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It is human nature to remember bad things more than good things. We tend to focus more on negative events than we do positive ones, simply because that negativity has a greater impact on our minds. The same holds true in wrestling. There is much more and fiercer debate on which matches are the worst than discussions on which are the best.
After all, if you’re looking at which matches are the best, at least those matches are ‘in good company’, in that they’re highly-regarded among fans. But no one wants to be in the discussion for worst wrestling match, which causes people to try and defend a bad match if they feel like it has some kind of justification for not being so bad.
For these lists, we’ll be looking at the five worst matches of every year, beginning in 1990. As criteria, we’re not only looking at matches that have poor in-ring action, but also ones that either failed to live up to the hype, suffered from bad creative direction, or were made worse by a negative crowd reaction.
However, there are some matches that might fit those criteria yet shouldn’t be considered ‘the worst matches’. Squash matches featuring obvious jobbers/enhancement talent that are inherently designed to be one-sided won’t be counted. But any match featuring established and popular talent being thrust into a ‘jobber’s’ position will be counted.
We’re also counting matches involving non-wrestlers like managers, because those tend to get a lot of hype around them, only to disappoint on execution.
5. Randy Savage vs. Dusty Rhodes – SummerSlam 1990
SummerSlam 1990 had many bad matches on it, but none of them were as disappointing as this one. Randy Savage was an amazing wrestler and Dusty Rhodes was a master at controlling crowds. Both of them also had one thing in common: they oozed charisma and could control an audience with little effort.
That’s why this match was so underwhelming. Lasting barely over two minutes in length, the match had little action and the finish came after Savage hit Rhodes in the back of the head with his then-manager Sherri’s purse. Yes, Dusty Rhodes, one of the icons of the NWA and southern wrestling for years, lost because of a woman’s purse.
It screams of attempts to discredit and embarrass Rhodes by WWE’s top brass, and was an enormous misuse of both Rhodes’ and Savage’s talents. While Rhodes was past his prime here, he clearly deserved better than this disappointment of a contest.
4. Paul Ellering vs. Teddy Long – NWA Capital Combat – Hair vs. Hair Match
The only good thing about this match was that it was incredibly short, going less than two minutes from start to finish. There wasn’t anything special in this ‘match’; both Ellering and Long just hit punches on each other and used a loaded glove to end the match.
This match felt like it was done just to waste time. It was a hair vs. hair match, although that didn’t really mean much given that Long was already balding when the match started.
Obvious booking error aside, this match wasn’t awful, by any means. It was a forgettable two-minute match that had a nonsense stipulation, but it wasn’t especially harmful in any way. If this was a match between two top stars, that would’ve been much worse.
Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be the last time that a wrestling booker would put two non-wrestling managers in a match against each other. In fact, such a gimmick would happen many times in the coming years, and some of those were way, WAY worse than this one.
3. Jake Roberts vs. Bad News Brown – SummerSlam 1990
In Stampede Wrestling, Bad News Brown was a fearless monster that ran roughshod all the time. In WWE, he was booked to be completely terrified of snakes and wrestled in gimmick matches. Makes perfect sense.
This match lasted less than five minutes and ended in a disqualification. With those two factors, you know that this wouldn’t be a fun match to watch. The action was disjointed and uninspiring, and the special referee in the match – Big Bossman – didn’t do a very good job of enforcing the rules.
What you were left with was a bland match that didn’t do much to further the story. The post-match segment was slightly exciting, but it wasn’t what WWE were hoping for in terms of crowd reaction.
The fans kept chanting for Roberts’ DDT, but it never came. That left the audience deflated by the time the DQ came, which only exacerbated the poor quality of this contest.
2. Big Bossman vs. Jim Duggan – Royal Rumble 1990
This match was only six minutes long, but it felt like triple that length due to how slow and boring the first 2/3 of it was. The reason it was so bad was because it was simply…boring.
Wrestling matches are meant to be exciting and filled with drama. This had neither of those things as Bossman dominated the first 2/3 of the match with punches and other strikes that Duggan barely sold. So you had worked punches for the first four minutes of a six-minute match.
After that, Duggan began a very weak comeback sequence that was completely nullified by a disqualification finish that made everything up to that point entirely pointless.
There isn’t much else to say about this nonsense. Duggan wasn’t always the most exciting wrestler on his own, and Big Bossman was a big man that couldn’t be expected to carry a match on his own. It’s almost as if this match was doomed to fail from the beginning.
1. Sid Vicious vs. The Nightstalker - NWA Clash Of The Champions XIII: Thanksgiving Thunder
If you ever wanted proof that big-man matches rarely excite people, look no further.
Sid Vicious and the Nightstalker (a.k.a. Adam Bomb/Bryan Adams) wrestled a terrible match that was meant to bore fans from the opening bell. While I understand that one should not expect much from someone wrestling their first match ever (such was the case for the Nightstalker), one would expect that a rookie would do their best when wrestling a fairly important wrestler like Sid.
Maybe the bookers knew that the Nightstalker couldn’t do much against Sid, which is why they proceeded to book one of the dumbest segments in WCW history. The match got interrupted due to outside interference, only for the Nightstalker to bring out a foreign object with which he’d attack Sid.
But this wasn’t just any foreign object; it was a BATTLE AXE. Yes, a double-bladed, medieval battle axe that the Nightstalker swung at Sid as if he were stuck in the 13th century.
Granted, obviously Sid dodged the battle axe, but then things got worse as shenanigans led to Sid winning by shoving Nightstalker to the ground for the win.
This was one of the most ridiculous wrestling matches ever booked, and not even in a so-bad-its-funny sort of way. It was a poor match worsened by a lame finish and featured the single-most ridiculous weapon ever brought into a wrestling ring. This match easily deserved its -4 star rating.
