10 WWE Moments So Awful That They Made You Stop Watching Wrestling (Until You Started Again...)
6. Eighteen Seconds
It started a movement that WWE didn't realise they'd one day desperately wish to stop.
When a World Title match between champion Daniel Bryan and Royal Rumble winner Sheamus was announced for WrestleMania XXVIII, it was thought as much to be an atonement for some poor treatment the pair were given on the pre-show the prior year. Having had their United States title clash dumped to the dark match slot (and then converted to a battle royal won by the Great Khali half way through) in 2010, the rematch a year later looked to vindicate their pair for the previous mistreatment.
Fans knew it, and thus uttered their incredulous indignation when, after just 18 seconds, Bryan had been defeated. Part of a bigger storyline involving the crumbling relationship between Bryan and AJ Lee, the match served merely as a backdrop to their inevitable collapse. Overbearing douchebag boyfriend Bryan demanded a kiss, then had his lights knocked out with a Brogue Kick.
In kayfabe, Bryan naturally blamed AJ for the embarrassment, but the audience was, by this point, wise to the game.
Tacking on a 'Yes!' chant to virtually every major song or cheer on the night in a show of solidarity with the former champion and his perceived mistreatment, the audience made the already-annoying heel mannerism an institutional genre-defining catchphrase that still exists today. The sentiment is now usually in fun, but on that night at least, the anger and fury was very, very real.