10 Wrestling Matches That Pissed You Off Straight Away
There are no second chances to make a first impression and these wrestlers found out the hard way.
There's an absolute doozy of a wrestling show sat in WWE's Peacock archives that probably doesn't get much love due to the presence one of the combatants in the evening's main event.
Fully Loaded 2000 closes with a Rock/Chris Benoit WWE Championship clash that's absolutely electric if you're able to cope with rewatching 'The Rabid Wolverine', but - and your writer counts himself amongst this group - if Benoit's matches are typically just too much to work through, simply hit stop after the incredible semi-main pitting Triple H against Chris Jericho and you'll still have a fantastic time.
At the turn of the new millennium, Vince McMahon had proudly assembled his most diverse and dynamic roster ever, found the perfect sweet spot between Crash TV and in-ring excellence and was somehow posting record figures across the board while one of his biggest money-makers ever was forced out injured for almost all of it.
The card is joyous, with the aforementioned Jericho/Hunter skirmish toasting a brilliant night for the talented and motivated roster. All apart from 7:34 in the middle where The Undertaker takes Kurt Angle's rapidly rising star and nearly completely extinguishes in a needlessly protracted and selfish squash, but then the 'American Bad A*s' often leaned in a little too literally on all three descriptors in that nickname.
Infuriating to this day it is, and you can tell where it's going almost immediately. As you could with...
10. Bianca Belair Vs Becky Lynch (WWE SummerSlam 2021)
Slightly less of a frown-inducing encounter when viewed through the prism of Becky Lynch's subsequent full heel turn, 'The Man's SummerSlam 2021 return was nonetheless a little devastating.
Part of this match came to represent all that's fundamentally broken about WWE's presentation in its current form. The choice to turn Lynch was an odd one in general, not least because the product was crying out for genuinely beloved stars that could still go full time. Lynch remained one of the last available, but the booking served to sap the joy out of it almost immediately.
WWE is also not the organisation that works out ways for nobody to get hurt. Belair looked a fool in defeat, even if the shock-and-awe defence might have been the planned rationale. Nodding along with the whole thing only to be cruelly schooled by the returning star did much to undo the aura she'd grafted hard to establish since defeating Sasha Banks at WrestleMania.
Vince McMahon seems obsessed with making moments, and this was one of those. But when these are the only memorable elements of your product, nobody recalls the fix-it jobs performed after things get broken.