10 Pay-Per-View Main Events WWE Could Actually Call The Worst EVER
"SUCH BAD SH*T"
There are far more matches from the recent past in this list than there should be.
WWE's roster has never been so talent-rich, as much because of quantity as quality in the era of warehousing wrestlers and Performance Center'ing them into Superstars. The model's success remains mixed, but the sheer ability levels of the roster have turned chickensh*t into chicken salad so many times over the past few years that it's hard to argue with it as a "strategy".
But of that marries up with the mad whims of Vince McMahon and his willingness to push the big red button bulging from the side of his brain where a wrestling promoter used be. The sh*tty headliner is a harsh reality of his existing mantra that seems as much to do with fighting his crowd as furnishing it.
In a bit of focus group patter on this subject, a few matches from the 1990s (but tellingly nothing from a 1980s low on pay-per-views but overspilling with supposedly derivative Hulk Hogan popcorn contests) were brought up. Only two were truly terrible enough because they still allowed the fans in the arena to remain emotionally attached to the output. Recent catastrophes have been worse for severing ties with the core audience, reflected most of all by substantial percentage drops in Raw's ratings over the last several years.
With some of these, WWE killed careers, pushes or programmes. The wider problem many of these reflect is in how they're gradually killing just under 50% of their business.
10. Roman Reigns Vs Samoa Joe (Backlash 2018)
Fans headed for the exits early as Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe chin-locked their way to one of the most disappointing headliners of all time, but was the abysmal assembling down to the men between the ropes or the ones pulling the strings from the relative safety of the backstage area?
A Vince McMahon project in such an overt fashion that he was all but ruined before a Leukemia diagnosis reframed the narrative, Reigns found rock bottom in his relationship with the crowd right around this time.
It was easy to see how he'd ended up in another pay-per-view main event just a month after WrestleMania's disastrous one (and the spot was the least Samoa Joe deserved) But the walk-out reflected a breaking point for New Jersey fans that seen and heard more than enough.
Beating the traffic meant so much more than witnessing Roman Reigns beat Samoa Joe. The core value of wrestling as a form of entertainment had never been lower.