spit on Eddie as well as the other family members if he was alive. And then Chavo and Vickie would be cast as the villains (yes, the villains) in the feud they would have with Rey, and later Chris Benoit, and Eddie's name would keep on getting brought up despite fans very obviously hating that the WWE kept doing this. To understand how offensively bad this is, this is to date the only Gooker Award winning induction on Wrestlecrap to not contain any pictures or jokes, just straight-up criticism about how truly full of bad taste this angle was.
• emmens: Wrestlemania 32 was bad and there are so many things I could call a dethroning moment of suck. The cheap use of legends, The Rock being in a "match" with Erick Rowan, the placement of the Undertaker vs Shane McMahon match where the fate of the WWE hung in the balance. but I think the truest dethroning moment of suck from all of this most recent Wrestlemania was from the night after. The opening ladder match ended in the best feel-good moment of the year when Zack Ryder won his first Wrestle Mania match to become Intercontinental Champion. This is significant due to how WWE has chosen to use Zack Ryder before this point (Google it so this entry doesn't get too long.) and immediately on RAW the next night, Zack loses the championship to The Miz because The Miz's wife Maryse distracted Ryder. Absolutely disgusting.
• Dr Zulu 2010: I removed my original entry because, speaking of Undertaker vs Shane O' Mac, in the end, the Hell In A Cell match between them was that because of how moot the whole thing was. Shane, despite losing, still has control of Raw, and The Undertaker may have wrestled his final match (or at least, his final non-Wrestlemania match) while giving Shane a proverbial slap on the wrist. For something like that to happen on Wrestlemania, which is supposed to be similar to a season finale was a good sign of Vince's lack of long-term thinking.
• chucknormie: For me, it was the push to the moon of Finn Bálor following his official main roster debut in August 2016. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the man himself. I think Finn is one of the best athletes in the company as a whole, and he definitely deserves to be at the top of the card for at least some of his career. What I don't get is how WWE screwed up such an easy angle to run. You'd think a likeable, charismatic guy like Finn would get the crowd on his side pretty easily after a few weeks and then get a push, right? Nope, WWE hotshotted him to winning their brand-new Universal Championship (still one of the worst names and belt designs I've ever seen, btw), right out of the gate when most of the casual fans were still scratching their heads over who exactly he was, or just cheering him because he wasn't Roman Reigns. It doesn't help matters how management made Seth Rollins, his opponent, play the same cowardly chickenshit heel character the fans were tired of seeing against him, and how Finn continually made him look like a chump, and Finn saying he "earned" the opportunity when people like Sami Zayn have been toiling in the lower mid-card for more than a year is more than laughable. The "Demon King" was intimidating on NXT, but just plain cheesy on the main roster, and I feel like the "feud" was less of that and more of Vince or someone in management trying to throw the smarks a bone after realizing that they buy most of the merchandise nowadays, disregarding the fact that a bland, flat character pushed to the moon is exactly what the smarks don't want to see once the novelty wears off. WWE NXT, while great, has one major flaw as seen in this case: it allows wrestlers to coast on their independent reputation with the smarky crowd and doesn't develop characters in many occurrences. In a strange way, Finn's injury may have helped out all the parties more in the long run: it created a comeback narrative that most fans can get behind for the man himself, allowed Rollins to finally complete his turn into the badass Anti-Hero we all wanted to see, and gave a title reign to Kevin Owens, one of the arguably most deserving men on the roster.
• BlahaIsAFraud: Survivor Series 2008. John Cena comes back from injury and immediately buries Chris Jericho, a horrible WWE title match between HHH and VLADIMIR KOSLOV of all people, and an abysmal casket match.
• Giant Leviathan: Sami Zayn's Face–Heel Turn. I have one word to perfectly summarise why turning Sami Zayn Heel was a colossally stupid decision: R-Evolution. The entire point of that storyline was that Sami Zayn was tempted to turn Heel after months and months of getting screwed over, but ultimately chose not to. And the thing is, he did show an edge, he did show character (Probably more character than anyone on the main roster has right now), and he did it all while making the conscious choice to stay Babyface. But now we're saying that that moment no longer matters. This pivotal moment in Sami Zayn's character may as well have never happened. Great, well done WWE. This is as idiotic as Batman suddenly gunning down families in alleyways, or Spiderman deciding he doesn't need to bother stopping criminals, or Captain America joining Hydra. You're going against one of the most important moments in their character development (And in Sami Zayn's case, the very thing that made him stand out as a unique character) for the sake of a shock moment, and his reasoning is moronic too. "After being severely injured, I now realise that my worst enemy is totally correct and I will now change my life's philosophy to agree with him!" Gee... I never realized it was so easy! I think tonight I'll go stab some Westboro Baptist Church members. Because as we all know, violently assaulting someone is the best way to get them to agree with your worldview. Also, this makes no sense for Kevin Owens either. This is the guy who is the most paranoid man on the planet. The guy who turned on Chris Jericho because he felt so uncomfortable with someone being so close to him. There is no way Kevin Owens would be so accepting of this. If the writers had any consideration for character consistency whatsoever, Kevin should be going: "What's your angle? You think I owe you something? Don't try to pull that "I just wanted to help" shit on me!" Because an act of such loyalty would make Kevin Owen deeply uncomfortable. Since it reminds him of how much of a treacherous scumbag he is. But no. Fuck nuance. Fuck character depth and consistency. We need a random shock moment because the WWE doesn't know how to write characters. So here's the real story as far as I'm concerned: Sami Zayn died on a hospital bed due to a crushed throat. The guy who came to save Kevin Owens is his identical cousin Mami Sane. And I'm done. The two characters that brought me back into the WWE, into wrestling, were Bray Wyatt and Sami Zayn. Now one of them is a rambling idiot who is about as worthless as slime mold. And the other one is dead. Fuck you WWE.
• Zeo Spark 16: I would love to rip into this one but a huge Dethroning Moment for me was Jinder Mahal's WWE title run. Let me first say that Jinder Mahal as a jobber for three years. Three freaking years! And, all of a sudden, when he gets moved to Smackdown via the Shakeup, he is suddenly World Champion material. Let me point out during that time, Mahal didn't even have a good finisher and suddenly he is just given the world title. Mahal is definitely one of the worst WWE Champions in a long time because his personality was so bland and too much of a generic heel. His moveset sucked, his theme song is annoying, and he is overall not WWE champion material. WWE only did this because they were doing a tour in India and they wanted Mahal to feel like a "hero" to them because he's holding the WWE title to represent them. Well, there was one problem with that. Mahal is not Indian! He's Canadian! ^note  Technically, he's of Indian descent, but he was born in Canada, not India. And you know what else? Everyone knew he wasn't Indian so having a major title on a mediocre wrestler such as him was entirely pointless! It was a good thing WWE nixed the idea of having Mahal win back the title from AJ Styles or we would've stayed with a boring champion for an even longer time. I still can't believe he ran with the title for around 6 months. I nearly stopped watching Smackdown if it wasn't for the good rivalry between Kevin Owens and AJ Styles over the US title.
  • Aj Wargo: I couldn't agree with you more. Jinder had absolutely no reason to be champion. I'll add another good reason- his previous history prior to winning the belt was full of losses, both in singles matches and as part of the band of jobbers known as 3MB. Worst of all, none of his wins with the belt were fair- his two henchmen would always screw over his opponent, proving to literally anyone that they were the only reason he was winning and that he couldn’t do anything on his own! I actually slogged through the equally disastrous reign of the Authority hoping maybe, maybe the company would recover. But after Jinder retained his belt against Randy Orton at Money in the Bank, I gave up on watching wrestling. I usually only watch moments where something is smashed or destroyed now.

• Patrickthekid I thought it couldn't get worse than having Kofi Kingston losing the title in a 7-second squash to Brock Lesner, but the company somehow found a way to top themselves in the Hell in a Cell 2019 main event between The Fiend and Seth Rollins. Despite being the babyface, no one wanted Rollins to retain the title. Yet it was clear that the company didn't want to make the exchange. So how did they protect the two of them? Well, first they had Rollins throw just about everything at the Fiend, including no less than eleven Curbstomps, making the move look weak and the Fiend look impossible to beat. All while the crowd booed at the match for Rollins dominating the match. Yet the worst part was when Rollins used a sledgehammer... and the referee called a no-contest. In a stipulation where Mick Foley almost died for real yet had it keep going. The Fiend was perfectly fine afterward and attacked Rollins, but at this point, the damage was done. One of the few over acts was humiliated once again while the top babyface was forever tarnished. All while the crowd was calling for refunds, a continuation of the match, and AEW.
• Will108: Triple H vs. Steve Austin, No Disqualification match. Survivor Series 2000. The most wanted match in said PPV, ended with Triple H getting into a car trying to run over Austin, only for Austin to one-upped him by using a forklift to pick up Triple H's car and drop it off the forklift from 30 feet in the air. The car lands on its top with Triple H still being trapped inside. The match ended with No Contest. After those violent brawls and strikes between Austin and Triple H, the match ended in such an anticlimactic way. Austin didn't get a win. What a disappointment.
• Red The Hedgehog: WWE thankfully is getting better, but one dethroning moment that I can say that happened this year was Austin Theory winning the Money In The Bank briefcase. No point, no need for it to happen, and just a case of WWE not reading the room.
  • Zeo Spark 16: I agree with that. Even Triple H himself thought that Theory winning the briefcase wasn't a good idea since Theory was still green in the WWE and it was too soon for him to have a shot at a major title already (especially if said current champion is Roman Reigns). So, Hunter had him cash it in on then-U.S. Champion Seth Rollins instead and even lose to him.
• Aj Wargo: WrestleMania 39. Roman’s taking on Cody in a match that should finally end his title run… And he wins. Yet again. This has finally torn it for me- Roman is being booked too protectively and has been solidified as an Invincible Villain worse than the Authority, Jinder, and Brock combined. And he can’t even win clean, either- his stupid inbred cousins always have to run in and help him and screw over his opponent. And for what? Why would you deny Cody his rightful spot at the top? To bury AEW? To make sure Roman makes it to 1000 days? Because you assume that if Roman loses, you lose your viewers? I wouldn’t be surprised if this finally kills WWE, because it’s already killed Roman’s push to the top and ensured that the Bloodline is, in all but name, the Samoan nWo.
  • TnAdct1: After years of having the "vote of no confidence" be the Dethroning Suck, this, combined with the Raw following the event, has usurped it. Just when it looks like WWE is finally getting better, Vince McMahon, whose departure was a huge reason for the turnaround, returns to Creative and manages to take everything WWE accomplished in 8 months and ruin it in the span of a day. The ending of WrestleMania 39 was bad enough, but the Raw following it, which is usually one of the must-watch episodes of the year, was easily one of the worst episodes of the show to date, with the show receiving three rewrites (two happening while the show was in progress), only a half hour of actual wrestling (with the commercial-free first hour only having one match, which consisted of a squash match), a Seth Rollins segment where he just comes out to hear the fans sing along to his theme and then returns backstage, Matt Riddle being the only return on an episode that is usually filled with surprise appearances, and a Bait-and-Switch main event in which Brock Lesnar becomes a heel again and beats up Cody Rhodes in a manner that, when combined with the end of the main event of the previous night, comes off as a Take That! from Vince for how Cody had managed to find success outside of WWE. CM Punk is probably right when he said "Maybe this company (WWE) will be better after Vince McMahon is dead."
  • RippenFan13: One can never truly know what Vince is thinking, but likely he figures with the upcoming UFC merger, he can do whatever he wants, even if it loses money or ratings, cause they've got that sweet Endeavor money coming in.
• RippenFan13: I've been watching WWE since its days on Spike TV, and the Invasion, believe it or not, hooked me, and I've been watching ever since then, and have even learned to retroactively enjoy the older years from the '80s & '90s when I grew up. I have read all the above listings, and have no problem with them, but we all watch wrestling for different reasons, and for me, I just like the over-the-top, colorful characters. Anyway, I believe wrestling is cyclical, so if something is bad now, eventually something better could come along. Anyway, I've changed mine from the Bobby Lashley / Lana "relationship" because, in spite of that, Lashley has enjoyed great success in the company, even winning the World title twice, and continues to remain a solid player. Instead, I'm choosing the heel turn of Dominik Mysterio. Maybe people felt Face!Dom was the second coming of Rocky Maivia, I don't know, but heel Dom is even worse. He's basically a Dirty Coward, whiny simp who can't win a match without help from his "girlfriend" ^note  Not to mention WWE downplaying the Unfortunate Implications of said "relationship" which, while never stated outright, was implied like crazy that they were "having all the sex." , or stable and a poor man's Eddie Guerrero ^note  He uses Eddie's signature Frog Splash and Three Amigos suplexes, and his "relationship" with Rhea is a rehash of Eddie's similar one with Chyna in 2000, right down to calling her "Mami" (short for "Mamacita"). Admittedly, Eddie was essentially an honorary uncle to him, so this could be considered more of an homage, as compared to the "Eddiesplotation" of yesteryear. with little of the charisma or skill that the latter possessed. A later trip to "prison" and then acting like a parody of a hardened criminal has only poured more fuel onto this dumpster fire. ^note  This is apparently based on another of Dom's honorary family members, Konnan, who legitimately was in prison. To give you an example, the other members of the Judgment Day stable are considered either Evil Is Cool or Love to Hate; Dom gets massive boos just coming out and loud boos & chants during his promos, seemingly another example of WWE not understanding the "right" kind of heat. It's admirable of Dom to want to follow in his dad's footsteps, and I'd like to see him succeed, but the way WWE has handled him is like teaching someone to swim by throwing them in the water with cement shoes.

WCW

• GetterKaizer: I don't think I have to explain the Finger Poke of Doom. Or David Arquette winning the WCW Heavyweight Title in a Tag Team Match.
  • tsstevens: Wait, let's not overlook the night that killed WCW. There was the Goldberg angle where he was portrayed as a stalker (originally a rapist,) the Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash "match" above, or the Reset Button being used on the NWO angle. However, if fans could point to one moment in the night it would be this: Mick Foley was going to win the WWF Championship on Raw, which was pre-taped. Eric Bischoff saw fit to spoil this and then had Tony Schiavone insult Foley by saying, "Wow, that'll put the butts in the seats, hyeh." Half a million WCW fans jumped ship that night, and just over two years later the company died, by insulting someone the fans held in high regard.
• Tork: How 'bout Vince Russo winning the belt? The Insane Troll Logic of Arquette as champ doesn't even apply to Russo winning the title. It had no possible avenue to draw money (nobody liked him and he had no matches to where he could get beaten up) and cheapened the status of the already hurting WCW title. On top of that, Booker T (the champ Vinnie gets the belt from) won it back almost immediately, making the whole angle entirely pointless aside from the fact that Russo can now put "former WCW Champion" on his resumé.
• SNL 95: To put how little the WCW title meant after these aforementioned incidents; after Goldberg lost the title it changed hands 32 TIMES in two years with the longest reign being 3 months. Some title reigns didn't even last a week and David Arquette and Vince Russo were among the champions. Hell, Chris Benoit willingly giving up the title is a testament to how meaningless the title had become under Vince Russo's booking.
• dictatorsaurus: June of 1991 - Jim Herd fires Ric Flair, who was NWA World Heavyweight Champion at the time. Not only did the firing destroy the plans for the Great American Bash, which had Lex Luger finally defeating Flair for the title, but it nearly killed the NWA World Title itself. Speaking of the Great American Bash, not only did it end up as one of the worst PPV shows of all time, but it ended with Lex Luger vs. Barry Windham in a steel cage match for the vacant title. What could make that even worse? Luger would win the title, and then immediately turn heel, siding with Harley Race. As big of a DMoS as it was, there was a silver lining later in the year: Rick Rude's debut as the WCW Phantom (and the centerpiece of the Dangerous Alliance) at Halloween Havoc. The formation of the Dangerous Alliance sparked a critical renaissance in WCW.
• Retsof Noraa: "Oklahoma", a parody of WWE commentator Jim Ross, complete with a tasteless mockery of Ross's drooping face as a result of Bell's Palsy. The invention of this character sparked a seething hatred in Jim Cornette toward Ed Ferrara, who portrayed the character, and even Ferrara has come to admit that the idea was horrible and should never have been done.
• Dr Zulu 2010: If David Arquette winning the title was the final nail in WCW's coffin and the Fingerpoke of Doom was the moment that killed WCW, the main event at Starrcade 97 might be where the disease that slowly killed WCW was caught. To put it simply, if there was a wrestler who was extremely over back in 1997, it was Sting. The storyline where he observes the NWO and Hulk Hogan was masterful with one year to build the same way WWE were doing it with the Mega Powers exploding. So, clearly they couldn't screw it up, right? Well, there is a good reason why there is no WCW network. Hogan was wailing on Sting with the latter giving no offence until the pin where the refree Nick Patrick doing a fast count. Or at least, that was the plan since Nick did a normal three count. And then, out of nowhere, Bret Hart comes up and restart the match to make sure they won't repeat a screwjob like in Montreal. In the end, Sting wins but that also makes him weak since he didn't win clean to Hogan, it makes Bret like a sore loser because he can't let Hogan win even though the ending was botched and it makes Hogan into an invincible villain where the fans are starting to get tired of Hogan and the NWO's schtick. WCW has the perfect opportunity to deliver the final blow to the WWE in the Monday Night War and they blew it. We can blame Sting's poor physical form and personal demons, Hogan's creative control, or Bischoff's lack of foresight but it gave the WWE enough time to build up the Attitude Era, leading to Mankind's victory against The Rock for the World Heavyweight Championship the night WCW did the infamous finger poke. And the rest, as they say, is history.

TNA

• Lionheart0: Victory Road 2011 saw Jeff Hardy coming out to the ring intoxicated. Keep in mind, this was the main event of the match and Jeff Hardy was the champion of the company. Considering Jeff's past poor track record, this is as much as a Dethroning Moment from the company since they put so much faith in Jeff in the first place.
• SNL95: The whole TNA World Heavyweight Title drama leading up to, during, and after Bound For Glory 2011 is one massive DMOS for the company. First some background, in the lead-up to Bound For Glory (read 5 months beforehand) TNA started doing a "Bound For Glory Series" which was a round robin style tournament where the winner would get a TNA title shot at Bound for Glory. The series itself was a mess, nobody understood the points system, it was continued through house shows leaving many viewers hopelessly confused about the standings which would change on a whim. Points were won through the most ridiculous means and Crimson, the guy who was at the top of the series, was injured forcing TNA to give Robert Roode the series victory. Despite this fans were happy for Roode and after he wins he gets a huge buildup going into Bound For Glory making people sure he would beat Kurt Angle for the title. However, Roode loses the match in a screwjob finish which was a blatant ripoff of the Summerslam 2011 ending (Angle pinned Roode while Roode was touching the ropes) and despite the fact that Kurt injured his hamstring and could barely wrestle a match. It was later revealed that Hulk Hogan, who buried Roode in a shoot interview before the show, got the match result changed because he felt Roode wasn't ready to hold the title. So already Hulk blatantly screws over young talent because of his own opinion, not the opinion of the fans who were almost completely behind Roode to make his face turn the highlight of the show instead of Roode's victory. Then on the next Impact taping James Storm, Roode's tag team partner, squashes Angle for the belt despite having no buildup and there being no reason for his victory other than the fact that Hogan wanted it. The question here is: Why didn't TNA build up Storm in the first place? Fans were pissed because there was literally nothing stopping them from building up Storm over Roode. Instead, TNA wasted months of storyline, screwed over a young talent before he got his chance, created a contrived Author's Saving Throw that pissed off several TNA "fans" and showed how terrible their bookers actually are. Good job TNA, good fucking job.
• The Notorious AMP It gets even worse, my friend, during the next tapings they have Roode wrestle Storm where he ends up turning heel by hitting storm with a beer bottle. Which he follows by spitting on Storm and then standing on him, declaring that he felt great after having betrayed his "brother" of 4 years. Note, this would not be a bad storyline if played out over a series of months, but it was so compressed it just sucked the potential out of it.
• koopakoop: Anything in which Garett Bischoff appears. Especially when he beat Kurt Angle, of all people.
• Super Sauce: The A.J.-Claire Lynch story that long outstayed its welcome. I would've preferred he had an affair with Dixie instead of this. The entire thing being a set-up almost made the pain worth it, though.
• Shadow 200: TNA's inability to get things right and learn from their mistakes makes things go from bad to worse. Every time it looks like they are turning the corner you just have to count to three to watch them do something stupid. And yet they continue to do so again and again, whether it's idiotic storylines, depushing and firing over talent that people like cause it's not who Dixie likes. Wasting millions of dollars on so-called celebrities (Jenna Morasca, Johnny Fairplay, The Mutants from Jersey Shore) while talent has to live off of food stamps. No wonder so many people have been turned off from them and never bothering to watch them again. I'm one of them.
• Aya Reiko: Having Spike opt to not renew the television contract for Impact!, full stop. TNA would eventually find a new home on Destination America, a network only available to slightly more than half of Spike's audience. These days, getting over 500K viewers is thought of as a reason to celebrate, it was a mere three years ago that the show used to get 1.7 million viewers to watch it.
• homiedclown: The beginning of the end was two things: 1) the 35-second "world title match" between Sting and Hardy, and 2) combining Fortune and Immortal. They should have been two rivals groups fighting each other instead of being a "group" of 15 wrestlers. Raven said it best on Talk is Jericho. How, with the talent roster being that deep, do you only get ratings of 1-2? His answer is, well, you have the worst booking committee in the world to do that. And they did it.
• KingLyger: "Hardy vs. Hardy: The Final Deletion". Beyond just using Jeff Hardy and Matt Hardy to recreate spots that were way past their prime, the editing was so bad that it was impossible to follow along. The Special Effects Failure of using holograms from drones just looked flat-out ridiculous, even by the standards of professional wrestling. There are so many Ass Pulls, Ass Pulls, and random costume changes that the match simply had no basis in reality anymore. The flat-out Narm of lines like "it's a dilapidated boat!" killed the credibility even further. Also, as Crazy Is Cool as Matt Hardy's character is supposed to be, his constant bleating of "Brother Nero!" quickly became the most annoying sound of the whole video. Finally, the audio quality was just terrible, with noticeable popping and scratching every time either wrestler hits the mat. It's already being called "The Room (2003) of pro wrestling matches," and it's not hard to see why. It has me convinced that TNA won't live to see 2017.
• Tropers/~tsstevens: Dixie Carter, outside of her role as the Corrupt Corporate Executive so this was real, a shoot, addressed the "Fire Russo" chants when asked about hiring him. Her threat to fire someone else if it happens again was all the evidence needed if there wasn't before that Carter's attitude was very much, "Fuck the fans, we don't care."

ROH

• dictatorsaurus: Tyler Black vs. Nigel McGuinness from Injustice 2. Don't get me wrong; the match was tremendous. However, the booking of the finish is what supplies the moment. Not only was there a draw where the timekeeper messed up and called it after 45 minutes (instead of the usual hour), there was no on-screen payoff to the timekeeper's mishap. Plus, this finish essentially killed ROH's New Jersey market until 2012.^note {ROH ran two more shows in New Jersey in 2009, but both were far from the marquee cards New Jersey once had. They were set to return to Edison in April 2010, but they outright cancelled the show due to a poor advance (likewise, the show from Boston the night prior was only postponed until September). To put the drop in perspective, the New Jersey market witnessed the CM Punk World Title win and heel turn, the ROH debuts of Naomichi Marufuji and KENTA, Homicide's face turn, Samoa Joe vs. Bryan Danielson during Danielson's World Title reign (KENTA vs. Davey Richards was on that same card that night), and Nigel McGuinness's World Title victory. When 2009 rolled along, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Toronto easily lapped Edison, NJ as one of ROH's major markets. They would return to Rahway, NJ for Killer Instinct in October 2012, which ironically enough, included another main event finish that has broken the base.}
• Grattiano: Supercard of Honor VII: Jay Briscoe starts mounting a comeback against Kevin Steen in the main event for the world title when members of S.C.U.M. begin to storm the ring. The ROH locker room empties as a brawl erupts on the outside with even Veda Scott getting involved when...iPPV issues result in the feed becoming frozen resulting in most viewers missing out on Jay Briscoe dethroning Kevin Steen and becoming the ROH champion. To make matters worse, up until this pivotal moment it looked like ROH had FINALLY solved the iPPV streaming issues that had been plaguing ROH for months prior. While the actual dethroning wasn't a moment of suck, the streaming problem completely ruined the flow of the match for those who were watching at home.

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