10 Wrestling Matches Everybody Wanted (But Nobody Watched)
9. Royal Rumble Match - WWF Royal Rumble 1992
This might scan as sacrilege, and it only loosely fits into the theme of the list.
It isn't so much "everybody wanted but nobody watched", but rather "everybody remembers fondly but wasn't remotely hot at the time".
Artistically, it remains a top three, at least, Royal Rumble match. Ric Flair's "Iron Man" performance pioneered a trope that has never been bettered in the 30 years since, one of wrestling's most talented ever performers, Bobby Heenan, entered the performance of his career, and rarely has victory been sold as well in a triumphant, seminal post-match promo.
The consensus take on the match, however, is one of wrestling's biggest and weirdly prevailing myths.
It is said, all of the time, that the '92 field is the most star-studded in the genre's history. A superficial glance at it justifies the argument - Hogan! Flair! Savage! Roberts! Piper! Undertaker! DiBiase! - but the buys were poor. 260,000 homes purchased the event, down a staggering 41% from 1991 (440,000).
Moreover, and this is wild, 300,000 homes purchased the '93 event, which is generally considered an inferior Rumble plagued by multiple failed experiments, like Max Moon, babyface Bob Backlund, and Damien Demento. If the '92 match was so star-studded, wouldn't that have compelled fans to order it en masse?
Hogan had declined significantly as a draw by that point, which explains why he was roundly booed in Albany.