10 Awful WWE Match Finishes That Ruined Everything

By the time his match with a returning Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson at the Royal Rumble rolled around in January 2013, CM Punk had been WWE champion for 434 days. That’s the 6th longest run of all time with that title, and the longest run in 25 years.

Come the end of a decent but unexceptional bout, with The Rock about to deliver the People’s Elbow to Punk, the lights went out. Under cover of darkness, persons unknown (but clearly The Shield) materialised to beat down The Rock and triple powerbomb him through the announce table. When the lights came back up, the interlopers were nowhere to be seen. Punk took advantage of the situation to roll The Rock back into the ring and pin him, retaining the title.

However. In the lead up to the Rumble, Vince McMahon had let Punk and Heyman know in no uncertain terms that if The Shield interfered on Punk’s behalf (as they had in their debut at Survivor Series 2013, and on RAW ever since), Punk would be stripped of the WWE championship. While Punk and Heyman were celebrating in the ring, Mr. McMahon strode out to the stage and prepared to do exactly that. That is, until The Rock – kayfabe taken to the cleaners, and clearly legitimately exhausted – got on the mic and did the whole heroic-babyface-NO-NOT-THIS-WAY schtick, getting the match restarted.

A fired up Punk viciously beat down the spent Rock, delivering the high knee in the corner followed by the Randy Savage flying elbow. He was about to hit the GTS when The People’s Champion slithered out, shot Punk slowly off the ropes into a lazy spinebuster, and hit the People’s Elbow for the three-count and the title, so ending the longest WWE championship reign of the modern era.

It had been common knowledge for a while that McMahon felt that The Rock vs John Cena II at Wrestlemania 29 would need the WWE title in play to make it special, and so differentiate it from the previous year’s supposed Once In A Lifetime exhibition match. That meant that the outcome of this match was pretty much set in stone, as was the outcome of the Royal Rumble battle royal earlier in the card. Everyone knew that Rock would beat Punk. Everyone knew that Cena would win the Rumble, earning the right to face The Rock again at Wrestlemania – a rematch that no one was really clamouring for.

But the way the match ended was an awful misstep. The People’s Elbow was a silly move with no authority behind it, famously lampooned by Mick Foley as “the most ludicrous thing [he’d] ever seen”, and originally invented as a rib to try to get the Undertaker to break character and laugh. Punk was on top in the match, absolutely on fire, and a desperate man: that he’d lie there for an age after a basic spinebuster and wait for a simple, massively telegraphed elbow drop - and then wouldn’t kick out of it – was a joke, making the finish look weak. By association, that made Punk (one of their top attractions) look weak too.