10 No-Win WWE Situations

From the outside looking in, booking a wrestling show seems pretty straightforward. You just need to identify which guys the crowd like and don't like, and have them do face and heel things respectively. Throw in a few gags about Fruity Pebbles, and you're good to go.

Watch WWE for over a period of two or three weeks, however, and your impression might change. The company is forever booking itself into a corner, making matches and storylines from which there is no possible outcome that wouldn't risk upsetting a large section of the fanbase.

In a way, we're as much to blame for this sorry state of affairs as they are. Many of us actually derive a perverse sense of pleasure from complaining about WWE decisions - even when they decide to do exactly the thing that we were screaming for a couple of years earlier. In this climate, it's little wonder that Vince McMahon and co keep finding themselves in situations like these.

They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't...

In today's WWE landscape, virtually any match contested by Brock Lesnar and the latest man thrust into his war-path is a no-win situation. They either beat him, and face the attendant pressures that come with it, or get destroyed in six minutes.

Given that, the announcement back in October that Jinder Mahal would be stepping in the ring with the Beast Incarnate as part of an inter-promotional champion versus champion match raised a lot of eyebrows.

Seriously, what was the plan here? The Modern Day Maharaja picking up the win simply wouldn't have been believable; Lesnar doing his usual thing would have smashed the last vestiges of credibility of the WWE Championship to pieces; and a screwy, DQ finish would have just upset the fans.

We would later learn that they didn't really have a plan at all (or, if they did, someone important got cold feet on it). Jinder was taken out of the match at the very last-second, replaced by AJ Styles, who would go onto share one of the matches of the year in his place.