10 Worst WWE Moments Of 2003

2003 was a strange year for WWE.

There was no competition to speak of now that WCW and even ECW had fallen by the wayside, and that let Vince McMahon run amok with some of his wildest ideas yet. In an unexpected twist after demolishing their rivals, the WWE product turned into latter-day WCW at points, and that's not meant as a compliment. Some say with supreme confidence that McMahon was Vince Russo's editor during the writer's heyday the late-1990s, but it was actually Vince who needed one in '03.

Some of his scheming just shouldn't have made it to TV. Family in-fighting still ruled the roost on episodes of Raw and SmackDown, and the McMahons were battling everyone else to hog featured spots when they weren't bickering with each other. "Bickering" might be putting it mildly. One pay-per-view match later on in the year left everybody stunned by how far Vince was willing to go in the name of entertainment.

There was more WCW flavour throughout 2003 too. That group's brightest stars turned in disappointing matches and feuds aplenty - Scott Steiner, Booker T, Goldberg and more were all involved in World Title shenanigans with Triple H. The latter name surprisingly misses out on this list despite hating his first year with the promotion, but Steiner and Booker are both here.

WWE leaned on soap opera heart attacks, unnecessary race-baiting (which they then claimed wasn't actually race-baiting) and more. They even had an onscreen GM force himself on Vince's wife at their home whilst Raw was live on the air. Yeah, some of this stuff is awkward to revisit.

Here's the worst of 2003! Some of it was even worse than Limp Bizkit's first album without Wes Borland that same year. 'Results May Vary' just about sums up what was going on over in WWE...

Lance Storm isn't boring.

No, he's never been electric on the mic by any means, but that was actually part of the package. Lance was a technician who wanted "to be serious for a minute". The fact that was even his catchphrase during promos for many years says it all. Storm wasn't supposed to be The Rock on the stick - whether he was capable or not isn't all that important. He was strait-laced and favoured wrestling skill over dramatics.

WWE missed the point of this entirely by having Raw co-GM Steve Austin ridicule Lance for being "boring" throughout June 2003. 'Stone Cold' interrupted Storm's bouts on the flagship show, snored over the live mic and also brought a pillow with him so he could snooze on the stage. It was played for laughs, but it was also really counterproductive to diminish someone's skills like this on live television then expect them to get over.

The company's grand idea was that this would endear Storm to fans and ready him for a comedy tag-team with Goldust. That didn't work, because (again) Lance wasn't suitable for that role. Creative was exposing his glaring weaknesses rather than playing to his biggest strengths, and they were doing it because apparently everybody needed to be some extraordinary live wire promo expert or they weren't worth caring about.

Look, promos are obviously vital to WWE's product. They always have been. Castigating someone for being bang average at them then failing to follow up on your own comedy tag gimmick is sure something though. Like, what was the point in any of this? Did they just want to embarrass the guy on telly?