10 Most Boring WWE Main Events Of All Time
5. Great American Bash 2005 - JBL V Batista
It still boggles the mind to think that JBL was ever the main man for a while on any WWE programming. But 2005 was a dark time for the brand extension, as SmackDown! became a poorer and poorer cousin to Monday Night Raw with each passing week. Few shows illuminated just how dreadful things were quite like the Great American Bash – the main event of which was brutally mundane, lifeless, and pointless.
The main takeaway from this match, like many others on this list, is that every aspect of the match was so inert, it was almost stationary. As most single brand PPVs of the era were, the card was very underbooked, so JBL and Batista needed to pad this one out as long as possible to get the PPV to a respectable running time. The entrances are thus pointlessly extravagant, which tests the patience of the live audience, and viewers at home as well.
When the match gets underway it actually starts off interesting, but both guys are enormous, and because of this they are gassed in incredibly short time. This fatigue leads to a ludicrously long sleeper hold from JBL on Batista that would probably lead to some sort of severe brain damage or death in real life. The sleeper kills any momentum that the match had, and it all heads downhill from there.
The two behemoths trade power blows before every screw job trick is pulled out of the WWE cliché book. There is a ref bump, a chair shot that the ref didn't see, and of course, the inevitable chair shot from face Batista to heel JBL which costs the former the match. The finish was so painfully telegraphed and transparent that it only made the plodding pace and ridiculous duration of the match all the more noticeable.