Top 10 Pointless WrestleMania Matches

WrestleMania is the Show of Shows, the Grandest Stage of them All, the Showcase of the Immortals. Sometimes, it’s also the grand stage of garbage. That’s what this list is about. It includes not necessarily the worst WWE matches to ever happen at WrestleMania, but the matches that shouldn’t have happened at all.

These are matches that had no reason to exist. They should be stricken from the record books and wiped from everybody’s memories. Some, indeed, are worse than others (just read on and you’ll see) but they all need to just disappear.

You may be surprised by some of the entries on this list, but when you read what I have to say about them, I bet you will agree with me. The stories leading up to them are either bad or non-existent and sometimes the story didn’t end with the match. That makes some of these matches even more pointless than they would have been if they were just a one-and-done!

Read ahead and try to forget these pointless matches from WrestleMania history.

#10 Yokozuna vs. Lex Luger (WrestleMania X)

yokozuna lex luger — Lex Luger challenged Yokozuna for the WWF Title at WrestleMania X

In the first of two WWF Championship matches that evening, Yokozuna defended his WWF Championship against Lex Luger, the co-winner of the 1994 Royal Rumble match. This wasn’t necessarily the worst booking decision of all time, because it was pretty unique. The reason the match was pointless is that nobody wanted Lex Luger to win and nobody believed that he was going to win.

After Hulk Hogan left the WWF in 1993, Vince McMahon tried to create his replacement. Instead of going with something new and different, something the fans wanted, he instead went with a carbon copy -- the overly patriotic, much-too-tanned, blonde, muscle-bound Lex Luger. The crowd wanted Bret Hart -- the regular guy, mild-tanned, dark haired, medium built Bret Hart. Sound familiar?

In any event, Lex had failed to win the hearts of the crowd, and the WWF Championship, in the summer of 1993. He spent the fall and winter trying to get another shot and eventually got to enter the Royal Rumble match. 1994 was only the second year that earned the winner a shot at the WWF Championship at WrestleMania, and it was Luger’s only chance to avenge his loss to Yoko from SummerSlam.

At the same time, Bret Hart had a score to settle with Yokozuna that went back to the previous year’s WrestleMania, in which Yokozuna defeated him for the WWF Championship when Yoko’s manager, Mr Fuji, threw salt in Bret’s eyes.

Again, the overall story was good, because both men had a reason to want a shot at the champion and it was something very different for the WWF to do, especially for its time. But Luger was the wrong guy to do it with because the majority of the crowd didn’t have any interest in him. Maybe using Bret and his brother Owen Hart, who were feuding at the time, would have been a better idea.

#9 Torrie Wilson & Sable vs. Stacy Keibler & Miss Jackie (WrestleMania XX)

torrie and sable — Torrie Wilson and Sable were something of an "item" in 2004

WrestleMania XX is one of the best WrestleMania events of all time, but it does have its shortcomings. WWE was out of the Attitude era and still within the “Ruthless Aggression” era (2002 to 2005? don’t know the timeline, but it was short-lived) but that didn’t mean they were done wasting time with women’s matches that nobody wanted to see.

Now, I understand that at the time it was more acceptable to use women that way, but by 2004 the company had a number of good female wrestlers. Two of them, Victoria and Molly Holly, wrestled for the Women’s Championship on the same show!

I’m not against women being used in things like “Playboy evening gown matches” such as this one at WrestleMania XX or the “Playboy pillow fight” the previous year. Sexy women doing sexual things has its place in society and entertainment, and if the women are comfortable doing it, I’m all for it.

In the context of pro wrestling, it works fine, especially if those women aren’t very good (or just plain bad) wrestlers. They just don’t need a spot on a show like WrestleMania. I’ll watch it all day long on TV, the website, even a DVD release. They did that stuff all the time back then.

WWE had a good relationship with Playboy magazine and from 1997 through 2005, one of the WWE’s women was on the cover of Hef’s publication almost every year. It sells magazines, not tickets.

#8 Andre The Giant vs. Hulk Hogan (WrestleMania IV)

hogan andre — Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant faced off in the title tournament at WrestleMania IV

This was part of the tournament to crown a new WWF Champion, as it had been vacated when Andre The Giant beat Hogan for the title in a shady manner and immediately handed it over to the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase, who claimed to be the new champ. The reason the match is on this list is that it’s one of the biggest cop-out matches in the history of the company.

One year prior, at WrestleMania III, Hulk Hogan successfully defended the title against Andre and also became the “first” man to pick him up and slam him. It was the biggest match in WWF history, and some claim that it still is the company’s biggest match to this day.

The rematch in which Andre won the title took place about a month and a half before, but it was disappointing because of the “evil referee” finish, in which Dave Hebner’s brother, Earl, was paid to count Hogan down for the pin even though his shoulders were off the mat.

So when it was announced that Hogan and Andre were both given byes into the Quarterfinal round of the WWF Title tournament at WrestleMania IV, it was a big deal. Finally, a rematch that would be called fair and down the middle, just like their clash at WrestleMania III.

One of the men was going to prove to be the better man by winning and advancing in the tournament and getting one step closer to the title. Sadly, they fought to a double disqualification in an extremely disappointing match that only existed to further the storyline of Ted DiBiase trying to buy his way back to the title. Why bother doing the match?

Hogan and Andre had a cage match in the summer of 1988 at the WrestleFest event to properly close out their feud, but it didn’t negate the fact that everyone was let down after the excitement of getting a WrestleMania rematch of the biggest match of all time. That cage match can’t even be found on the WWE Network, although you can find it on YouTube. It wasn’t even shown on TV or PPV -- it was part of a home video release.

#7 Edge vs. Booker T (WrestleMania x8)

edge booker t — The sign in the crowd says it all

Is there really even that much to be said about this match? Booker T came into the WWF in June 2001 as the WCW Heavyweight and United States Champion, having become a double champion in March on the final episode of Monday Nitro.

He relinquished the US Title to Kanyon as a show of solidarity of the Alliance during the InVasion angle and would lose the WCW Title to The Rock a couple months later at SummerSlam (he lost it to Kurt Angle for a very short period of time before this, but gained it back quickly).

After the InVasion storyline ended, Booker teamed up with Vince McMahon and the Big Bossman in a reprisal of the Austin vs. McMahon storyline. That was extremely short, lasting less than two months, and Booker never got a proper match with Austin. They did have that classic grocery store segment that saw Austin completely humiliate Booker, but that was it.

In any event, Booker T was pretty much a chump once the Alliance vs. WWF storyline was over. Edge, by contrast, had broken out as a singles star. He won the 2001 King of the Ring tournament and won the Intercontinental Championship at SummerSlam.

Christian turned on him because he felt marginalized like he was the second fiddle to the more popular Edge. Christian joined the Alliance and Edge eventually vanquished him. He finished the InVasion storyline as the Intercontinental and United States Champion, and the titles were merged. He also had a decent feud with William Regal, where he lost the IC Title.

What I’m saying here is that the men were on pretty different career trajectories, with Booker T’s stock lowering from March to December 2001 and Edge’s stock significantly rising during that same time period. But both men were without anything to do at WrestleMania, so WWE concocted a ludicrous Japanese shampoo commercial for the two to fight over, and they had a forgettable match.

Edge would go on to become an even bigger singles star when he feuded with Kurt Angle on SmackDown when the original brand split began, and Booker trod water for a while. This match could have jumpstarted both of their careers right before the brand split, but instead, they just got lazy.

#6 John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt (WrestleMania XXX)

Here’s one you may not have expected to see on the list. Sadly, it needs to be here. Not only did the match, and the entire feud, turn out to be pointless, but it was the beginning of the end for the Bray Wyatt character.

Wyatt was pretty new to the scene having debuted just the previous summer. His first match was at SummerSlam in 2013, less than eight months before this WrestleMania match against John Cena.

People really thought that Wyatt was going to be the guy who was eventually going to take over the role of the crazy dark guy once Undertaker hung up his boots. He was creepy, he had minions, he was super over with the crowd and he was essentially untouchable. In fact, he defeated Daniel Bryan as clean as clean gets at the 2014 Royal Rumble event, only a couple of months before Bryan won the WWE World Heavyweight Title at WrestleMania.

The machine, it seemed, really was behind Bray. Enter John Cena. Now, this entry isn’t about how John Cena “buried” Bray Wyatt or anything like that. My feelings on that matter are unimportant. It’s about the terrible, pointless, ineffective story.

Wyatt, a destructive person who played mind games and wanted to drag everyone into the depths of near-insanity with him, started targeting Cena, saying that he was soft and that he would need to embrace the darkness in order to stand a chance against the mysterious newcomer. The match itself wasn’t necessarily bad, but it certainly wasn’t good.

Bray tried to get Cena to embrace his anger while Cena poorly acted like he was conflicted, as though he might actually do it. The main issue here is two-fold. One, Cena NEVER had a problem being vicious when he needed to be. The man has had hellacious I Quit and the Last Man Standing matches, First Blood matches and everything else you can think of -- all while being the white meat babyface that he has played for almost a decade and a half.

Bray trying to make him be vicious for the first time was impossible because it wasn’t “for the first time”. They played the match as though Cena was cautious to even throw a punch because he was afraid to descend into the darkness or some silly thing like that.

In the end, Cena would overcome and defeat Wyatt at WrestleMania. It was Bray’s first loss. He would go on to defeat Cena in a really bad cage month the following month before Cena beat him in a Last Man Standing match the month after that. During none of this did Cena ever “change” or act more vicious -- he was regular John Cena doing regular John Cena things, including showing extra aggression when necessary.

Bray lost his aura and although there have been glimpses, he hasn’t gotten it back. He went on to lose to The Undertaker at the next WrestleMania, got beat up by The Rock the next year, lost a terrible match to Randy Orton after that and showed up for a few minutes in the pre-show battle royal at WrestleMania 34.

Bad booking, not John Cena, caused the demise of Wyatt, but it was this WrestleMania feud and match that started it all. Nothing changed for Cena and nothing changed for Wyatt, either, except for losing momentum and staying in the middle of the card instead of moving up to the top. The pointless match was siply a waste of time.

#5 Genichiro Tenryu & Koji Kitao vs. Demolition (WrestleMania VII)

Kitao and Tenryu have had extremely different careers. Both working in the short-lived Super World of Sports promotion, Kitao had debuted as a wrestler in late 1989 and was less than 2 years into the business when this match happened.

Tenryu had been a wrestler for 15 years at this point and had already won the prestigious Triple Crown, which was the top championship for All Japan Pro Wrestling. He continued to wrestle through 2015. Kitao didn’t really do much, wrestling in 1997 but never achieving anything significant.

Tenryu showed up a couple of more times in the WWF, but only as an enforcer-type character with Mr Fuji and Yokozuna. Super World of Sports had a working relationship with the WWF, and many of the WWF guys worked in Japan for them during their short 2-year run.

This specific match at the 7th WrestleMania event had no build and just sort of happened. The Japanese contingent defeated Demolition, a legendary team that split up shortly after this. It wasn’t even the real Demolition, as the third member, Crush, had taken the place of Ax, who left the WWF in late 1990.

It was essentially a post-intermission cool-down match (it followed the Savage vs. Warrior retirement match) that nobody cared about. Nobody knew who the Japanese guys were and Demolition was done. The match happened, but it didn’t need to and was a sad way to see Demolition go.

#4 The Undertaker vs. Shane McMahon (WrestleMania 32)

I hated this storyline and I did not like the match. The jump from the top of the Hell in a Cell structure was the only thing that's memorable about the match. Shane McMahon returning to WWE was an amazing and shocking moment, but it went downhill almost immediately. They had some vague story about a “lockbox” that Shane owned that had secrets about Vince -- personal, business, it was never explained -- and that was only spoken of one time.

To summarize, Vince gave Stephanie McMahon some sort of stupid fake achievement award, but Shane, who apparently caught wind of this somehow, made his return after being gone for almost seven years to protest.

Stephanie was still technically in charge of RAW along with Triple H, and Shane said that he hated the direction they were going, so he was returning to right the ship. He also said that he had a lockbox of Vince’s secrets that he would reveal -- I guess -- if Vince didn’t give him what he wanted. Not really sure.

In any event, Vince said that Shane could run RAW if he won a match at WrestleMania, but if he lost, he would have to leave and hand over the lockbox. It was revealed that Undertaker would be Shane’s opponent. Shane lost, handed over the lockbox (we assume since it was never mentioned again) and then never went away.

In fact, he started to run RAW literally the night after he lost the match that stipulated that he had to win in order to be the General Manager of RAW.

That’s the definition of pointless. Stipulate that a guy has to win a match to run the show. He loses the match and then gets to run the show anyway, effectively in less than 24 hours after losing the said match. There was so much wrong with this storyline. The match existed because they somehow couldn’t come up with a way to get Undertaker on the card and because they wanted Shane to jump from a high place. Just terrible.

#3 Fandango vs. Chris Jericho (WrestleMania 29)

They had their hearts in the right place. Well, at least Chris Jericho did because according to the stories, it was Jericho who asked to put Fandango over at WrestleMania. Just one month after debuting the Fandango character on an episode of SmackDown (after almost four months of vignettes and a name change from Fandango to Fandango), he had his debut match in a victory over Chris Jericho at WrestleMania. Think about that.

You debut as a brand new character after a disappointing prior run and a month later you are defeating Chris Jericho at WrestleMania. That has to mean you’re going to be huge, right?

Nope. Despite his gimmick and theme song becoming ironically huge, WWE did nothing with him. He lost the rematch with Jericho on the next PPV, Extreme Rules. He suffered a concussion before the Payback PPV a few weeks later and was taken out of a triple threat match for the Intercontinental Championship.

It’s rumoured that he was supposed to win the match, but that is just speculation based on the fact that his replacement, Curtis Axel, ended up winning the title. Fandango made his return on July 1, 2013, about a month after the concussion. Since then, he’s essentially been a joke. All of his WrestleMania appearances since his debut (30, 31, 32, 33, and 34 as of this writing) have been in losing efforts in the Andre the Giant Battle Royal. That’s one hell of a fall from grace.

It’s completely unclear as to exactly what happened. Was he just a pet project of Chris Jericho that the former multi-time World Champion hoped to get over? Because if that’s the case, he did get over, and WWE still ruined him almost immediately.

This match is one of the top three most pointless matches in WrestleMania history because it had exactly zero impact on anything that happened after the show. I’d rather that it never happened at all.

#2 Booker T and Sharmell vs. The Boogeyman (WrestleMania 22)

booker t boogeyman — Booker T gets knocked down by The Boogeyman at WrestleMania 22

Booker T’s story in WWE is an odd one. He came in as the WCW Champion and was quickly reduced to cannon fodder for the “real” stars of the WWF. He fought a match over shampoo in his first WrestleMania.

He actually made it up to the status of wrestling for one of the World Titles in his second WrestleMania but was embarrassed in defeat after losing a match that followed over a month of being harassed by racially insensitive remarks from the Champion (Triple H).

He went on to have some success as a tag wrestler and won the tag titles with RVD, even successfully defending them on his third WrestleMania. He had a ridiculously stupid feud against The Undertaker that saw him try to use voodoo to beat the Deadman, only to be squashed and made to look like a fool.

His fourth WrestleMania appearance was in a battle royal that was untelevised, but at least he won! That was WrestleMania 21. Oh, and let’s not forget that storyline where Kurt Angle wanted to have “beastiality sex” with Booker’s wife!

Then, we come to WrestleMania 22. Booker T and his wife had been taunted and chased around by the worm-eating Boogeyman for a few weeks and ended up in a handicap match against him at the Show of Shows, which they lost. Good lord. It was an embarrassing time to be a Booker T fan.

He would eventually get a World Title run, as he won the King of the Ring later that year and shortly after would win the World Heavyweight Title. That was a good time to be a fan of Booker T, but sadly he would be gone from WWE about one year later.

His biggest WrestleMania moments were being defeated to end a feud that saw him repeatedly get put down for being black, and losing a 3-minute match that ended with him being covered in live worms. Oy.

#1 Michael Cole vs. Jerry Lawler (WrestleMania XXVII)

This match. This storyline. I just can’t. Michael Cole began a heel turn when he started making snide remarks about Daniel Bryan being a loser during Bryan’s original run on the terrifyingly bad NXT television show that replaced WWE’s ECW in 2010.

He was grating and annoying on commentary, continually badmouthing Bryan, and eventually started going after all of the good guys and siding with all of the heels, most especially The Miz, who was Bryan’s “pro” in the first season of NXT. Miz would win the WWE Title in late 2010, and in early 2011 Cole helped him defeat Jerry Lawler in a TLC match on RAW, during the feud that led to this match.

The whole thing was a result of a terrible storyline. Cole was miserable to listen to on commentary, and nothing they did with his heel character was fun, entertaining, or enjoyable in any way. The whole thing should have culminated at WrestleMania, but after a nearly 15-minute match (unbelievable…) he ended up getting a DQ victory over Lawler due to referee Stone Cold Steve Austin’s interference.

The storyline would continue for nearly two more months (!!!!) before Lawler properly defeated Cole at the Over The Limit PPV (Cole and Jack Swagger defeated Lawler and Jim Ross at the Extreme Rules PPV the month prior), and it ended the way it should have at WrestleMania, in about 3 minutes.

It was awful PPV, and all-around just bad. And then, when it was all over, Cole apologized, Lawler accepted and it was water under the bridge. Just one big, giant waste of time. I don’t know who was responsible for the idea for not only Cole to be a heel commentator for two and a half years, but also for him to have three consecutive PPV matches, and actually winning two of them.

You’d think that they would close the chapter at WrestleMania. It still would have been a pointless match because there was no money to be made since nobody was paying to see Michael Cole get beat up, but it’s even more pointless because the outcome of the match made the whole rotten thing last even longer.

Horrible. I’m sorry that I’m writing this right now because I’m having to live it all over again. I’m sorry for making you read this, and hopefully, you were able to miss this all when it happened. Ugh.

Send us news tips at [email protected]

One of Samoa Joe's colleagues had harsh words for him HERE