10 Stupidest Decisions By WWE In 2007

The year Vince McMahon's house of cards nearly came tumbling down.

Vince McMahon Rosie Odonnell
WWE.com

WWE in the year 2007 is, regrettably, synonymous with one thing and one thing only. While it was certainly a very newsworthy year, with hirings, firings, suspensions, major injuries and just about everything else you'd expect from the company, nothing was talked about as much as the Benoit family tragedy.

How WWE reacted to the tragedy and the fallout after the horrific facts came to light would be widely-scrutinised. WWE were in an unenviable position in the aftermath of the double-murder suicide, but they still made some major and avoidable mistakes, including one directly after the news broke.

When WWE weren't fielding questions about what caused one of their most respected superstars to turn into - to quote Vince McMahon himself - a 'monster', they were bungling pushes and storylines and allowing locker room leaders to go and work for the competition.

It was a tumultuous year for sure, mixed with overwhelming success (such as the record-setting buyrate for WrestleMania 23) and abject failure (a certain seven-foot-tall giant as World Heavyweight Champion). WWE were faced with making many decisions and they didn't always make the right one.

The following are the ten stupidest they made during this topsy-turvy year.

10. Letting Rob Van Dam And Booker T Go

Vince McMahon Rosie Odonnell
WWE.com

Former World Tag Team Championship partners Rob Van Dam and Booker T both reached the summit of WWE in 2006. RVD won the WWE and ECW Titles from John Cena in an ultra-heated match at One Night Stand on June 11th, and then a little over a month later 'King' Booker upended Rey Mysterio at the Great American Bash to become WWE World Heavyweight Champion for the first time.

It had long been felt by fans and those in the industry that both performers had been held down somewhat since their arrival in the summer of 2001. While they intermittently received chances in the main events, they were never fixtures. Van Dam and Booker T both felt as though they were deserving of opportunities but it took them a long time to properly materialise.

Come the summer of 2007, both were feeling disgruntled and wanted to leave. Booker was no longer champion and was engaged in meandering midcard feuds with the likes of Jerry Lawler. He'd been contemplating retirement from in-ring action for a while but two incidents convinced him to part ways with the company.

First was his crushing, sub-seven minute loss to Triple H at SummerSlam. In The Game's comeback match (he'd been out for most of the year recovering from a torn quadriceps muscle), King Booker wasn't given much offense and was put away far too easily. Then, just a couple of weeks later, he was informed that he had failed WWE's Wellness Policy (he was named in the Signature Pharmacy scandal) and would be suspended for sixty days.

Unhappy with his position and feeling well and truly worn out, Booker decided to walk instead.

Van Dam, meanwhile, had been feeling the grind of the road for a while. Way past the point of being passionate about the business, Van Dam's woes were compounded when he was demoted down the card in the wake of his high-profile highway drug bust in July 2006. Tired, beat up and realising that he had probably peaked in WWE, Van Dam told officials that he would not be renewing his contract when it expired in June of that year.

His last night with the company was the One Night Stand pay-per-view. Although he was victorious against Randy Orton in their Stretcher Match, he was viciously attacked in the post-match and written out of storylines for good.

Both Booker and RVD were two of WWE's most dependable and over talents. The well-travelled veterans always provoked a reaction and could be relied upon to have a good match. WWE did themselves a disservice by not doing more to convince them to stay.

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Contributor

Student of film. Former professional wrestler. Supporter of Newcastle United. Don't cry for me, I'm already dead...