Ranking The WORST Era Of Every Major Wrestling Show
5. WCW Thunder
WCW Thunder was fairly awful from the jump.
The launch of the show coincided with WCW's decline. The first episode took place weeks after WCW completely bungled the Sting payoff at Starrcade '97, so you could, with no hyperbole whatsoever, state that Thunder died on its premiere date of January 8, 1998.
Eric Bischoff blames Thunder for WCW's death overall - as opposed to himself, shockingly enough - and the B-show was so bad that WWE SmackDown, AEW Rampage and AEW Collision were all received with a chill down the spine. Thunder set a precedent; a third and fourth hour of first-run programming was as a result nothing short of a harbinger of doom.
To be specific, Thunder was at its worst on May 3, 2000.
Vince Russo's creative was bad enough on Mondays; on Wednesdays, his already wrong brain was fried. On May 3, he booked the New York Rules episode. It was infamous.
It was infamous for making no sense, and for that to be specified about Vince Russo, it really had to make no sense whatsoever. And it didn't.
Russo decided that the battle between the New Blood and Millionaire's Club would be advanced on the night by a series of 'New York Rules' matches. These things were so hard-caw that they didn't need a referee even to ensure the safety of the competitors!
The wrestlers therefore counted their own pins, but because Vince Russo was so stupid that he never once stopped to consider the simplest of plot holes, not one of them fast-counted. Then they didn't need to count because New York Rules suddenly became Tables matches (with no explanation).
Read this next sentence a few times:
On May 3, 2000, Ric Flair defeated Billy Kidman when Kevin Nash hit a powerbomb on Mike Awesome.
In Russo's defence, you didn't see that coming.