5 Worst Wrestling Matches Of 1992

Pro wrestling shows can be weird events. In some cases, on the same show that you find one of the best matches of the year, you’ll also find its exact opposite. This has been true for many years and has affected many different companies.

Take WWE, for example. WrestleMania III is widely regarded as the pinnacle of that company’s history, its biggest and most celebrated show of all time. That event witnessed one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time in ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage vs. Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat. It was such a critically-acclaimed match that people still talk about it over thirty years later.

Yet on that same show was one of the worst matches of all time in Hulk Hogan vs. André the Giant. While WWE has managed to almost completely distort its own history about that ‘legendary’ moment, the truth was that the match in question sucked.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only WWE event to host both a best match of the year and one of its worst, as we will see for the 1992 edition of the five worst matches of the year.

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#5 Virgil vs. Nailz – SummerSlam 1992

Some matches are just so boring that the only reaction they generate is apathy

The early 1990s WWF was filled with awful gimmicks, and Nailz was one of the worst. The concept was that he was a former convict seeking revenge on the Big Bossman, which he got by fighting Virgil for some reason.

When it came to the wrestling match, Nailz’s offense was incredibly limited. He couldn’t do very much and spent a lot of time doing chokes and rest-hold-like maneuvers. That made this match into a snooze-fest, as it was void of anything particularly exciting.

Ironically, that choking is what made Nailz infamous in later years. Not because he did it in a match, but because of his confrontation with Vince McMahon. Nailz allegedly choked Vince in his office, and was fired by WWE for doing so. Nailz even became a central figure in the steroid trial against Vince, but his testimony was said to have been so bad that it led to Vince being acquitted.

That entire fiasco, which wasn’t even seen on TV or in front of a live audience, seems more interesting when you read about it than this match with Nailz actually wrestling.

#4 The Undertaker vs. Kamala – SummerSlam 1992

The Undertaker’s early years were some of his worst, as he was often stuck wrestling in gimmick matches and suffered from disqualifications. This is one of those matches, as the Undertaker’s entrance was more exciting than his actual match.

Undertaker and Kamala fought for all of three minutes, before Kamala’s manager got involved and hit Undertaker to cause shenanigans. It was a disappointing match because nothing exciting really happened. Neither Undertaker nor Kamala really did anything overly athletic, and this was too ‘even’ to be a squash as it actually looked like both wrestlers were trying to go somewhere with this contest.

While the ‘DQ finish to set up a rematch’ approach does work in WWE a lot, it doesn’t help when the match that was ended by DQ didn’t have much action to begin with. Even if the match went another two or three minutes, that would’ve given both wrestlers enough time to make more out of the story they were trying to tell.

#3 Hulk Hogan vs. Sid Justice – WrestleMania VIII

By the early 1990s, Hulkamania was way past its prime, yet no one had told Hogan that. He was still wrestling in main-event matches, yet those contests were anything but riveting. Hogan wrestled Sid in the main event of WrestleMania VIII in one of the most boring matches of the 1990s.

Because both of them were muscular power wrestlers that weighed around 300 pounds, neither one of them could do much chain grappling or hit any exceptional moves. The majority of the contest centered on tests of strength and rest holds, which almost put the audience to sleep.

Unfortunately, this match is also famous for having one of the biggest botched endings in wrestling history. As Hogan was going for his Leg Drop, Papa Shango was supposed to run in and break up the pin, resulting in a disqualification. However, Shango missed his time cue, which forced Sid to kick out of the Leg Drop (possibly as revenge for Hogan kicking out of Sid’s Powerbomb finisher).

The shenanigans continue with Shango and Harvey Whippleman hitting the ring, before the Ultimate Warrior makes returns and cleans house alongside Hogan. While the fans did wake up for Warrior, they were almost completely zoned out for the actual main event match, which tells you a lot about the state of WWE’s world title picture in the early 1990s.

#2 Sting vs. Jake Roberts – Halloween Havoc '92

This match being awful is not the fault of either wrestler. Instead, blame falls squarely on the head of Bill Watts, who was WCW’s booker in 1992. Watts had some unusual rules and creative ideas, and this was one of them. He had a concept called ‘Spin the wheel, make the deal’, which meant that the match type would literally be decided by chance.

The stipulation? A Coal Miner’s Glove match. A match that required two men to race up a turnbuckle and retrieve an item. This was a ridiculous concept that made the match look more like a joke than a serious fight between two bitter rivals.

Because of the random stipulation, Roberts and Sting couldn’t have a good match at all. The entire match consisted of a continuous holding pattern where one of them would hit a move, stare each other down, circle each other in the ring, and repeat. By the time the eponymous Coal Miner’s Glove came into play, it didn’t make any difference as outside interference by Cactus Jack and a ‘defanged cobra’ caused the match to end via shenanigans.

This was easily one of the worst ways to end a wrestling feud, and serves as the perfect example of why ‘spinning wheel with different stipulations’ is a disastrous concept that needs to be avoided at all costs.

#1 Rick Rude vs. Masahiro Chono– Halloween Havoc 199

This is one of those matches that looked good on paper but ended up awful in practice. This is because for twenty minutes, virtually nothing happened. And when anything did happen, it was so slow you’d think that Rude and Chono were wrestling underwater. Maybe it was due to a language barrier, but the majority of the match was composed of rest-holds, unexciting submissions, and most headlocks than all the Randy Orton matches.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the match ended in a dusty finish thanks to the added stipulation of two special guest referees in Harley Race and Kensuke Sasaki. Shenanigans occurred, a ref got bumped, and the match was inconclusive as the referees argue over which wrestler won the match.

These sorts of finishes are the kinds that help the wrestlers little and irritate viewers a lot. Having matches end due to referee disagreement only works on rare occasions, and help if the actual wrestling was good. In this case, it wasn’t, and left more fans groaning in disappointment than cheering in approval.