10 Reasons WWE's Ministry Of Darkness Failed

If we take wrestling down to its most rudimentary elements, the thing that wrestling promotions are selling, and the things that wrestling fans want, is, well, wrestling. Discounting the various appearances of Ministry members in three-minute television matches, the pay-per-view bouts left a lot to be desired.

Mideon vs. Big Bossman was an uninspired six-minute brawl, in which the two combatants did little else than deliver the most basic and perfunctory of chokeholds and clotheslines. The pre-angle match of Undertaker vs. Big Boss Man in a Hell in a Cell, meanwhile, was a disappointment of epic proportions. The combination of this being The Undertaker’s first major comeback since 1998, with the last Hell in A Cell in the promotion featuring Mick Foley nearly dying, made this match something that would never live up to expectations.

Still, the match that followed fell below any viewer’s most basic expectations, with both wrestlers dragging each other to a nine-minute finish in the most sluggish way possible. The ensuing angle may be the only time in history since the eighteenth century that a crowd were bored while watching an execution. 'Boring' chants became a reliability in Ministry pay per view matches, despite their brevity. After a quick set-up of Ken Shamrock decreeing his loyalty to Captain McMahon, a Shamrock/Undertaker match was set for Backlash 1999. The match itself was neither commendable nor awful, but a dispirited and un-immersed crowd made sure to make their feelings known, calling the bout out for its failings at the halfway mark.

As we have seen from the pandemic, one of the most essential features of a wrestling match is the atmosphere; despite the two working hard, this was another Ministry contest relegated to the scrap pile.