10. Having Scott Steiner Wrestle 18 Minutes At The Royal Rumble
Look at that face right there. That is the face of a (very veiny and very muscular) man watching his short WWE career flash before his eyes. That was Scott Steiner after wrestling a pretty damn awful eighteen-minute match with Triple H at the Royal Rumble. Okay, so the match sucked and both guys deserve to take some measure of the blame. But whose idea was it to book Steiner in a match of that length in the first place? Eighteen minutes isn't exactly an Iron Man match or anything, but Steiner had only wrestled a few times since leaving WCW almost two years previously and was clearly not in decent ring shape. Now it could be argued that Steiner, whom WWE forked out big money for, should have been able to do a twenty minute match no questions asked. But this wasn't the same Steiner who had regularly wowed audiences in WCW and Japan. This was a Scott Steiner with a laundry list of injuries and about thirty extra pounds of muscle on his knackered frame. WWE knew this when they hired him. Then there was Triple H, whose performances had been getting gradually worse throughout 2002 (save for that belter with HBK at SummerSlam) and who was frequently on the injured list himself (too many 'vitamins' I think). He was in no position to carry Steiner to a decent match, regardless of whether he thought he was the modern-day Ric Flair or not. WWE really screwed Steiner by putting him out there for that long so early in his WWE run. He should have been booked to work a 10-15 minute brawl, tops. To add insult to injury, Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle went out right after them and contested an absolute barnburner, for which Benoit was given a standing ovation afterwards. Ouch.
