10 Awful WWE Match Finishes That Ruined Everything

In the old days, Wrestlemania was where feuds and long-running angles went to be blown off: the following weeks would see all-new storylines develop to take WWE into the remainder of the year. The previous month had seen John Cena defeat Bray Wyatt cleanly at Wrestlemania XXX, and the general consensus had been something along the lines of LOL CENA WINS, because of course he did: it’s John Cena.

Why exactly the company then felt the need to book a rematch between the two in a steel cage at Extreme Rules is a mystery. Wyatt’s stock with fans was already plummeting by this point, and the rumour was that there wasn’t much planned for him after Cena had disposed of him. Whatever the case, the finish had fans furious.

Assaulted inside the case by the three members of the Wyatt Family (all of whom were booked as monsters in their own right), Cena actually dominated them all, electing to win by leaving the cage by the door with his opponents prone inside. That’s where he was stopped in his tracks by a blank-faced choirboy in a flowing black robe, lip-synching Wyatt’s favourite song in a scary voice. Apparently, this apparition so appalled Cena that he fell victim to a Sister Abigail, and Wyatt then left the cage to win the match.

It’s common knowledge that one of WWE’s favourite non-finishes is the inexplicable distraction, where a third party hovers in the background to ruin his rival’s chances of winning and the rival, like a child seeing something shiny, is duly distracted and loses. However, this was just ridiculous: distraction via possessed child?

Fans in attendance were nonplussed; laughing nervously, already wondering where on earth this could possibly be going. They had their answer at Payback four weeks later, in a messy Last Man Standing match marred by interference, which Cena won convincingly once again.

With hindsight, Extreme Rules 2014 was the beginning of the end for the Bray Wyatt character. While there’s still time to rebuild him, he’s a shadow of his former scary self today, his weird, occult aura dampened with hamfisted booking and dull writing. His feuds with Chris Jericho, Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns have been met with apathy, while his supposedly high profile match with the Undertaker at this year’s Wrestlemania was met by a puzzled frown of indifference by pretty much everyone watching.

Meanwhile, Cena himself is so used to getting mixed reactions from the live audience that the man wasn’t fazed in the slightest by the sniggering at the cage match’s ending. He’s Teflon, a cartoon character, the Road Runner to Bray Wyatt’s Wile E. Coyote. Bad reactions are irrelevant to him.