9 Times WWE Turned Treasure Into TRASH
The WWE fumbles that took some of wrestling's best moments and reduced them to creative rubble
In 2019, All Elite Wrestling launched and WWE's monopoly was gone.
It had been 18 years since Vince McMahon had opened up a Monday Night Raw talking about how the fate of WCW - and with it, the rest of mainstream wrestling - was in hands, and in that time he'd let that control slip through his fingers with a run of miserable, complacent and idiotic years as a market leader a long, long way away from being the "Recognised Symbol Of Excellence In Sports Entertainment" or whatever branding they chose in the moment.
Treasure into trash became habitual. So habitual that trash into treasure became the new norm - there were more terrible ideas that wrestlers worked hard to elevate than there were good ones lost to bad booking. Neither are ideal, but the latter is at least the right way around. Wrestlers were sent out there to die on the vine, all at the whims of a blithering disconnected billionaire loser who'd lost touch with reality much earlier than was probably apparent.
The evidence was there, week after week, and it wasn't half frustrating. An open world playground that centrally exists to mimic the highs and lows of legitimate sport. There should be no better stage with which to entertain, and yet...
(Join WhatCulture Wrestling+ on YouTube for exclusive behind-the-scenes content, membership badges, emojis, and much, much more).
9. The Shield
The Shield were legitimately awesome, and it's just a pity Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins think that as much as any fans that got to live through them at their best.
As a genuine trio in an era where...nothing was particularly genuine-feeling, Reigns, Rollins and Dean Ambrose carved a path for themselves as difference-makers in a difficult time. That they stuck together and fought for one another behind the scenes as much as they did between the ropes, and never was that clearer than when they split up and had to fend for themselves.
For years following Rollins' 2014 storyline dissolution of the group, all three experienced mixed fortunes as singles stars, falling afoul of Vince McMahon's booking peccadilloes as much as anybody else that had the misfortune of putting a run together during the consensus worst of times.
If in doubt, promotion and performers went back to what worked, and results, predictably, were mixed. The good (Rollins and Ambrose finally making peace in 2017 over a period of months rather than hours) tended to overwrite the bad (Ambrose rigging Rollins' Money In The Bank briefcase with goo), and genuine credit with the audience went a long way when the company needed a quick win.
The patience for their lore was pushed to breaking point en route to a SummerSlam 2026 match that attempted to peddle the idea that Seth and Roman hadn't battled all that much, and when they had, 'The Architect' consistently had the measure of 'The Tribal Chief'. Both these things were patently and provably false, but it didn't stop the pair over-egging their parts to an excruciating degree at the 'Biggest Party Of The Summer'. Over-wrought and over-blown, the match stunk - though that's inevitable when people spend 33 minutes smelling their own farts.