10 Times WWE Was Even Dumber Than WCW

9. House Of Horrors

WCW Bray Wyatt
WWE.com

The House Of Horrors was a gritty reboot of WCW's awful tripe, and pick whichever - Chamber of Horrors, Doomsday Cage, basically, any stipulation match absolutely nobody was ever going to take seriously. And, like the worst reboots, WWE stripped any nostalgic, schadenfreude charm from it and produced something as silly as it was boring.

Randy Orton turned up to a 'haunted house' - you knew it was haunted because of the blue light and dolls with scissors in them - and was attacked. After some basic brawling that just looked stupid in the stupid f*cking context of a haunted house, Bray Wyatt trapped Orton under a fridge, and stole his limo. He could have teleported, since he can teleport, but perhaps his powers of teleportation can only take him from gorilla to the ring. Orton beat him to the arena, somehow, inviting Uber jokes.

This was also quintessentially WCW because the lame storytelling also made no sense whatsoever. It was nighttime at the house, broad daylight in the arena, for one.

WWE telegraphed the result by switching Wyatt to RAW in the Superstar Shake-Up. The title had to stay on SmackDown. So Wyatt won anyway (!), thus weakening Orton ahead of his WWE Heavyweight Title loss to Jinder Mahal. But it was all OK, because Wyatt had to be protected, else it would just look silly when he dropped a bucket of fake blood over Finn Bálor.

Wyatt didn't point out that he had claim to a WWE Championship rematch - who cares, eh? - when he won. He remains the lineal WWE Champion, but nothing matters, because it's WCW.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!