As humans, we all have off days (except, of course, myself). The only difference is that wrestlers’ mistakes are aired in front of potentially millions of people with discriminatory and expletive remarks fired at them on Twitter. Even the very best wrestler will have unsalvageable matches in which they just cannot sail to shore. This becomes even stranger when some of the greats repeatedly have underwhelming bouts at a specific event. These are some of those fine workers who fumbled things when it came to performances at a certain Pay-Per-View (PPV).
Jake Roberts: WrestleMania
Although he had eight matches at WrestleMania, none of them truly hit the heights that “The Snake” should have done. There are two main types of Roberts ‘Mania encounters, the unrequired and the unfulfilled.
Starting with the unrequired, Jake debuted at WrestleMania II, just weeks after debuting on TV. The newly debuted Roberts beat enhancement talent George Wells in short order in the Nassau Coliseum venue of the PPV (the worst in terms of match content). The next year, he faced The Honky Tonk Man in a mundane and uncared-for match in which the most interesting part was the presence of metal pioneer-turned-oblivious walking meme Ozzy Osbourne. ‘Mania V saw Roberts wrestle André The Giant to a DQ win after “The Eighth Wonder Of The World” assaulted guest referee Big John Studd, with Jake getting little out of the immobile Frenchman. His last match was slightly less irrelevant but he certainly was not the focus as he lost a six-man tag to the newly-formed Camp Cornette.
Now, for the matches that sound great on paper but did not reach their potential at the PPV. WrestleMania IV saw “The Snake” take on “Ravishing” Rick Rude. Although these two great workers should have put on a great show, a lengthy facelock killed the crowd, as did the time limit finish. Similarly, a match with “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase ended disappointingly with a count-out ending. The seventh “Grandaddy Of Them All” saw Roberts taking on another top-level worker when tussling with Rick Martel. However, the storyline saw “The Model” blind Jake, resulting in a Blindfold match in which both men bumbled around the ring like drunk uncles rummaging to find the house keys.
In Roberts’s last match of his first WWF run, he wrestled The Undertaker. A dream match, Roberts would only compete in the match if given his release so was unmotivated in the match. Plus, The Undertaker was in his unfeeling, zombie mode at this point in time, adding a rather soulless energy to the match – and that’s not to mention the tombstone on the outside, in which you could a fit a Land Rover Discovery in the space between Jake’s head and the floor.
I don’t think you could really say Roberts has really had any terrible matches but neither did he have any matches up at the PPV to his great standard of workmanship.
The Undertaker: SummerSlam
The career of The Undertaker may very well be one of the most decorated in the history of professional wrestling but one thing he does not have is a great SummerSlam PPV résumé.
That is not to say every match he has had at the event is a bad one – with matches against Mankind in 1996, Steve Austin in 1998, and Edge in 2008 being PPV particular highlights.
From his first match at the event in 1992 up to his Boiler Room Brawl contest with “Mrs Foley’s Baby Boy”, The Undertaker had a string of truly terrible matches.
His 1992 match against Kamala was best-noted for ‘Taker’s amazing entrance with the match itself lasting just over three minutes and ending in DQ. The next year, he fought Giant Gonzalez in a match better than their WrestleMania IX encounter, although that’s like being the best Sharknado movie! The Undertaker won that one with his patented flying clothesline finisher. 1994 saw him wrestle himself, which is all you have to say really. The Undertaker’s match against The Underfaker (“Prime Time” Brian Lee) was ranked the worst SummerSlam match of all time by a particularly great author at WrestleBuddy who called it a “sub-10-minute match that was such a crime to the eyes it felt much longer”, with the dull affair making a mockery of the brilliant WWF title match that preceded it. The next year he faced mid-card mingler Kama Mustafa in a casket match that nobody cared about.
And that’s not even covering the worst Undertaker matching outside those years. In 2000, he had a surprisingly heatless match against Kane in which it was ruled a no-contest when Kane was unmasked and ran away, which was very Riddler-like. 2001 saw the Brother Of Destruction reunite to obliterate The Alliance’s Diamond Dallas Page and Chris Kanyon in an unsettling foretelling of the lop-sided WWE vs WCW/ECW feud. Of course, who could forget the big-time PPV rematch between The Undertaker and Brock Lesnar, after “The Beast Incarnate” had ended the streak, ending with a bit of admin error from a naughty timekeeper.
These poor performances cannot be put down to ‘Taker but rather his inferior opponents or more commonly, bad booking. There is a reason he is synonymous with WrestleMania, not SummerSlam.
CM Punk: Hell In A Cell
There’s only so much “The Best In The World” can pull off.
2009 saw the first Hell In A Cell PPV, already problematic as it was worried that the creation of such an event would undermine and trivial a match stipulation whose employment should have only been utilized for the most deadly and personal feuds. Anyway, The Undertaker squashed the young World Heavyweight champion Punk at the event, beating him in 10 minutes to win the belt in a one-sided encounter. ‘Taker was reportedly peeved at a perceived Punk jibe after “The Dead Man” chastised the C-to-the-M for not dressing like a champion.
The next year, Punk competed in a three-way HIAC match against John Cena and Alberto Del Rio for the WWE title. The best Punk match at the event, it was good albeit forgettable for a Cell match, ranking in the bottom half of the 40 rated Hell In A Cell matches on Cagematch at #24.
In 2012, the WWE booked themselves into a corner when WWE champion CM Punk took on the yet-to-be-beaten Ryback. Punk retained in a lackluster, prolonged affair when winning after aid from rogue klutz referee Brad Maddox. At the next year’s PPV, a rematch took place, only with a sprinkling of a love triangle as both men had switched heel/face roles, cattily fighting over ex-lover Paul Heyman. Punk hit Heyman with a GTS on top of the cell afterward, which was the most notable part of the match.
The Midnight Express: Starrcade
Starrcade 1985 was the debut Starrcade outing for The Midnight Express. In this match, in short order, the duo won an Atlanta Street Fight over the ‘street people’ team of Jimmy “Boogie Woogie” Valiant and Miss Atlanta Lively. Miss Atlanta Lively was future NWA champion Ronnie Garvin in drag, why? Garvin himself has said it was his idea and put it down to “show business”. The unconventional duo beat Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton, before pantsing Jim Cornette – who was wearing comedy undergarments with love hearts on. An absurd comedy bout, the brawl was quite fun but too brief…and just bizarre.
1986’s installment was titled around “Beautiful” Bobby and “Loverboy” Condrey’s clash with The Road Warriors in the Skywalkers match. Suspended 20 feet above the ring on a thin scaffold, although these teams could have produced a good match, any attempted movements were limited. After several minutes of unremarkable strikes – and exclusively strikes – The Midnights were knocked off. Most famously, manager Jim Cornette was then chased up, falling off and totally cocking up the landing, landing on his leg-breaking a knee bone, tearing all the ligaments, and destroying the cartilage in his knee.
The next year, The Midnights – this time with Stan Lane – took on classic rivals The Rock’n’Roll Express in another Skywalkers match. It lasted a bit longer than the first Skywalkers match but even the more mobile and technically sound Morton and Gibson could not get much out of the hindering match type. No bit spot could take place, the likes of which occurred last year but The RNRs did give some comeuppance to manager Big Bubba Rogers. They hit Rogers in the mid-section with Cornette’s racket and just left him there, which felt a bit anti-climactic but the lack of a huge bump was understandable. Bubba left the NWA soon after, with this spot where he was required to take this risk being a contributing factor; he became Big Boss Man in the WWF. So overall, not a successful match by any stretch of the imagination.
By 1988, the duo was relegated to a dark match battle royal.
Sting: Halloween Havoc
Sting’s woeful Halloween Havoc history can be put largely put down to poor booking. To cover just some, we will only mention the significant failures.
The very first HH event in 1989 had a brilliant on-paper main event as Sting and Ric Flair battled Terry Funk and The Great Muta, with guest referee Bruno Sammartino. Unfortunately, the Thunderdome cage flopped. Although promised to be electrified, it was not, a prime example of over promising and underdelivering.
The main event next year saw Sting beat Sid after a confusing twist. Sid pinned ‘Sting’, who turned out to be Barry Windham dressed up as the face-painted surfer, why? Doesn’t matter. Maybe Sid should have questioned the few feet “The Stinger” had suddenly put on.
1991’s Havoc’s opening saw Sting – as well as many other talents such as The Diamond Studd (Scott Hall), Cactus Jack, Vader, and others – compete in the one and only Chamber Of Horrors match. You had to try to electrify someone to win the match, no further detail is needed.
1992 saw Sting face the newly-debuted Jake “The Snake” Roberts in his only WCW PPV match. In an apparently unrigged ‘’Spin The Wheel, Make The Deal’ roulette to decide the match stipulation, it was decided the duo would face off in a Coal Miner’s Glove match. They pulled something together from a mysterious match stipulation but it was not good, as Eric Bischoff commented: “I felt the same way in 1992 that you did about a Coal Miner’s Glove Match…..what the fuck is that? What makes it so interesting? No story, no buildup – just a gimmick match for the sake of a gimmick match.”
1998 saw a potential dream match between Sting and Bret Hart marred a ton of shenanigans after a referee bump, taking away from what could have been much better.
1999 saw Sting face Goldberg in a main event billed not as a world title match. Goldberg won and despite it being non-title, Goldberg won the belt. Sting’s title was regifted but this regifting was annulled as Sting had attacked a referee.
2000 too featured a Jeff Jarrett match completely shambolic as the biggest part of the bout was a series of faux Sting ‘lookalike’ dressed up in different iterations of the character. Classic shambolic Russo BS booking here.
As Brian Zane of Wrestling With Wregret once highlighted, Sting had to put up with a lot of crap in WCW and it didn’t get much better in TNA, and it didn’t get much better in WWE.
Taz at ECW’s CyberSlam
Taz’s record at Cyberslam is not terrible but it does not stand up to scrutiny as well as Taz’s other PPV records.
Taz’s best match was an ECW title match against Chris Candido. Held under hardcore rules at the 1999 installment, the end was questionable with a kayfabe neck injury being conducted with extreme seriousness by Joey Styles. The result was never really in question and as Peter Kent of 411Mania commented: “If this match was clipped it would have been entertaining, but then, so would almost any match.”
The 2000 iteration of the PPV saw Taz’s second-best match, a short match when the then-WWE-hired Taz lost his ECW title to Tommy Dreamer in five minutes. It was feel good for Dreamer but even this is lost when you find out “The Innovator Of Violence” never wanted to win the ECW belt. He lost it to Credible minutes later, making Taz little more than a side character in his departing moment.
Taz’s first three CyberSlam matches all were too short to really produce anything of note. In these he beat Joel Hartgood, Little Guido on night one and Tracy Smother on night two, and Brakkus – all of which were under five minutes. These at least fitted Taz’s modus operandi of short squash matches. None of these PPV bouts were bad per se but you can only get so much out of the same match pattern: brief and dominant.
Jerry Lawler: King Of The Ring
Considering his “The King” moniker, it makes sense that Lawler has had so many matches at the King Of The Ring events.
Lawler’s first match at the PPV was in 1994 when he took on “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in the main event. Despite being great talkers, the match was poor. The finish involved some random Roddy Piper fan, a badly-executed back suplex, and an awkward pin. As Bruce Prichard put it: “I thought that they would…tear it down in an old school way and instead it was just kind of old.” It headlined over the KOTR tournament because who cares about it anyway, nobody could ever make a PPV around that premise(!)
The next year, he wrestled Bret Hart in a Kiss My Foot match, after which “The King” ended up with a “Hitman”’s hoof shoved down his throat. It really speaks volumes about the state of the WWF at the time that this was the best match of the card, even in spite of the bizarre stipulation.
During The Ultimate Warrior’s 1996 return, he feuded with Lawler. After the build-up largely surrounded by Warrior’s magazine and university, the two-faced off at KOTR. The Memphis legend got in pretty much all the offense, about 90% of which was chokeholds. Warrior even got up from a piledriver before Jerry did. UW won with a running shoulder block – he could not be bothered to even do a Warrior Splash. Oof, bad.
1997 saw Mankind face Lawler in the KOTR semi-final. Foley did all he could to get the PPV match over with unnecessary bumps but the result was forthcoming and the match had no backstory so the crowd just did not care.
“The King Of Memphis”’s final PPV match contribution to the event was in 1999 when he refereed a tag match pitting his son Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor (Too Much, who would later become Too Cool) against Al Snow and Head. Lawler counted the pin when Christopher pinned Head using a bottle of Head & Shoulders so the future Grandmaster Sexay pinned the ‘shoulders’. It is about as good as it sounds.
Randy Savage: Uncensored
There is little doubt that “Macho Man” is one of the best to ever lace up a pair of boots but Uncensored lacked pomp and circumstance in terms of match quality. Despite standing across the ring from great workers like John Tenta, Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Kevin Sullivan, Chris Benoit, The Giant, Roddy Piper, and Lex Luger – Savage lacks a good bout at the event.
Working backwards, Randy’s last match at the PPV was in 1998. Rated –1 and ½ stars by Dave Meltzer, this was a very one-dimension cage match. Slow and plodding, it was further ruined by a nonsensical finish. Everyone’s favorite main eventer The Disciple (Brutus Beefcake) got involved and caused a no contest result. Savage was saved from the two-on-one beatdown by Sting who “Macho Man” assaulted and walked off, not aligning with Hogan. Not even the world title match, it main evented over Sting vs Scott Hall. As Wrestling Classic Reviews’ Paul Matthews summed it up, “This wasn’t good. It was mindless brawling and had no finish. The action was punching, whipping, and ramming each other into the cage. It wasn’t interesting. Then the non-finish killed it. What a disappointing main event.”
The previous year, Savage was in cahoots with Hogan in the nWo. In an 11-man four-on-four-on-three WarGames match, the faction fought Team WCW and Team Piper in a needlessly overcomplicated bout that very much took away from the WarGames premise – each team had something on the line if they won. Messy and disorganized, Savage himself played a small role in the match, not scoring any eliminations until the first one from his team out after a Lex Luger Torture Rack. Although WarGames matches are enjoyable, this one was proof that if a concept is not broken, do not fix it and ranks in the lower echelon of WarGames bouts.
1996’s PPV match was a comic spectacle. In this, Hogan and Savage teamed up to defeat eight other men in a Doomsday cage. The two best workers – Ric Flair and Arn Anderson – were dealt with early and even then limited in the match’s format to simple strikes. In addition, the match featured powder and frying pans as weaponry as if it was a deleted scene from a 1960s episode of Batman. Most confusingly, despite featuring immobile and one-time workers like Z-Gangsta (Zeus) and The Ultimate Solution (previously The Final Solution), it ended after pinning Ric Flair: the then-world champion. Guys, you had seven other blokes to protect the face of your company. Utterly preposterous.
The first event in 1995 pitted Savage against Avalanche. Although both were strong workers in their own right, the action moved at a lumbering pace. As the solo PPV debut of Savage, this really was not the way to kick off his career in WCW. Like in the aforementioned Hogan match, despite being at Uncensored and in a No Rules match, the match was ruled a DQ after interference. That said, we got to see Ric Flair in drag so it was not a lost cause.
Bray Wyatt: Survivor Series
On paper Bray Wyatt’s Survivor Series history looks great but is contrary to Wyatt’s character.
After being a manager for Harper and Rowan the previous year, 2014 was Wyatt’s in-ring debut. In a good match, he faced Dean Ambrose. Unfortunately, the WWE went into one of their many toxic traits and the finish was a lame DQ. Imagine paying to see a match at a big four event only for a BS finish to prolong a feud to the next event. At least this was a chair shot and not a rouge exploding monitor!
There can be little argument that 2015’s Survivor Series PPV is one of the worst PPVs of the past decade (unless it is more of a decade, of course). At this, The Undertaker and Kane trounced Wyatt and Harper as well as the Wyatt Family as a whole at the event marking 25 years since “The Dead Man”’s debut. Although a nice nostalgia bit for ‘Taker, Dylan Diot from 411Mania highlights: “Unfortunately, it was done at the expense of the Wyatts who are pretty much dead as a dangerous faction and join the growing list of roster members who are dead in the water right now” and TheSportster’s Michael De Sua commented, “it’s frustrating to see Wyatt lose every single feud he’s in.”
Survivor Series 2016’s men’s Raw vs SmackDown match was very good for Wyatt. Yet it does raise the question as to why cult leader Wyatt would work alongside enemies for the justification of corporate brand warfare. This illustrates a bigger issue in WWE in which wrestlers abandon any grudges for the sake of a coloured shirt.
After failing to make the event in 2017 and 2018, Wyatt returned in 2019. This time, Wyatt was the Universal champion. Despite being widely praised for his The Fiend persona, Bray had lost notable moment after a problematic rivalry with Seth Rollins and by SS had not regained the lost steam. The 2019 Survivor Series match with Bryan was good but did not help The Fiend character recover, with a better match between the duo taking place at 2020’s Royal Rumble.
Arn Anderson: The Great American Bash
“The Enforcer”’s Bash history is something he should be bashful about, especially after I’m about to bash his records at the event.
After debuting at the event during the inaugural 1985 Supercard, Arn had a number of good matches, largely alongside Minnesota Wrecking Crew partner Ole. This peaked in multiple highly-regarded WarGames matches. Arn continued having good to great matches under the NWA banner but when WCW took over, things plummeted downhill.
After a WWF stint, he returned in 1990 for a wasted match for someone of his talents. In this, he, Barry Windham, and Sid of The Horsemen lost to the out-of-date alliance of Paul Orndorff and Junkyard Dog as well as a debuting El Gigante. JYD weirdly no-sold anything and the match ended with a Horsemen loss via DQ. At the time too fans would have been disappointed the newly-arrived Gigante did not get involved but perhaps this was a blessing in hindsight.
At the terrible 1991 Great American Bash, Arn Anderson main evented in an undeserving handicap where he and Paul E. Dangerously lost to Rick Steiner. Missy Hyatt was supposed to have been in the match but was not allowed to after the ruling by The Athletics Commission.
1995 saw Arn lose his TV title to The Renegade. Perhaps the worst match of Arn’s career, The Renegade won with a diving splash in a match filled with moves and moments that highlight just how green Renegade was. Unbelievable booking choice to have Arn lose his mid-card belt to someone Anderson had to do 80% of the work for. Anderson carried it the best he could but you can only do so much against a worker as lousy as The Ultimate Warrior impersonator.
1996 saw Arn and Ric Flair of The Four Horsemen carry American football stars Steve “Mongo” McMichael and Kevin Greene to a good match. Imaginably, the talent was one-sided from The Horsemen. It was good for what it was but felt unfitting for two stars of the caliber of Anderson and “The Nature Boy”. Afterwards, McMichael joined the duo’s stable, becoming perhaps the worst member of the group.
Arn’s history at the event is a story of two halves. The early NWA work was good, as well as the tag match in 1996 in which Arn and Flair beat the footballers in a good bout. Yet despite this, the worse matches stand out and people more often remember the bad stuff over the good stuff. This makes sense as the bad was really bad or pointless.
Epilogue
Every and any good wrestler will have a bad match. Yet to make it a common trait per event is something worth noting. As established, it is not often the wrestler’s own fault as it can be down to the opponent, booking, or an additional external factor. These wrestlers have managed to repeat the feat of a rare bad match each time they compete, which just illustrates how not even the best can always have top-tier matches. Oscar Wilde probably put it best: “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes”.