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When you are about to watch a match from the likes of Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Kurt Angle and AJ Styles, you know you are in for what will likely be a showstopping affair.
Some wrestlers can do just no wrong in the squared circle. But not everyone. Almost any superstar can have an off night, an off week, an off month, or in the case of this list, an off year. And I'm not referring to mid-card performers or lesser known stars, sometimes the biggest and best in WWE can have a string of bad performances. Whether it be nagging injuries holding them back, or not connecting with the right opponent, some of the best of all time can have a bad match, or two... three, four and maybe more.
All of this and more, effected these superstars. Although having been great before and after, these big names each had at least one year of their professional careers where they just seriously lacked in great performances in the ring.
#5 Scott Steiner - 2003
With brother Rick, Scott Steiner is one of the greatest tag team wrestlers of all time. The Steiner Brothers dominated tag team wrestling in WWE, WCW and elsewhere throughout the 90's.
The Steiner's broke up in early 1998 when Scott turned on his brother and joined the NWO. Scott easily became the 'Shawn Michaels' while Rick was the Marty Janetty. Scott shined in singles competition, winning several Championships, including the WCW World Championship in October 2000, until the last ever episode of Nitro in 2001.
Scott took a break from wrestling to deal with some injuries, and after longtime speculation, he finally returned to WWE in late 2002. Scott was given a main event push immediately, as he feuded with Triple H for the World Championship. Before his return match at the 2003 Royal Rumble with The Game, Scott had only wrestled a handful of matches on the independent scene, and was dealing with minor injuries, so it was going to be interesting to see how the match with Triple H would go, and as it turned out, very bad.
Scott and Triple H had arguably the worst match of the year at the Royal Rumble, but WWE didn't give up on their new top dollar performer just yet. Scott's main event push continued for another month, ending with an equally awful rematch with Triple H at No Way Out. Scott spent the remainder of the year teaming and feuding with Test, with few decent matches.
Scott was released by WWE in 2004 after they decided they had no use for him in the ring. Scott managed to bounce back, of sorts, in TNA Impact Wrestling in 2006. During his 6+ years with the company, he has had several highly entertaining matches.
#4 Booker T - 2004
After being one of WCW's best tag team wrestlers in the 90's as apart of Harlem Heat, Booker T was finally given his biggest singles push in 2000 when he defeated Jeff Jarrett at the controversial Bash At The Beach event for his first WCW World Championship.
By the time WCW went out of business, Booker had become a 4 time WCW Champion, and winning his fifth in WWE. Booker's main event push in 2001 in WWE was full of starting and stopping, before eventually staying at a very slow pace throughout 2002 and 2003. Despite being barely featured in Heavyweight Championship matches during that time, Booker T still had many excellent performances.
The, something happened, and it is hard to say what exactly. Booker T just seemed to have a very off year in 2004, with very few entertaining matches. He started the year off by forming a short-lived tag team with Rob Van Dam, which, while they did win the Tag Team titles, the team only existed for the duo to have something to do at WrestleMania XX.
Booker was then transferred over to Smackdown, and after a few weeks of squash matches, he entered what seemed like a promising feud with The Undertaker.
The two met in the ring at Judgement Day, for what would be a very sluggish 11 minute match. And a rematch on Smackdown 3 weeks later was no better. From here, Booker entered a 4 month long feud with John Cena. Now today, John Cena is probably one of the best of all time, but back in 2004, it was quite the opposite, John was just complete pants. He was very inexperienced for the position he was in, and it showed very much in his Best of 5 Series with Booker T.
After a dozen dismal matches with John Cena, Booker entered the WWE Championship picture where he unsuccessfully challenged the then barely mobile JBL, in a couple boring matches. Booker at least ended the year on a high in a great Fatal Four Way with Bradshaw, Undertaker and Eddie Guerrero at Armageddon. He bounced back to his entertaining ways in 2005 with a string of rewarding matches with Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit.
#3 John Cena - 2008 & 2009
Two for one in this entry.
John Cena has always gotten a lot of flack from fans over the years, but he hasn't deserved it all. I mean sure, in his early years he was a little interminable to watch, and only shined in matches with opponents on the level of Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho and The Undertaker, but by 2006 he had become quite an entering performer in the ring.
In fact, John was one of the best wrestlers in all of WWE in 2007, regularly stealing the show, often on pay-per-view even. During a match with Mr. Kennedy on the October 1, 2007 episode of Raw, Cena suffered a legitimate torn pectoral muscle while executing a hip toss and was out of action for the rest of the year, and when he returned at the 2008 Royal Rumble, it was almost as if he had returned to his former interminable self.
John entered 2008 to a sling of bad matches. He managed to have some decent efforts with Triple H and Randy Orton on pay-per-view, but his matches on RAW were very poor. He reopened his feud with JBL at one point, which gave us more boring matches and his 'dream match' with Batista at SummerSlam fell very short of expectations.
After a few months on the shelf, he returned for some average PPV matches with Chris Jericho to close the year. And 2009 wasn't much better. While he ended his on/off years feud with Edge on a high, he spent several months having some of the years worst matches with the Big Show, and spent the rest of the year having a mix of really good and really bad matches with Randy Orton.
John bounced back in 2010 with a number of solid matches with Batista, The Nexus, CM Punk and more and has been highly entertaining in the ring ever since, solidifying himself as one of the best ever.
#2 Triple H - 2003
Triple H finally stepped out of Shawn Michael's shadow in 1999, and solidified himself as one of the best in the world in 2000, and continued this pattern throughout 2001 (until his injury) and 2002.
Things slowed down, way down, for The Game in 2003. Triple H spent much of the year dealing with various minor and nagging injuries, and refusing to take time off to deal with them. Instead, he made the questionable decision to keep the World Heavyweight Championship for the majority of the year, despite being hardly mobile in the ring.
Not only did these various injuries hamper Triple H's performances, but he literately spent the entire year destroying what remained of WCW. Triple H spent the entire of 2003 feuding with former WCW stars. He started the year off in an interminable feud with Scott Steiner, which provided us with the two worst matches of the year (Royal Rumble, No Way Out).
He then moved onto Booker T. While Booker was one of the most, if not the most deserving superstar on RAW to be the World Heavyweight Champions, Triple H used his creative stroke to scrap plans for Booker to defeat him at WrestleMania, with instead The Game defeating him in a barely passable match, with a horrible ending of Booker laying lifeless in the ring for 20 seconds after a Pedigree, and then being covered.
When Triple H was finished with the Book, he feuded with his good buddy Kevin Nash. The had a poor match at Judgement Day and one of the worst Hell in A Cell matches ever at Bad Blood. Triple H spent the remained of the year feuding with Goldberg. Goldberg managed to squeeze a couple decent matches out of the injured Triple H, before The Game decided to end Goldberg's three month Championship reign, because I guess the previous 9 months Triple H had held the big gold belt, wasn't enough time.
The only worthy match of the year contender Triple H over the entire year, occurred on the very last episode of RAW in 2003, battling to a draw with Shawn Michaels in a stunning match. The reopened feud with Shawn Michaels helped bring Triple H back to having excellent match in 2004.
#1 The Undertaker - 2001
The Undertaker is arguably the greatest superstar in history of WWE. However, he hasn't always been one of the best performers every year, and one very noticeable big exception was in 2001.
I don't know what happened with him in 2001, he wasn't injured, in fact to be honest, he just seemed lazy. The year didn't start off too bad for the American Badass, as he was having entertaining tag team matches with 'brother' Kane, and had a great match at WrestleMania X-7 with Triple H. He also had a good feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin over the WWE Championship with some decent pay-per-view matches.
The lazy part of the year for The Undertaker, seems to have mostly been during the Invasion angle. Taker spent several months of it in the years worst feud, with Diamond Dallas Page. Other than the stalker angle being creepy and ruining DDP's career, the worst part of the feud was the matches. Taker just wouldn't give DDP anything, it seemed like every match they had, Take squashed the former WCW Champion. Taker senselessly injured DDP in a squash tag team Cage match at SummerSlam, and then had the worst match of 2001 with Kronik at Unforgiven.
Throughout RAW and Smackdown, Taker annihilated the like of Raven, Kanyon, Steven Richards and others, and didn't give Booker T much to work with during their short feud, which Taker selfishly dominated. Taker also showed some greed in his year ending feud with Rob Van Dam, although at least RVD managed to scrape a good match out of him.
The Undertaker turned things around for the better in 2002, becoming the complete opposite. In 2002, he wrestled some of the years best matches and put newer stars over.
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