10 Dumb Stipulation Matches WWE Should Never Book Again

At one point, nationalism was all you needed to build a red-hot feud. But in a fully globalized society, hanging a rival banner just isn't the insult it used to be.

Flag matches were invented as a way to bring the war-like fun of capture the flag to the squared circle. There were a couple of classics, notably the hyper-patriotic tilt between Hulk Hogan and Nikolai Volkoff in 1985, and the stipulation was basically Jim Duggan's entire gimmick on the late-80s house show circuit, but the Cold War was the last time the match meant anything. Latter-day variations seem forced and jingoistic, with Rusev's 2017 match against John Cena being the most enduring evidence of how WWE just could not get the Bulgarian Brute's booking right.

The last great nationalistic angle WWE filmed was when the Harts became Canadian heroes in the early days of the Attitude Era. They got two low-profile flag matches out of that, and they amounted to little more than cheap heat in the long run.