10 Reasons 2022 Was Wrestling's WILDEST Year Ever

10. Shane McMahon’s Royal Rumble Fiasco

Cody Rhodes
WWE.com

Remember when this was seen as one of the nuttiest stories of the year, just one month into 2022?

Fans knew something was off during the Royal Rumble when Shane McMahon was booked to last until the final three, eliminate Kevin Owens and out-strike former UFC fighter Matt Riddle.

Then the news came tricking out.

It turned out that Shane-O-Mac had huge backstage heat for trying to book himself even stronger in the Rumble, reportedly trying to book the event around himself. This caused tremendous strife behind the scenes, with McMahon running afoul of Brock Lesnar, Randy Orton and even Vince himself.

Everything blew up in Shane’s face, with the younger McMahon “let go” from the company by his father, nixing any further wrestling plans for the executive.

Rumors of Shane joining AEW persisted for a while before dying down, likely due to other crazy stuff taking its place in the public consciousness.

And yet, this barely cracked the top 10 for the year.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.