12 WWE PPVs With TWO Unsatisfactory World Title Matches
Del Rio vs. Swagger? Twice in a lifetime? It's the worst of both worlds!
In the wake of the article posted over a year ago looking at some of the Pay-per-views with two great WWE World Title matches, it's only natural we would turn the tables and look at the other side of the coin as a follow-up.
Since the day said piece was posted (4th September 2019), there have been fifteen more occasions in which two World Championships were defended on the same night, with the new Universal Championship joining the classic WWE Championship in all of those.
This is a "tradition" that started back during the Invasion angle, at SummerSlam 2001, where the WWE (Stone Cold vs. Kurt Angle) and the WCW (The Rock vs. Booker T) straps were both defended on the same show.
Ever since, the WWE Championship has been present in all the 141 pay-per-views that have featured two or more World Championship matches on the same night, with the old World Heavyweight Championship being its most common partner, on 105 occasions between 2002 and 2013.
As seen in the previous article, on some nights both title matches absolutely nailed it. Other times, one delivered and the other not so much. However, there have also been other shows where both bouts were either forgettable or just plain bad.
Today, we will be looking at some of those awful nights...
12. Armageddon 2002 (Shawn Michaels Vs. Triple H; The Big Show Vs. Kurt Angle)
First up on that night was SmackDown's WWE Championship match, which saw Kurt Angle challenge the then-champion, The Big Show. 'The Olympic Hero' would win that bout and his third WWE Championship with a huge assist from a p*ssed off Brock Lesnar, who came in and F5'd the giant after being robbed of the belt at the prior pay-per-view, Survivor Series.
The match itself wasn't necessarily bad, especially for The Big Show's standards, but it doesn't compare to most of the matches from the glorious days of the 'SmackDown Six' era.
Meanwhile, fighting over RAW's World Heavyweight Championship in a brutal(ly long) Three Stages of Hell Match were Shawn Michaels and Triple H. It was the third chapter of the former DX members' feud, whose ending never came, despite the pay-per-view's theme song! It was far from being as good as their confrontations at either SummerSlam or Survivor Series earlier that year.
Sure, the match had its moments and features some insane spots, but it didn't grab the fans' attention as much as their first encounter at SummerSlam, which featured stronger psychology and felt more like a "blood feud" instead of a glorified spot fest.