All things considered, it’s been a pretty good stretch for WWE. The brand split has worked out solidly for the most part. AJ Styles has gone to the top of the card at almost a record pace, and there truly have been a ton of truly good matches as well. And hey, we should do a list of those.
Most of the time, pay-per-view matches seem to work out perfectly fine. But after all, how can you do a list of something truly good, unless you compare it to something truly bad? And there are a select handful of matches that have endings that are so egregiously bad, it ruins a perfectly good match. Here are just the top 10 in recent memory.
10: Charlotte vs. Natalya: Payback 2016: At Wrestlemania 32 a month earlier, Charlotte, Becky Lynch, and Sasha Banks put on arguably the best match of the night in a triple threat match for the Divas Championship (which would be replaced by the rebooted Women’s Championship) which Charlotte won. Her first defense of the new title was at Payback. Nobody remembers anything about this match other than the ending. Towards the end, Charlotte locked Natalya in a sharpshooter submission hold, and referee Charles Robinson rang the bell even though Natalya even though didn’t tap. Why? Because Bret Hart was there, and they just couldn’t resist one last reminder of the Montreal Screwjob. In any case, commentator Michael Cole showed some outrage as everyone else in the Chicago crowd showed genuine rage that WWE had shelled out one of the worst finishes of the year in exchange for people’s ticket money.
9: Dean Ambrose vs. Dolph Ziggler: Summerslam 2016: Some of the matches on this list are on here for different reasons. Some because the in-ring chemistry was poor, and some because it had such great promise but inevitably floundered. The brand split had happened, Dean Ambrose was WWE Champion, and Dolph Ziggler was the number one contender surprisingly. Neither one was truly a true main eventer just yet, and with the WWE Championship on the line, this was a golden opportunity for both to shine. But… it didn’t really work. The in-ring chemistry was poor, and the tempo of the match never progressed from a slow start. It felt nothing like a WWE Championship match should be like, and by the end of the night, both looked worse than when they first entered.
8: Bayley vs. Dana Brooke: Hell In A Cell 2016: This was a bit of a mess. Bayley is fantastic, but she’s just not at the level where she can carry anyone just yet, and while Dana looks good, she’s only there because she looks like Charlotte’s mini-me. At Hell in a Cell, with a crowd fairly quiet even for Raw, Dana worked Bayley’s arm in the corner for about six boring minutes, and then Bayley hit a Bayley-to-belly suplex, and it was all over.
7: Nia Jax vs. Alicia Fox: Clash of Champions 2016: That’s right, we’re including kickoff matches in this list too! Now in all fairness, it doesn’t seem right to include a kickoff match for being bad, but truly, this was a hot mess. Not only that but what happened defeated its purpose for even existing. Nia was coming into her first pay-per-view after the brand split off a series of squash matches in which she was made to look Awesome Kong dominant. Then, it took her five full minutes to beat Alicia Fox, a woman who’s been seen so infrequently on TV, some are surprised that she’s able to move at all. What was supposed to be a strong showing for Jax came off as poor as all we saw was Fox’s flailing limbs?
6: Shane McMahon vs. The Undertaker: Wrestlemania 32: You know that the Undertaker/Shane McMahon storyline made no sense whatsoever. Shane returned to WWE and wanted to run Raw, but his father, the chairman of WWE, Vincent Kennedy McMahon, said no. Shane was threatening to expose secrets about his father, so he said yes, but you have to beat the Undertaker inside Hell in a Cell at Wrestlemania. That all happened in the same segment in about 15 minutes. Now the match wasn’t that all bad, especially with Shane jumping from the cage, but it lasted 30 minutes. Shane then lost, and then began running Raw anyway! That’s really weird! It’s a bit like stapling five different newspapers together and calling it a book. And since Shane is doing well for himself currently as the commissioner of SmackDown Live, it’s something he doesn’t exactly want to remember.
5: The Ambrose Asylum Match: Extreme Rules 2016: The match was set for disaster as soon as we saw a potted plant hanging from the top of the cage. Chris Jericho was feuding with Dean Ambrose (second appearance on this list), so it only made sense that Ambrose created the match. It could have been good, and it’s not that often that we see a thumbtack spot ever since Orton had some sticking out of his fingers, especially because he and Ambrose were mainly feuding over a jacket. But the pace was ruined every time they had to reach up to the top of the cage to grab a new weapon. And the sight of Jericho with thumbtacks sticking out of his fingers can’t save this match from tried and failed gimmicks.
4: The Miz vs. Darren Young: Battleground 2016: This ending to this match was really weird. So weird actually, some people have conferred with a number of other referees, bookers, and scientists to try and exactly figure out what went wrong. Young had a tiny bit of momentum from lucking his way to Intercontinental title shot and a win over Alberto Del Rio on Raw, with Bob Backlund in his corner during “Make Darren Young Great Again.†So here’s what we actually know what happened: Miz was trying to leave, but Backlund was in his way. Then while Miz and Young fought, Maryse (Miz’ wife) slapped him and pretended to fall down. Backland tried to take off his shirt, but that didn’t really work. Miz then pushed Backlund over, and Young, furious over this, put him in a submission hold, and then referee John Cone called for the bell.
Now… why? At no point did either Maryse or Backland interfere in the match, and the submission hold was on for about five or ten seconds. Many people just didn’t get it. It was so bad and confusing, that again, match ruined.
3: AJ Styles vs. Dean Ambrose: Tables, Ladders, and Chairs 2016: James Ellsworth is unlike any WWE Superstar that we’ve come across in recent memory. He’s bad on purpose, and he’s the total opposite of what WWE is looking for in their superstars. That being said, Ellsworth, who thanks to Dean Ambrose has three wins against AJ Styles, screwed him over for Styles to win the WWE Championship. This heel turn made absolutely no sense. And also, it’s a little insulting to Styles, who is one of the top stars in the company and also won against John Cena clean at Summerslam. Thankfully, Styles has moved on to bigger and better things, and Ellsworth is also doing
much better things now.
2: Roman Reigns vs. The Undertaker: WrestleMania 33: 23 minutes. That’s how long it took Roman Reigns to win against the Undertaker before a crowd who were ready to burn him alive. Vince McMahon clearly doesn’t get the message that sorry, we’re just not interested in that big dog you keep bringing to shows.
Also, this another Undertaker storyline that didn’t really make any sense. Reigns eliminated the Undertaker from the Royal Rumble, and that’s the only thing we have to go on for this match going on because that’s about the only thing that happened.
Even if nothing else in a Wrestlemania card works, the Main Event has to. It’s the final match in a season finale of WWE’s calendar year. With a right match (I.e: Wrestlemania 20 between Triple H, Shawn Michaels, and Chris Benoit), an ok card can become a classic. With this match, a decent card stings and stings badly.
1: R-Truth vs. Curtis Axel: Fastlane 2016: Here’s a fun fact about Fastlane: On the pre-show, Kalisto faced Alberto Del Rio in a two out of three falls match for the United States Championship. It was actually really good. Why was that on the pre-show you may ask? Well, it was there to make room on the main card for matches like R-Truth vs. Curtis Axel.
What?
When people watched it live, some actually thought that Kevin Dunn and his production team had messed up and accidentally messed up and spliced ten minutes of NXT into the pay-per-view. R-Truth vs. Curtis Axel, unannounced, with no build-up (none whatsoever) on a road to Wrestlemania pay-per-view? Sounds like WWE is occasionally on the FastLane to putting on bundled performances on pay-per-view.
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