10 Great WWE PPV Matches That Ended In Disqualification
These matches failed to give us a winner, but they certainly didn't fail to entertain.
Okay, I should probably begin with some sort of disclaimer.
At the time, I hated the finish of each and every one of these matches. Pay-per-views are where the biggest bouts take place, and those biggest bouts should almost always have a definitive winner. Even today, a disqualification finish on a show that people have paid to see strikes me as cheap and lazy.
Even so, it is an important plot point in wrestling and as such it is a necessary means to get from A to B. Or from J to K, as stories may be. Just because a match ends with a referee motioning to the timekeeper and thousands of people in attendance simultaneously rolling their eyes and booing doesn't make the action that precedes it bad.
Sometimes, that action is absolutely fantastic. There have been a number of wonderful matches on pay-per-view that have ended in disqualification over the years, and my job here is to bring your attention to them, to those you remember and those you may have forgotten about.
So there might not always be a winner, but this shouldn't cloud over the work two men put on inside the ring before we get to the end. This is about work not spoilers, and the means and effort that two individuals put in before the end of their match.
Here are 10 great WWE PPV matches that ended in disqualification.
10. Randy Orton Vs. John Cena - No Way Out 2008
Believe it or not, but there was a time when John Cena vs. Randy Orton was actually a fresh match! Despite winning his first World Championship a whole eight months before Cena, it took longer for Orton to truly solidify himself as a main event performer, but by 2008 this was certainly the case.
Cena had returned shockingly at the Royal Rumble a month earlier, and after winning it did something that still makes absolutely zero sense today: he decided to have his World Championship shot at No Way Out as opposed to WrestleMania.
Why John, why?
And so the match was made, Randy Orton vs. John Cena at No Way Out for the WWE Championship. The match was still fresh as previously mentioned, and the crowd was absolutely molten for the whole thing.
Now I'm not going to try and tell you that Randy Orton vs. John Cena was a five star classic or anything, because it wasn't, but this was as good as those two were ever going to give us. The finish was different too, as Orton became frustrated that he couldn't put Cena away and struck the referee to get himself disqualified.
It was cheap, but it made sense in a roundabout way.