Best Of 2019: Worst Match Of The Year
IMG Credit: WWE
This is the last entry in the series and we’re going out with something I think you all can guess pretty easily. More often than not these things are going to stand out rather badly and that was no exception in 2019. Keep in mind that I’m not looking just at the quality of the match. Some of this is going to be based on the way the match was set up/the idea of the whole thing. Sometimes the match just being set up terribly is a lot worse than the match itself being bad, and that was the case this year.
Also note that I’m intentionally ignoring Undertaker vs. Goldberg. Yeah it was bad, but it was bad due to an injury, and I’ve never found it fair to blame a bad match on someone being hurt, especially as badly as Goldberg was knocked out.
Ken Shamrock vs. Joey Ryan (Impact – November 5)
This is one where the match alone taking place is a bad idea. Impact is a promotion that does not have the best reputation in the world and their best move is to bring in Joey Ryan (an idea that is going to turn off a lot of people in the first place) and have him do his shtick on Ken Shamrock? As in the Shamrock who is something close to a legend willing to do something with your company?
It was a bad idea and made the company look like they were going for the fun route instead of trying to build something up. Ryan’s status in Impact (and wrestling) is secured so why waste one of Shamrock’s appearances on him? Just for the joke of having Shamrock take Ryan’s big move? Yeah Shamrock won and everything, but it’s the kind of match that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Becky Lynch/Seth Rollins vs. King Corbin/Lacey Evans (Extreme Rules)
The words to describe this match would be tone deaf. Seth Rollins went from winning the World Title from Brock Lesnar to being Becky Lynch’s boyfriend by the summer. Clad in a “The Man’s Man” shirt, Rollins was in a mixed Extreme Rules match (with tags because reasons) here for both titles against two opponents that no one wanted to see. I can’t imagine a more colossal mixture of everything that could have gone wrong. It just needed one more thing on top of it though.
And then Brock Lesnar cashed in Money in the Bank to become Universal Champion again, because Brock Lesnar must be a World Champion in WWE. This was the culmination of a bunch of bad ideas and it left me never wanting to see anything else on from WWE for at least twenty one hours, because the show must go on. Even if the show comes after a terrible idea for a match.
Shane McMahon vs. Roman Reigns – Super Showdown
This was part of the Summer of Shane, as fans kept sitting around waiting for SOMEONE to stop Shane. Somehow that was the case going into Super Showdown in Saudi Arabia with Shane facing Roman Reigns. There was no way they would do something like this right? I mean, it’s Roman Reigns. This guy beat the Undertaker at Wrestlemania so he had to be able to beat Shane right?
Well of course not, as Shane kicked out of the Superman Punch, blocked the spear, and pinned Reigns in the end (albeit with help from Drew McIntyre). The ending actually made me laugh, because it was clear that WWE was trolling us. That’s all well and good for them, but is it really a good idea to be trolling the fans for about eight months, including on this show that was controversial enough in the first place? They certainly seemed to think so and that’s why we were stuck here.
Those were all bad, but one had me actually ranting and raving at my screen as the match took place.
Seth Rollins vs. The Fiend (Hell In A Cell)
It makes me mad just thinking about it again. I’ve seen a lot of wrestling from a lot of companies and I don’t remember the last time someone came up with such a bad idea this side of Vince Russo. You have an actually interesting character in the Fiend and you put him inside your company’s biggest showdown match (it’s so big that the show is named after it) and….it’s almost some weird performance art thing with the Fiend being down for about half of the match. That’s bad enough, but then there’s the ending.
It’s a DQ (officially a referee stoppage, but it is my experience that a wrestler being told not to do something and then doing it, followed by a bell ringing is a DQ) inside the most dangerous match in wrestling. I won’t go into my full rant again, but the amount of long term damage here is astounding. Why should I care about the Cell again? The whole premise of the match is thrown out the window, likely because WWE didn’t think things far enough ahead. But hey, you can buy it again next year!
On the other side of things, yeah the Fiend recovered but the point is he shouldn’t have had to recover from this because it shouldn’t have happened. This is one of the only times I can remember when it felt like WWE took my money and laughed at me for it. That’s not why I’m a wrestling fan and I should never feel that way.
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