10 Worst WWE Booking Decisions Of The 2000s (Year-By-Year)

With the new millennium, WWE made many crucial mistakes when it came to booking.

Rey Mysterio World Heavyweight Champion
WWE.com

The 2000s were an up-and-down period for WWE. Which is to say: they started the decade on an upswing in the greatest wrestling boom in history, and ended as a floundering husk struggling for relevance. That’s not to say WWE ended 2009 in the same state as they were in 1995, but it says a lot that they started the decade as one of the key movers and shakers of culture, and by the end, they were using the likes of Jeremy Piven and Ken Jeong as desperate ploys to boost ratings.

While much could be attributed to WWE’s decline in the 2000s, including WCW and ECW’s collapses within months of each other killing swaths of fan interest, many critics say Vince and co. only have themselves to blame. The key culprit, to many, being the controversial switch to TV-PG content in 2008, in an effort to regain advertisers and mainstream acceptance.

However, if we look at various booking decisions made in the 2000s, we can see that regardless of the content rating, WWE made several errors that were a likelier greater detriment to their popularity and relevance.

10. 2000 - Rikishi Does It For The Rock

Rey Mysterio World Heavyweight Champion
WWE.com

If 1998 and 1999 were years where WWE could do no wrong creatively, then 2000 was those years times one hundred. While WCW and ECW marched to their dying days, WWE was amassing its greatest roster ever and putting on some of their most inspired programming.

However, even before that year, something clearly was wrong. At Survivor Series ‘99, Steve Austin was hit by a mystery motorist and taken out of action, thus explaining his absence from television so that he could get neck surgery. The subject was left alone for close to a year until September of 2000, when Austin returned, seeking to find out who it was that ran him over. It seems as though WWE had no plan on who the culprit was when they came up with the idea. The most obvious choice would have been Triple H, but instead, their initial culprit was Rikishi.

In 2000, Rikishi was a workhorse midcarder and a very popular babyface, with his alliance with Too Cool being one of the most celebrated acts of the Attitude Era’s latter period. However, with the revelation that he ran over Austin “for The Rock,” fans quickly lost interest. He just didn’t connect as a heel, and his popularity was never the same even after turning face again, thus depriving the company of a great upper-midcarder.

Speaking of poorly thought-out heel turns...

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