Wrestling, cruel? Vince McMahon, vindictive? But he puts smiles on faces, pal!
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00:00Spite is a powerful motivator. Just ask Vince McMahon, whose booking makes up the majority of this list.
00:07I'm Adam Wilborn from WhatCulture and these are 9 wrestling matches booked out of spite.
00:129. The 2005 Royal Rumble
00:15As spitefully funny as it might be, remembering the sight of Vince McMahon no-selling a torn quad with his arse planted on the canvas like a child,
00:23that is not the 2005 Royal Rumble's meanest moment.
00:26Not least because it wasn't planned.
00:28And real spite involves a certain element of premeditation.
00:31And that was scarily evident when Daniel Pewter entered the titular battle royal to take an on-screen hazing for some supposed crimes the year prior.
00:40The tough enough winner entered the match third.
00:42Right as competitors number one and two, Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit, were gleefully beating the crap out of each other.
00:48Naturally, they paused that conflict to sadistically smash the shout of the newbie.
00:53As did entrant number four, drumroll please, Hardcore Holly.
00:57Pewter had infamously caught Kurt Angle out during another borderline abusive tough enough segment the prior summer,
01:02and the locker room heavies clearly enjoyed making him pay for this apparent act of disrespect.
01:09The beating was too on the nose for its own good, and the sort of thing that thankfully won't ever happen again.
01:148. The Big Show vs. Acabono
01:17For almost all of his time in WWE, Big Show was considered overweight by his employers.
01:24It's fair to say Paul White was packing more tonnage than he had during his breakout years in WCW,
01:29but wholly unfair to suggest that he was the sort of size in keeping with sumo wrestling.
01:36Alas, this was his lot at 2005's WrestleMania 21, when he took two-sports star Acabono in an exhibition that made him look multifariously daft.
01:46Long zooms on his dimpled and mostly exposed arse were done for the benefit of those guffawing in the gorilla position,
01:53rather than any kind of artistic expression, and the match itself failed to elicit anything from an otherwise molten audience.
02:007. Tay Conti vs. Santana Garrett
02:04Friday, the 16th of October 2021, brought back feelings that had laid dormant for the better part of two years.
02:11A super-sized smackdown was front-loaded in an effort to throttle that Friday's rampage during a rare overlap,
02:17resulting in 90 minutes of live, head-to-head action.
02:20Both sides were magnificently petty.
02:23WWE utilized Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, and a monster Sasha Banks-Becky Lynch match,
02:28while AEW chased random magic with Bryan Danielson vs. Minoru Suzuki,
02:33and not-so-random spite with Tay Conti vs. Santana Garrett.
02:37The latter clash had some real spice.
02:40Garrett Conti was the first thing that ever defeated AEW in a viewership court hour
02:45in the earliest days of NXT and Dynamite going head-to-head.
02:48With Conti now an AEW regular and Garrett available for the night,
02:52a throwback fight night saw one side land a remarkably sly jab.
02:56Number 6. Adam Cole vs. Matt Riddle
02:59It was the black and gold brand's biggest match at the time,
03:03and it proved to be one of the show's best ever, too.
03:05But Adam Cole vs. Matt Riddle was representative of something much bigger than the NXT Championship.
03:12The match was built up for that specific time,
03:14because WWE were keen to try and marginalize their new competition from the off.
03:19This was night one of a new wrestling show, and the mandate was clear.
03:23Dynamite was to be challenged not with a show that gradually built to the biggest matches,
03:27but with the biggest matches.
03:29Predictably, the show couldn't keep doling out these massive matches on a weekly basis.
03:33The increased desperation was clear within the first year of a supposed war
03:37that ended up being somewhat of a massacre.
03:40And don't forget, if you are desperate for more wrestling content,
03:43hit that subscribe button and ring the bell.
03:45Number 5. Triple H vs. CM Punk
03:48The voice of the voiceless had already returned a touch too early
03:52from his transcendent WWE Championship victory at Money in the Bank,
03:55and then won a rematch against John Cena in less than clean fashion,
03:59then found himself battered by Kevin Nash and dethroned by Alberto Del Rio.
04:04Detonating a pipe bomb had started well,
04:07but suddenly he was losing way more than he was winning.
04:10The intended night of Champions clash with Nash would have surely gone his way,
04:13but when the game stepped in for his injured mate,
04:16the figurative betting may as well have been suspended.
04:20Hunter had fumed on screen with a couple of Punk's near-the-knuckle gestures and remarks,
04:25and presumably could not bloody wait to plant him with a pedigree like all the rest.
04:30This useless result was never returned to after the fact.
04:33I mean, Hunter and Punk were teeming by the next pay-per-view,
04:36but how do you think these two are going to get on in 2024?
04:39Will Punk make it to Mania?
04:41Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
04:434. Lita vs. Mickie James
04:46Trish Stratus' September 2006 WWE departure was so soaked in sincerity
04:52that almost nobody predicted it, and even fewer imagined it was the actual end.
04:57An unforgiving pay-per-view in her hometown,
05:00the beloved multi-time women's champion snared the strap yet again
05:03in a blinding battle with career rival Lita.
05:06Audiences trained to WWE's mean streak were absolutely stunned,
05:10so when Lita was suddenly back in the picture ahead of her own planned exit in November,
05:14most safely assumed things would go the same way.
05:17Wrong again.
05:18He and Lita put over Mickie James on her way out,
05:21which would have jived with all the dignified traditions
05:23had she not been stripped of those before getting out of the building.
05:26Following the defeat, her retirement was converted into one last shaming of the woman
05:31who'd taken virtually all of the heat for the real-life situation
05:34that had occurred between her, Matt Hardy, and Edge a year prior.
05:39It was gross.
05:40Number 3, Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels
05:44Far be it for this to be yet another journey
05:46through perhaps the most journeyed-through match in wrestling history,
05:50but it's worth remembering that Vince McMahon didn't have to book the match
05:53that gave him and his top two performers so many headaches.
05:56McMahon's biased remorse upon re-signing the Hitman in 1997
06:00may have been as evident as early as Survivor Series the prior year,
06:05commentating on Hart's return as if six months off
06:08had turned him into a knackered old veteran rather than the ex-WWE champion
06:11that had just comfortably gone an hour in a WrestleMania main event,
06:15McMahon seemed to be sidelining him from the off.
06:18The intentional breaking of Bret's contract in October of 1997
06:22was seen as confirmation of this scepticism towards Hart,
06:25as was the stubbornness in the booking of the Montreal match in the first place
06:29alongside its infamous and unforgettable finish.
06:33Number 2, Team WWE vs. The Alliance
06:36Vince McMahon openly admitted to being tired of this Alliance crap,
06:41this invasion crap during a Raw promo that set up a Survivor Series final battle.
06:46He was patently as bored of this as the rest of us,
06:49even though he'd been the one booking it in the sodding first place.
06:52A 10-man tag was set, culminating in Stone Cold Steve Austin of the Alliance,
06:57tussling with The Rock, WWE,
06:59and them scrapping for the umpteenth time over stakes
07:01that supposedly transformed the world as we knew it.
07:04The mere inclusion of The Rattlesnake and The Great One exposed this as a fallacy,
07:09as did the post-show Monday Night Raw.
07:11Jerry Lawler was reinstalled as a commentator,
07:14McMahon and Austin were reset as heels and babyface rivals on the original side of their divide,
07:18and ex-Alliance stars worth anything were re-established as WWE superstars looking to make the grade.
07:25Number one, The Bloodline vs. The New Day
07:28September 2021 marked something of a zenith for AEW's bold next steps,
07:34having unveiled CM Punk, Adam Cole, and Bryan Danielson within the last 30 days,
07:39and conclusively moved forward with Hangman Page as the successor to Kenny Omega's throne.
07:45All Out 2021 was forecasted as the company's highest-selling show ever,
07:50and the fabled seven-figure viewership had become the norm.
07:53Remember that?
07:54Unsettled by all this, WWE raced ahead with the obvious Survivor Series matches two months early,
07:59dragging The Bloodline and now new WWE Champion Big E over to Monday Night Raw for the pure and obvious sake of it.
08:07The match did perform well, but didn't arrest the slide, it never does,
08:11even after AEW slipped from their own pedestal.
08:15And if you liked this video about matches booked out of spite,
08:18why not check out this one about gimmicks made out of spite as well.
08:22Thanks for watching, I'm Adam from WhatCulture, and I'll see you soon.