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Kane is a legend in WWE. There’s no denying that. From the hype surrounding his debut to the moment he ripped the door off the cage during the first Hell in a Cell match to being lit on fire, lighting others on fire, becoming a corporate crony and everything in between, the man who has donned the mask (sometimes) for the past 20 years as Kane is a guaranteed Hall of Famer.
He is also the kind of wrestler who, even early on in his career, could afford to suffer losses without losing momentum. The word used for a wrestler with that kind of staying power is “bulletproof”. One of the biggest and best examples of a bulletproof wrestler is Chris Jericho.
He can realistically defeat Shawn Michaels and lose to Fandango, and then come back and become a top contender without anybody batting an eye. No loss has ever hurt Chris Jericho’s status in the eyes of the fans.
Kane is another great example. No matter how many times he loses and no matter who he loses to, Kane will always be the monstrous brother of The Undertaker and he could beat your top guy one week and then lose to the lowest guy on the totem pole the next week without losing an ounce of credibility. Yet somehow, over the years, Kane has won some matches in which he had nothing to gain and his opponent had a lot to lose.
#10 vs. Randy Orton (WrestleMania 28)
This one is more of a weird result than anything else. It was 2012 and neither Randy Orton nor Kane was doing anything important (or anything at all, really), so why not put them in a match together?
This was right on the heels of Kane being John Cena’s personal punching bag on the way to the first of two “once in a Lifetime” matches against The Rock. At least Kane was in some kind of storyline, as Orton was just sort of existing at the time.
Kane shockingly won the WrestleMania match with a top rope chokeslam and went on to lose twice to Orton on TV and PPV to lose their feud. Later on, they would both become important members of The Authority.
The winner of this match was completely inconsequential, as at the time neither man was important -- in fact, the match probably shouldn’t have happened at all. But it did, and Kane won a singles match at WrestleMania in 2012.
#9 vs. Chavo Guerrero (WrestleMania 24)
This match just further put into the minds of the fans that the WWE version of the ECW Championship was completely unimportant. Kane won the match in about 10 seconds with a single chokeslam, defeating Chavo Guerrero to win the ECW Title. Chavo was coming off of a very competitive feud with CM Punk, and this served to essentially put Chavo out of his misery.
Punk would go on to win his first of two straight Money in the Bank matches that night, so it didn’t hurt him at all. He lost the feud to Chavo, who was made to look like a joke by Kane but won Money in the Bank and the World Title, so Punk was just fine.
Even worse, though, is that this led to months of monsters feuding for the ECW Title, as Kane would feud with Mark Henry and The Big Show as Champion before finally losing the belt to Henry. At least that was a good thing. Mark Henry was a good ECW Champion.
#8 vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin (King of the Ring 1998)
This might just be the sick side of me talking, but when I was 12 years old watching the main event of King of the Ring in 1998, I wanted two things. One, for my hero Stone Cold Steve Austin to retain his WWF Championship, and two, for Kane to light himself on fire, as he promised he would do if he lost the First Blood match and did not win the title from Austin.
Sadly I was rewarded with neither of these events, as both Mankind and The Undertaker, on the same night as their infamous Hell in a Cell match, interfered. The Undertaker took a swing at Kane with a steel chair and hit Stone Cold instead, causing Austin to bleed and the referee to award the match and the WWF Title to Kane. Stone Cold would win the title back the very next night on RAW less than 24 hours later, so the entire stipulation was for nothing.
Obviously, the intended purpose of the match at King of the Ring was to get people to buy the show on PPV, because we were guaranteed to see someone bleed and because Steve Austin was untouchable and had only won the title 3 months earlier, we expected that Kane would set himself on fire. He was already set on fire two months prior to the first ever Inferno match, and we wanted more!
#7 vs. Rob Van Dam (SummerSlam 2003)
2003 was a weird year for Kane. And that’s saying something because in 2002 he had a feud with Triple H that accused him of being a murderer and necrophiliac -- and he never got his comeuppance! But in 2003, Kane would be unmasked for the first time (by Triple H, no less), set Jim Ross on fire, and later in the year he… well… electrocuted Shane McMahon in a very sensitive area using a car battery.
It was also an important year for Rob Van Dam. He was wildly popular as the only good guy on the heel team of The Alliance in 2001. In 2002 he became Intercontinental Champion and had a series of good matches with the likes of Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit, and then looked to move up to a higher level.
He was at an all-time high (no pun intended) only to be defeated easily by Triple H (and Ric Flair with the help of a sledgehammer) to lose his shot at newly minted World Heavyweight Championship. He continued to fail to win the title that year, and in 2003 he ended up teaming with Kane (the other victim of Triple H at the beginning of the “reign of terror).
They won the Tag Championship and held the belts for a few months. After losing the titles, Kane also lost his mask to Triple H (as mentioned above) and turned on his partner and friend, becoming a heel and sparking a rivalry with RVD.
Kane won their match at SummerSlam and then beat Van Dam again on an episode of RAW the following month in a cage match, sealing his victory in their feud. Kane would go on to have a bad match with Shane McMahon at Survivor Series (the electrocution incident) and then failed a few times to win the World Heavyweight Championship as the year came to a close.
WWE spent a bunch of time making Kane look strong in the second half of 2003 specifically so he could lose to a returning “Dead Man” Undertaker at WrestleMania XX in 2004. Oh, and RVD would go on to do nothing important for almost 3 years when he defeated John Cena in the Hammerstein Ballroom to win the WWE Title before getting fired for getting busted with drugs. Talk about a waste.
#6 vs. Rey Mysterio (Money in the Bank 2010)
This ended Rey Mysterio’s short-lived second World Championship reign, and while it was no big deal because the reign ended the ill-fated run of Jack Swagger, the implications for the future were extremely grim.
The storyline goes as such. The Undertaker got injured in a match against Mysterio (legitimately) so WWE came up with a storyline reason for him to be out of action for a while. He was “found” laid out by Kane, and Undertaker was declared to have been in a vegetative state.
Yes, he was not only in a coma, but there was apparently no brain activity going on. This was a story that WWE did in 2010. In any event, Mysterio would retain his title against Jack Swagger in their rematch at the MITB event, but Kane, who won the match of the same name earlier that night, cashed in his contract to be the first man to cash in on the same night.
Although Kane claimed that he attacked Mysterio in order to gain revenge for his brother because he blamed the luchador, it turned out that Kane, in fact, was the person responsible for taking out the Undertaker.
‘Taker, of course, ended up being just fine and returned with Paul Bearer before Paul Bearer turned on him and realigned himself with his son (remember that Kane is Bearer’s son?), and they used the magic of a light beam that emitted from Undertaker’s historic urn.
I’m done talking about it. The point is that Kane should not have defeated Rey Mysterio to win the World Title, because it led to a World Title feud, in 2010, between Kane and The Undertaker that featured storylines that would be expected in 1998. But they would have even been considered bad then. And the matches were even worse.
#5 vs. Bray Wyatt (Backlash 2016)
This didn’t turn out to be too detrimental in the long run, but it was still just ridiculous to see. Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt had become embroiled in a feud at the beginning of the new brand split, but Orton was concussed by Brock Lesnar the month before SmackDown’s first pay-per-view so their match could not take place. Wyatt instead wrestled Kane, and even though Orton interfered in the match to help him win, it should not have been a win for Kane.
Bray Wyatt had a chance at new life when the brand split began, and he was immediately defeated by Kane, who shouldn’t have been winning big matches in 2006, let alone 2016. As I said, it didn’t hurt Bray too much, as he and Orton would end up becoming a successful team and Bray even went on to win the WWE Championship early the following year.
#4 Vs. MVP (Armageddon 2006)
MVP’s first feud in WWE was against Kane, which also involved him teaming with Mr. Kennedy and Kane teaming with The Undertaker. It was a pretty entertaining affair that spanned the last few months of 2006, but MVP and Kennedy were made to look like they were severely lesser talents than Kane and ‘Taker, which did them no help in their young careers.
Kennedy and MVP ended up winning a number of matches, all by fluke, and when it came down to it, the feud’s finale saw Kane actually win an Inferno match when he lit MVP’s back on fire.
There’s no reason, as I said earlier, that Kane should have been winning big matches in 2006 let alone 2016, and this was indeed in 2006 against an opponent that spent the first few months of his tenure in the company looking like he wasn’t as good as he said he was.
MVP had some good moments and matches in his 4-year career with WWE, but I would estimate that his slow start did him no favours as he embarked on the rest of his time with the company.
#3 With The Undertaker vs. Bray Wyatt & Luke Harper (Survivor Series 2015)
WWE really loves the Brothers of Destruction. No matter what happens, they keep going back to either the rivalry between Kane and The Undertaker or the partnership between the men. Often, the partnership leaves to the rivalry or vice versa.
This was no different in late 2015. After turning face and leaving The Authority (mostly), Kane lost a title match to Seth Rollins and Corporate Kane was dead. This led to the return of Demon Kane full time, and because it was 25 years after The Undertaker’s WWE debut, he had to show up, and of course, he had to win.
Because they were of similar ilk, WWE chose Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper to be the sacrificial lambs to a pair of old guys who had no business beating a pair of men who could very well be the future of the company. Nah, just keep beating Bray Wyatt, and keep holding Luke Harper back. You know, the guy who is probably the best overall big man in the whole company today.
#2 With The Undertaker vs. DDP & Kanyon (SummerSlam 2001)
14 years before they teamed up to beat Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper, the Brothers of Destruction teamed up during the early stages of the WCW/ECW invasion storyline. Undertaker and Kane were the WCW Tag Team Champions and DDP and Kanyon were the WWF Tag Team Champions because at the time they loved having the warring factions holding each others’ belts.
Stone Cold Steve Austin, for example, the leader of the Alliance, was the WWF Champion, and the main event of SummerSlam 2001 saw The Rock, who was one of the leaders of the WWF, win the WCW Championship.
In any event, at the time, since this was early on, people still thought there was a chance that they would try to make the WCW/ECW alliance look strong. We were all very silly to think that, but think it we did.
Two great and popular talents from WCW were DDP and Kanyon, who were teamed up for no reason other than, as far as I can tell, they were both available. And Kanyon did a comedy gimmick for a while in WCW in which he parodied DDP, going around the arena hitting random “Kanyon Kutters” (as opposed to DDP’s Diamond Cutter).
DDP was actually brought into the WWF shortly before the Alliance storyline really took full effect, when he was revealed to be the man stalking The Undertaker’s then-wife, Sara. It was a terrible storyline that should never be spoken of, and it killed DDP dead, and he never recovered.
He may have had a chance, though, if he and Kanyon had defeated Undertaker and Kane inside this cage match that had both sets of tag titles on the line. Instead, the BOD dominated the relatively short match, made their opponents look like chumps, and both men immediately became non-players in the invasion storyline. What a mess.
#1 vs. Finn Balor (RAW, 10/23/17)
This is a debatable choice for the number one worst victory of Kane’s career, but this is what I’m going with. It was indeed very recent, less than two months before the time of this writing, but it was a glaring mistake. WWE needed a new monster to feed to Braun Strowman, and they chose pretty much the only monster left, Kane.
That’s all well and good. They also had to reintroduce Kane and give him some devastating victories to show how strong he is, which is also well and good. No issue there, since there are tons of guys on the roster that can be fed to the Big Red Machine and make him look impressive.
Instead, they decided to use Finn Balor. The popular leader of Balor Club Worldwide had defeated The Phenomenal AJ Styles, former WWE Champion, one of the most popular and protected wrestlers in the company right now, the guy who would become WWE Champion for a second time a short few weeks later -- just ONE NIGHT before taking a match with Kane and being summarily pounded into the mat like a nobody.
Sure, Balor put up a decent fight before falling to three chokeslams, but why did they make this choice? It’s worth noting that it didn’t take three chokeslams to defeat Balor. He didn’t kick out of two of them, only to fall to a devastating third one after a valiant fight. Kane simply chokeslammed him, picked him up, chokeslammed him, picked him up again, and then chokeslammed him one more time for good measure. Talk about overkill.
Finn would go on to receive a Tombstone piledriver on the entrance stage the following week and has yet to get any retribution. He won’t be getting any retribution, either, because Kane has to be kept strong so he can be killed by Braun Strowman. Sure, maybe Finn will challenge and defeat Kane once he’s been taken down by The Monster Among Men, but it won’t have the same effect.
Finn has been relegated to doing nothing important in the weeks since his destruction at the hands of Kane, and it doesn’t look like things will be changing anytime soon. It’s absolutely baffling that WWE would sacrifice a guy like Balor when the only thing it accomplishes is making Finn look bad. Kane could have beaten anybody and it would have had the same positive effect on him. This was just poor.
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