10 Wrestling Matches Where The Wrong Guy Went Over

It's shovellin' time.

Triple H, Sting, WrestleMania 31
WWE.com

Wrestling is fake. Or, to put it in terms that would avoid annoying a potentially highly-strung professional wrestler four times your size: wrestling is pre-determined.

As such, it doesn't really matter whether you win or lose.

It's not totally meaningless of course: anyone who goes on a 10- or 20-match winning streak knows that they're doing something right - even if it's just cosying up to the right people backstage.

But the point is: winning all the time shouldn't necessarily be conflated with being the best - contrary to every other sport in existence.

In the same way that Arnold Schwarzenegger probably didn't want to spend the entirety of The Terminator haplessly chasing Sarah Connor from afar, though, most wrestlers ache to be in the main event. And to get there, you have to win.

Winning may not mean you're the best, but it does open up doors for new opportunities later down the road - and that's why performers, as well as their fans, are often left frustrated when they go down.

The career of any wrestler entails both wins and losses, of course, but there are some outcomes that just don't make any sense.

10. John Cena Vs Damien Sandow

Triple H, Sting, WrestleMania 31
WWE.com

However much you wanted to see Damien Sandow as World Heavyweight Champion - and a great many of us did - it wasn't a bad decision, in and of itself, to have him lose his cash-in match on Raw in late 2013.

Ultimately, his title reign - if it happened at all - would probably have only been a transitional one. WWE was imminently preparing to unify its two world titles at the end of the year, and with WrestleMania just around the corner it was always likely that the mantle of undisputed champ would be given to an already-established star instead.

The manner of his defeat, though, really grates. Sandow had ambushed Cena with a sneak attack, ostensibly re-injuring the arm he hurt at Hell in a Cell. That his opponent picked up the win, despite the odds being stacked in Sandow's favour, did little to help his long-term main event credibility.

Contributor