10 Worst WWE Matches Of 2018
Worst Wrestling Entertainment.
There's always the temptation during end-of-year reflection to ignore deep-dives in favour of recency and/or beliefs that were held regardless of the actual content. Wrestling fans - your writer included - are relentlessly guilty of both. Your favourite wrestler shouldn't be afforded a free pass for assembling something wretched. Just as Something from last week hasn't had to linger as long in the memory like something from last month, but we apply these biases because WWE won't do it for us.
No longer are mistakes or missteps covered up. They are dwelled and built upon. No longer are fans allowed to reminisce about a character's back story. It is compromised and contradicted too often.
Revisiting the best (and in the case of this list, the absolute worst) of the year has never been more useful. Wrestling is moving at a faster pace than it did during the pomp of the Attitude Era, even at Raw's glacial worst. The rules and rosters are constantly changing, even if Vince McMahon inexplicably remains at the forefront to oversee it all. This juxtaposition is the most contradictory of all, and provides a big picture rationale for why so many of the following fights failed so frightfully...
10. Brock Lesnar Vs Roman Reigns (WrestleMania 34)
There was something depressingly familiar about Brock Lesnar's WrestleMania 34 victory over Roman Reigns.
Worst of all, it mattered not what either men did anyway. The boos, beachballs and boredom buried within the audience became the brutal truth of the issue between the two, rather than the kayfabe one the company had limply tried to establish. And what an utterly f*cking absurd story it was.
After a year of beating everybody - everybody - with a single F5, Lesnar delivered so many to 'The Big Dog' that finishing moves as a concept began to lose meaning. Designed around triggering the biggest reactions from crowds and teasing conclusions, the F5s failed at both. Over, and over and over again.
The two weren't doing anything outwardly bad, but the New Orleans faithful let their emotions flow like Roman's wasted blood. His claret only made them blue, meaning they missed Lesnar's actual victory. Of course they did - they weren't really looking for it. One had to wonder how Roman felt as Lesnar dragged a jagged arm across his head for the instructed gash. Especially when no comeback of significance was permitted before the winning fall. Stone Cold Steve Austin at WrestleMania 13, this - unsurprisingly - was not.