10 Times You SERIOUSLY Should Have Asked WWE For Refunds

The WWE Network costs £/$9.99. This gives you:

Almost spectacularly abysmal pay-per-views designed to bore fans into submission...under the apprehension of getting the company's top star over; at least three rematches per pay-per-view, most often engineered through depicting babyfaces, referees and or established narrative continuity as a joke; matches spanning several minutes wrestled by greenhorns pushed ahead of their more experienced and talented peers; inferior sequels to good TV matches, proving that the entire enterprise is a*se-backwards; Jinder Mahal as WWE Heavyweight Champion, an unspeakable creative atrocity executed because we've already been convinced to part with our money...

This is the dire creative cost of the platform's low-cost price tier. It's no great effort to pay for, no great effort to produce, fostering a relationship of utter mutual apathy. Still, it's only a tenner, and that tenner also grants you circum-1989 NWA and old, hysterical episodes of WCW Thunder, so there's that. Table For 3 is quite good too.

It's something we receive with a shrug.

But WWE simultaneously did not try and actively tried to p*ss us off years before it charged us through our bloodied noses...

'Card subject to change' is, of course, the caveat with which WWE secures itself from doling out refunds. This was an altogether more bullsh*t bending of the rules, in that the impromptu change to the main event was not in any way enforced; the company knew in advance that Steve Austin was not physically capable of competing, but used his drawing power to sell the event regardless.

Vince McMahon knew full well that Austin was days away from surgery, and he knew full well that The Big Show was a woefully inadequate replacement. A year prior to his demotion to Ohio Valley Wrestling, The Big Show was crowned WWF Heavyweight Champion (!) in a dire replacement for what was, infuriatingly, an absolutely fascinating prospective first-time meeting between the three biggest stars of the Attitude Era. Even worse still, this was but the beginning of the deluge; in order to sell the swerve as the plan, Show won, and embarked on an abysmal reign with the gold, the most memorable moment of which saw Show ride his dead daddy's casket. To put into perspective this monstrosity of a decision, consider that, even in the Network Era, Vince replaced Roman Reigns with Kurt Angle's premature return at TLC 2017.

Or perhaps don't, for sanity's sake, because the implication is that Vince thinks Austin was more expendable.