10 Great Wrestling Feuds With Awful Payoff Matches
Examples of how to turn an intense, engaging rivalry into the drizzling sh*ts.
When wrestling is at its best, so often there's a white-hot character or believable, engaging rivalry at the centre of the action. Even now, if fans look back at their favourite wrestling memories, the chances are that those memories will be built around a great rivalry. 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon is the classic example.
Throughout the decades however, these intense and fascinating rivalries haven't always fared so well when it was time to step between the ropes and get a match underway. In fact, some once-brilliant rivalries have ended up completely falling apart, the conclusive contest designed to give some semblance of a payoff fell flat and stunk out the place.
While we could easily go on about the greatest matches from the greatest wrestlers in the greatest feuds in history, it's far more fun to take the low road and highlight those times when it all turned sour once a brewing rivalry finally made it to bell-time. And when it comes down to it, it's in the ring that so often the famed payoff of an angle or feud is meant to happen.
Keeping that in mind, here are some examples of great wrestling rivalries that ultimately ended in horrendous payoffs or awful in-ring action.
10. AJ Styles Vs. Shinsuke Nakamura
For anybody with even a passing interest in New Japan Pro Wrestling, the prospect of seeing AJ Styles square off against Shinsuke Nakamura – at WrestleMania, no less! – was a mouth-watering proposal.
Finally, with Styles running SmackDown as the WWE Champion and Nakamura having won the 2018 Royal Rumble, the pair were put on a collision course for WrestleMania 34. Surely this was the match that would steal the show, right? It absolutely, undoubtedly, impossibly could not be a dud, yeah?
When all was said and done, the Styles vs. Nakamura match was “okay”. The thing is, with the genuine chemistry and history between the two, audiences were expecting a whole lot more than “okay” for this battle at the Showcase of the Immortals. Styles got the victory, then the King of Strong Style turned heel by giving AJ a post-match shot to the balls.
Several other PPV matches between the pair would follow WrestleMania 34, yet all of them were frustratingly average and largely built around Shinsuke’s fascination with slamming his forearm into Styles’ little Phenomenal One.