The WORST Wrestling Moment Every Year (1989 - 2025)
32. 1994 | The Old Generation
WCW is often (and accurately) remembered as a wildly dysfunctional promotion so mind-boggling in its stupidity that you can never comprehend how certain decisions were made. The WWF, meanwhile, only developed that reputation years and years later. The Fed wasn’t nonsensical in its mainstream wilderness years of the mid-1990s - just very behind the times and in need of a full tonal reset.
Except it was nonsensical at times. It was nonsensical at the worst possible time.
Vince McMahon had an idea in 1994, one that allowed him to both promote the younger, smaller wrestlers he was burdened with and bury WCW at the same time: he marketed the WWF roster as ‘The New Generation’. Hulk Hogan was out, that ancient orange geezer, and Bret Hart was in. If you want old fogeys, like Ric Flair, tune into WCW. Or us seven years later, when he’s seven years older. One of the two.
This initiative was formally launched at King Of The Ring 1994. What was the main event?
A match between WrestleMania 1 headliner Roddy Piper and Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler, comfortably past his late 1970s-to-mid-1980s Memphis peak. They were both in their forties, and this was a time before that was the median age for a WWE headliner. This was a time when Hulk Hogan was considered a fossil.
Piper looked shredded, in fairness, but the match was an interminable bore that felt at least three times as long as its 12 minutes. It was a fitting end to a rubbish show infamous for the worst commentary of all-time, in which a guy expressed incredulity that certain lighter wrestlers could do stuff that would hurt.
No, not AEW Jim Ross; this was Art Donovan.