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WORST MAIN EVENT ENDINGS

8K views 66 replies 54 participants last post by  Crazy Jim Films 
#1 · (Edited)
There is no doubt that last night's Hell in a Cell's Main Event will go down as one of the absolute WORST endings to a Main Event and match. Below are some of the worst I can recall off the top of my head (NOT IN ANY ORDER). What are some of the worst you can remember??

WRESTLEMANIA 2000 (16):

Triple H retains in the Fatal 4 Way. Rock should have gone over or if you were going to do the big Backlash with Rock, HHH and Austin, Foley should have won and Rock and HHH at Backlash should have been a tournament final!

WRESTLEMANIA 9:

Yokozuna beats Bret and Hogan beats Yoko for the belt in an impromptu challenge! IMO, should have been Hogan or Randy Savage putting over Bret here.

WRESTLEMANIA 25:

Triple H went over Randy Orton...terrible! Say what you want about him now, but from late 2008-mid 2009, Orton was the hottest thing in Wrestling. BUT, after all the involvement of Legacy and The McMahons, they had a snoozer of a Main Event (which I literally snoozed through) and THE WRONG GUY WON!!!

BATTLEGROUND 2013:

Daniel Bryan vs. Randy Orton....for the vacant WWE title: we must have a winner, BUT, there was no winner as Big Show interfered and destroyed the match. At least when Undertaker vs. Kane fought for the vacant WWF title, we got the infamous Stone Cold kidnaps Vince angle the next night on RAW where Vince famously pissed his pants as Austin shot him with a toy gun. The YES Movement was in full swing, but people wanted a winner here!

STARRCADE 1997:

Right guy won...BUT, there was no fast count, so, why did the match need to be restarted again??? They had an out that they could have used as Hogan grabbed the tights, but they were too incompetent to pivot. Also, how could Bret name himself a referee????

SUMMERSLAM 2015:

Undertaker taps out, bell rings, but ref does not see it and chokes Brock out for the win. Undertaker was legit enough to get a win here so why do the screwy finish???

SURVIVOR SERIES 1997:

The infamous Montreal Screwjob! Nothing more to say that hasn't been said or written over the last 22 years!
 
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#50 · (Edited)
Summerslam 2003 Elimination Chamber: Goldberg should've won the match, there is no ifs and buts about it. He came out and destroyed everyone and crowd was going crazy...HHH literally stayed in his chamber for 40mins, until Goldberg dragged him out, hit him with a couple of rights threw him in the ring, charged for the spear, HHH countered it with the hammer to the head and pinned him. That was one of the biggest BS I've ever seen.

WM 2000: refer to the OP.

KOTR 2000: After two years of feud over the WWE title, Rock/HHH finally ended with....Rock pinning Vince in a 6 man tag match.
 
#55 ·
Summerslam 2003 Elimination Chamber: Goldberg should've won the match, there is no ifs and buts about it. He came out and destroyed everyone and crowd was going crazy...HHH literally stayed in his chamber for 40mins, until Goldberg dragged him out, hit him with a couple of rights threw him in the ring, charged for the spear, HHH countered it with the hammer to the head and pinned him. That was one of the biggest BS I've ever seen.
Oh my god yes. That's easily one of the worst Hunter's Reign Of Terror booking decisions. There's no defending HHH on that one.

Goldberg looked like a million dollars in that match, a match tailor match for him, and HHH squashed him because The Game has to kill everyone from WCW.
 
#52 ·
in terms of sheer lack of quality probably wm32. just such a flat boring ending to an already boring card. at least in wm18 and 25, HHH had the excuse of having to follow great matches. not that time.

in terms of just screwjob/LOLWWE stuff, hell in a cell 2011 with awesome truth (yes, they really tried to push the miz and r truth as a main event heel faction) interfering and getting arrested.
 
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#67 ·
I will argue that the show itself was amazing enough and that there was enough momentum that this didn't quite feel like the trainwreck it became in hindsight on the day. The ultimate problem was they had nowhere to go with it.

Surprised, nobody ever mentioned the clusterfuck that was the Extreme Chamber at December to Dismember.
 
#12 ·
I’m surprised to see some of the entries on this list.
Wrestlemania 2000’s main event was great for the mere reason that it made The Rock’s prevailance at Backlash all the more sweeter. Nobody expects the heel to win at Wrestlemania and it was done for the first time in history, and if you’ll look at the crowd reaction after Triple h’s win they were bummed the fuck out and some of them were throwing trash, that’s great heel heat. Besides, the whole “baby face walking out with the title” at WM is such a kayfabe stigma that some internet fans take way too seriously just to compare big wins and losses between their favourites, a sort of “mark war” - generally speaking - to see who is more favourited by the company and thus who is more valuable, which in itself is a ludicrous idea, if anything it shows that the smart marks aren’t that smart as they are falling within WWE’s grasps just like any other fan .. In retrospect it didn’t damage The Rock’s credentials at all, in fact It made him look more like a fighting champion, more adored by the fans, and by the next year or two became above any world title. IMO Backlash 2000 is probably the ultimate babyface win of all time especially when it comes to execution.

Wrestlemania 9 all you need to do is look at the crowd pop when Hogan won, one of the loudest pops of the New Generation time and it was in an open arena.. it’s the surprise win which came out of the blue that made it magical. It’s one of the fun elements in wrestling that is seldom used nowadays or has been branded

The Montreal Screwjob is a tricky one here, it was very sour and confusing when it happened, but that finish generated such a wave that it made wrestling catch fire for the following years. WWE caught lightning in a bottle with the blowback of that finish so me personally I wouldn’t call it the worst main event of all time knowing what followed.
 
#16 ·
I don't dislike Hogan, but I have to agree with Wrestlemania 9 being among the worst finishes ever.
And no, I don't care that casual fans loved it - that only proves to me that those "fans" never actually gave a crap about wrestling and only wanted a nostalgia pop. Bret was the face of the company, he had busted his ass despite having next to no viable competition, and they basically Kofi'd him.

A smaller, smarter wrestler defying the odds and defeating a huge monster is a timeless story. But no, they had to have Hulk out there because a bunch of idiot "fans" couldn't move with the times and wanted their childhoods validated.
 
#19 ·
I don't dislike Hogan, but I have to agree with Wrestlemania 9 being among the worst finishes ever.
And no, I don't care that casual fans loved it - that only proves to me that those "fans" never actually gave a crap about wrestling and only wanted a nostalgia pop. Bret was the face of the company, he had busted his ass despite having next to no viable competition, and they basically Kofi'd him.

A smaller, smarter wrestler defying the odds and defeating a huge monster is a timeless story. But no, they had to have Hulk out there because a bunch of idiot "fans" couldn't move with the times and wanted their childhoods validated.
You mean to tell me that popping because their favorite wrestler won, doesn't make them real fans and makes them idiots? What an elitist statement

I can't imagine being a wrestling fan means that you should care about other wrestlers over your favorite simply because they're younger or do more moves, that's not being a real fan, that's being a mark.
 
#26 ·
Even considering recency bias, Rollins/Fiend has to be up there.

Survivor Series '97 doesn't really count because of the extenuating circumstances.

WrestleMania 2000 was bad but not awful, since it opened up the possibility of WrestleMania ending with a heel victory, which was a smart precedent to set, and plus Rock won the belt a few weeks later anyway.

The Bryan/Orton match from Battleground was frustrating but made sense in the larger context of their story, so I wasn't all that mad at it.

To be on the level of HIAC 2019, we have to find main event matches that killed multiple characters, defied the internal logic of WWE storytelling, and openly spit in the face of the audience.

With that in mind, the best answers are WrestleMania IX and Royal Rumble 2015.
 
#31 ·
WM 9 was awesome. Don't care what anyone thinks. The crowd loved it. It wasn't a "nostalgia" thing because Hogan had all but headlined the first 8 manias, and this was only the 9th.

Now if you want to talk about what happened after that and how Bret\Hogan never happened, then sure, that is disappointing and a big torch passing missed opportunity. If Bret\Hogan happened at Summerslam and Bret goes over, then I doubt people would be bitching about WM9 today. I was a massive Hulkamaniac as a kid (still am) but you could see his time was coming to an end and Bret brought something different to the table and was going to be the "cool" face of the 90s. I would have been all for Bret going over.
 
#38 ·
Bray Wyatt VS Dean Ambrose: TLC 2014. When we hoped a great ending for this rivalry... pfffft... Ambrose wanted to tablet shot Wyatt but the device was wired and that provoked an explosive. That costed the fight. Awful!

WrestleMania 29: Was "Twice in a lifetime" between Cena and The Rock necessary? Was necessary The Rock winning the WWE Championship at RR to build the road to WrestleMania selling us the 16th Cena's maximum championship reign?
 
#39 · (Edited)
Uncensored 1999 - Hogan vs Flair in a Barbed Wire First Blood Steel Cage Match.

The only way to win is by making your opponent bleed. Nevermind pinfalls also count. Nevermind no they don't. Nevermind you have to bleed profusely not just a little. Nevermind you are both bleeding profusely so pinfalls count again.

Turns out it was supposed to be a double turn and a referee heel turn. But the crowd loved Ric Flair. His heel son tried to screw him out of winning but also heel Arn Anderson helped him win by pinfall. Such a confusing mess to watch in real time.

Anybody who blames Russo for WCW's demise can watch this and see what a mess the booking was before he ever arrived.
 
#40 ·
Uncensored 1999 - Hogan vs Flair in a Barbed Wire First Blood Steel Cage Match.

The only way to win is by making your opponent bleed. Nevermind pinfalls also count. Nevermind no they don't. Nevermind you have to bleed profusely not just a little. Nevermind you are both bleeding profusely so pinfalls count again.

Turns out it was supposed to be a double turn and a referee heel turn. But the crowd loved Ric Flair. His heel son tried to screw him out of winning but also heel Arn Anderson helped him win by pinfall. Such a confusing mess to watch in real time.

Anybody who blames Russo for WCW's demise can watch this and see what a mess the booking was before he ever arrived.
This has Sullivan written all over it.
 
#49 ·
Wrestemania 32 main event: Roman Reigns vs Triple H

Garbage main event which was boo'd the entirety of the match.

IMO the main event really should've been a fatal 4 way between Ambrose, Lesnar, Reigns and HHH.

Considering the fact that Ambrose was eliminated by HHH in the Rumble and the fact that Lesnar lost the title due to a cash in + wasn't pinned in Reigns #1 contender match, to me the story seemed to have written itself.

Having Ambrose win vs HHH at the Network special would've perfectly set it up.
 
#53 · (Edited)
another one (not a main event but a wwe title match) is EC 2010. cena wins (as always) and he, for no reason, has to face Batista. this was done solely to make cena a sympathetic 'underdog' face even though we had just endured several years of him steamrolling the entire roster. no one bought it. at least at NYR 06 they had the storyline reason of the MITB cash in. there was no reason given for batista's match.
 
#62 ·
I'm gonna go with one, that doesn't get talked about regularly, however with other matches, this is one of the WORST MAIN EVENTS !!!

John Cena/Dolph Ziggler vs Kane/King Barnett from Beast In The East .

Now this match had zero build to it, and was on the same card that featured Finn Balor winning his first N.X.T. Title in Japan, where he was most famous. In addition to that, also features Brock Lesnar facing Kofi, now this P.P.V. was seemingly named after Brock, as hes the Beast.
 
#63 ·
I forgot about this as it goes a bit back.
Clash of Champions I- Sting vs Flair- they said before the match there had to be a winner and they had these judges as well. The match went the time limit so it came down to the judges. One voted for Sting, one voted for Flair and one voted for...a draw. So it ended up being a draw even though they said there must be a winner..lol.
 
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