10 Times Stipulations Ruined Wrestling Matches
1. Booker T Vs. Jeff Jarrett - WCW Nitro, October 2 2000 (San Francisco 49ers)
And here, we come full circle with an infamous Vince Russo special.
By autumn 2000, WCW was in tatters. The nWo was dead, and the company's best midcard talents, the Radicalz, had departed for the WWF. There remained one homegrown talent, Booker T, whose popularity endured to an extent that he survived the embarrassment of an undercard-flavoured repackage - G.I. Bro - a persona he had experimented with early in his career. It was akin to Stone Cold Steve Austin reverting to The Ringmaster gimmick in the spring of 1998.
He was the most talented and over man they had. If the league was to survive, as inconceivable a prospect that was even at the time, he was the Champion to build itself around. Instead, Russo rather tarnished his main event aura by defeating him for the WCW title, before he decided that he wasn't a wrestler after all. No sh*t.
His rampage of ego was retconned, thankfully, but any attempt at a new dawn was crushed when the vacant title was contested under "San Francisco 49ers" rules. Four boxes were draped from poles (because Vince Russo) hovering over each turnbuckle, inside one of which was the big gold belt.
In the others? Scott Hudson suggested "lead pipes, brass knucks." "Hand grenades!" Mark Madden piped up. Instead, positioning the company's top prize as a complete joke, more so than it already was, one contained a framed picture of Scott Hall. In another, an inflatable sex doll. In the third, a coal miner's glove.
When Booker eventually got his hands on the box - after an assist from Howard Stern Show alumni Beetlejuice, whose microcephaly was just a riot! - the belt fell out of it before he could smash it. Of course it did.