10 Terrible WWE Main Events One Tweak Away From Excellence
"Worst pro wrestling on the planet. Period." But it didn't have to be...
At WWE's second Crown Jewel event in October 2019, Seth Rollins lost his once-beloved Universal Championship to The Fiend Bray Wyatt.
'Monday Night Rollins' had given so much of himself to winning that red strap (twice) in 2019 for the good of the flagship that he had nothing left. And not in the weird, unhinged breathy way he described his circumstances ahead of defeating Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam. Pfft, he wishes. No, in the way that he's now just the latest top babyface to be booed out of buildings, to be pillioried on Twitter for leaping to the defence of an organisation that simply doesn't warrant it, and to have his back catalogue reframed based on several years of matches not quite on the level of the ones he had before an 2015 injury suffered by the same road rigours he wanted desperately to return to.
Like many of his 2019 clashes, the loss to The Fiend was another disappointment - but at least it yielded the right result. It subsequently won't ever be considered terrible, even though it was destined to be graded on perhaps the shallowest curve in company history too. Just weeks earlier, the pair had assembled a catastrophe so rotten it will almost certainly outlive them both.
10. Seth Rollins Vs The Fiend (Hell In A Cell 2019)
Why it's terrible: As a standalone spectacle, the match isn't very good. A lame story presented with fairly lame visuals for an end result that was one of the lamest in WWE history, this would have comfortably failed on its own terms even if it didn't have an awful lot more riding on it.
One Tweak: What else? The Fiend wins the Universal Championship at his first attempt.
Booking WWE is harder than many assume, but this particular decision was a lot easier once they'd actually decided to have the match. The optimists amongst us assumed that the company hadn't booked themselves into a corner, but had in fact just gone all in on a really over character and were going to make him champion. WWE relies on that optimism, regardless of how infrequently its rewarded.
Such was the case when a stoppage was called because The Fiend hadn't moved for a few minutes after potentially having his rubber mask caved in by about six different weapons. Despite the fact that after the controversial call, he moved. As 50/50 as the company had ever booked, this unforgivable finish didn't just play into the hands of those fiercely critical of the company - it armed them with their deadliest new weapon.