5. The Extreme Elimination Chamber – December to Dismember
I mean, to be fair, Vince McMahon could have walked through the crowd and personally handed everyone in attendance a 100 dollar bill and this still would have been the most toilet PPV of the ruthless aggression era, maybe even of all time. Under-promoted, booked with all the hype and spectacle of a Milton Keynes house show and spitting into the open mouth of every cherish memory that the name ECW invoked. Somehow the Chamber match managed to make the PPV 10 times worse, with the most anger-inducing booking imaginable. In the match was Big Show, in the worst shape of his life as a laughably non-extreme ECW champion, Sabu who would at least guarantee a good spot or two, RVD who every single person in attendance wanted to win, CM Punk who was not an ECW alumnus, but still popular, Bobby Lashley who was John Cena without the personality and the most obvious WWE guy on the card, and, for some reason, Test. To clarify, the top 3 people the fans wanted to win were Rob Van Dam at the top, then CM Punk, then Sabu. How did the match pan out? First of all, Sabu got kayfabe injured backstage on the night and replaced by Bob Holly, that’s not a good start, thanks for buying the PPV as advertised everyone. Then CM Punk was eliminated first, oops, then RVD went out next, and at this point the match is broken, then Bob Holly’s elimination was botched, fan outrage just rose and rose until terrible Lashley won, and Paul Heyman, the man who spent the entire day telling Vince that everyone would hate this booking, got the sack because everyone hated this booking.
4. The 2015 Royal Rumble Match
I mean, when a hashtag to cancel your streaming service trends globally, that’s generally the indication of a bad night’s work. Few remember that the 2015 Royal Rumble match actually started off brilliantly. Bubba Ray returns, Bray Wyatt has a nice run of dominance befitting his character, DDP shows up and yogas some punk asses in oblivion like a total SUPERSTARRR, then Daniel Bryan, the fan favourite to win, arrives to rekindle his awesome rumble history with wyatt, everything’s golden, and then YOUR RUMBLE HAS PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION AND WILL BE SHUT DOWN Daniel Bryan gets eliminated like a total rookie, leaving Roman Reigns as the only possible winner and everything just collapses. They massively miscalculated that fans would be able to ‘get over’ bryan’s elimination and shift their support to Reigns, but even then, the booking just gets worse and worse. Kane and Big Show arrive and start very slowly eliminating all of the other superstars like they’re absolutely nothing. Bray Wyatt has been there the longest, one punch, gone, people still like ziggler, one punch, bye. Dean Ambrose is over, oop out you go. Heinous, ugly, soulless booking, then Reigns eliminates both giants, not because he’s smart or powerful but because FOR NO REASON, big show and kane start squabbling amongst themselves what’s wrong with you, roman is right there, finish the job first. They half-eliminate themselves before Roman’s able to push them out, and then the rock helps fight them off. THAT’s your hero’s journey? Enters late, gets lucky, has to have help from someone not in the match. It makes less sense than a ventilated condom and it is F***ing Maddening.
3. Hulk Hogan vs. Sid Justice – WrestleMania VIII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkYPoqFYIqY
Some main events are bad because of what they are, but some main events are bad because of what they are not i.e. the wrong match being the main event. We saw that with Roman vs Joe. Take that feeling and multiply it by itself until time stops. For a decade, Ric Flair had been the biggest draw in the NWA, for a decade Hulk Hogan had been the biggest draw in the WWF. In 1991, owing to freak circumstances of Jim Herd being a terrible WCW President, the nature boy was now in WWF, WrestleMania 8 was the first Mania with both men on payroll, they were in the same building! Did they wrestle for the championship? NOPE. Flair fought Savage in the middle of the card and Hogan fought Sid Justice with absolutely nothing on the line! HOW. HOW DID THIS DREAM MATCH NOT HAPPEN. Yes I know, they trialed the match on a house show tour and it wasn’t a huge draw, but, like, as an artifact in wrestling history. To have that match happen at YOUR big show, IN YOUR HOUSE. I just… oh god I just can’t. When Hogan jumped to WCW in 1994, guess the first PPV match he had. Yup, Hogan vs Flair at Bash at the Beach doing one of the largest buyrates in WCW history. Well, that sadness to one side, we should probably talk about Hogan vs Sid because even despite the fact that it wasn’t hogan/flair, it also managed to be s*** all by itself. Slow and clumsy, it featured an infamous botched ending where Papa Shango arrived too late for his scheduled run-in, so Sid had to kick out of the unkickoutable atomic leg drop before a messy and confusing DQ finish. To WrestleMania. The biggest show of the year. The first DQ in WrestleMania main event history, and it was botched. Oh and the Ultimate Warrior returned but just… jesus wept…
mailing list