The Magnificent Seven: The 7 Worst WWE Rivalries of the Last Ten Years

As I wrote about two weeks ago, rivalries are one of the most fundamental building blocks of a successful wrestling promotion and successful careers for wrestlers. On the flip side, however, poor programs run the risk of disillusioning fans, setting back wrestlers’ careers, and even hurting a promotion’s overall programming quality and business. This week, I’m looking back at my picks for the worst WWE rivalries of the past ten years.

I should note up front that placement on this countdown is not necessarily a condemnation of a performer involved. In fact, in most cases, I take little issue with the performers at hand, but rather with the way the powers-that-be opted to (mis)use that talent at that time.

While I’ll be the first to admit that personal opinion weighs heavily in all of my countdowns, I feel that it is particularly true this week, in which case I’ve tried to take into consideration poor storytelling, excessive length, the squandering of one or more talents and their heat, and the ways in which storylines may have adversely affected the overall business of WWE, but I’ll concede this countdown is uneven in how it considers those factors and depends more on my gut reaction related to the programs I found most confounding over the last decade.

#7. The Big Show vs. The Straight Edge Society, 2010

Note the wording for this rivalry—that I am focusing on the entire Straight Edge Society stable, not just CM Punk, the SES’s leader and featured player. If Show and Punk had feuded and Show and won out, I would probably still consider it a lousy feud, but the rivalry enters profoundly bad territory because Show singlehandedly took on the entire SES and won.

For fuller context, Punk and his stable had grown hot in the preceding months, behaving like a cult, providing a vehicle for Punk to do some of his most fascinating character work in WWE. The stable lost some of its steam when Rey Mysterio overcame interference and bested Punk at WrestleMania and in immediate rematches, but still might have thrived with another hot angle to follow.

While masked CM Punk (to be joined by masked Joey Mercury) had promise, the group found itself embroiled in an issue with Big Show, in which Show more often than not got the upper hand, culminating in three-on-one handicap match between the once promising stable members (Punk, Mercury, and Gallows) and past-his-prime Show at SummerSlam. The match was largely a goof and rather than telling the story of Punk standing victorious via nefarious plotting and the vicious heel work of his teammates, instead Show squashed everything in sight, and won clean as a whistle in under seven minutes.

Yes, Punk would prove himself resilient enough to come back a year later and pin John Cena for the WWE Championship at the following year’s SummerSlam, so things largely worked out in the long term, but that’s far more of a testament to Punk’s ability to get himself over than any favors WWE did him, overtly sabotaging what might have been a really special act.

720pHD WWE TLC 2009 Michelle McCool vs Mickie… by WomensOfWrestlingNetwotk

#6. Mickie James vs. Michelle McCool, 2009-2010

In the present moment WWE (and more particularly the NXT brand) are doing well in representing women’s wrestling as a serious and entertaining aspect of its product. WWE does not have a great track record on this front, however, with a history of prioritizing beautiful women over talented athletes and failing to honor any semblance of storyline continuity.

Ironically, this program—the only women’s program I’ve included on the countdown—suffers from very different problems. The women involved, Michelle McCool and (all the more so) Mickie James were actually quite good in-ring workers, and they did work a relatively coherent storyline together for the winter of 2009 into 2010. The problem is that the story was so poorly conceived, simplistic, and unsatisfying (not to mention arguably offensive).

The McCool-James issue anchored itself around McCool poking fun at James for being overweight. First of all, the bullying involved sent an awful message to the viewers about objectifying women and picking on people of different body types. Secondarily, it was ludicrous because James may have been the single most objectively in-shape woman on the roster at the time—not super thin, but actively strong and athletic. At the least, this poor story mechanism looked as thought it would clearly pave the way for McCool to get her comeuppance when James pounded her into oblivion to blow off the feud.

Think again. In the Survivor Series match to follow, James’s team would beat McCool’s, but with Melina, not James, pinning the top female heel. From there, McCool actually beat James in their first one-on-one PPV outing at TLC. While James would finally beat McCool for the championship at the Royal Rumble it was both too late and too little as McCool won the belt back a month later, and the issue between the two more or less ended there, with the bully winning out.

This program would probably rank higher on this countdown if the wrestling itself were worse, but because the workers involved were reasonably skilled, it only clocks in at number six for an offensive premise and the wrong outcome.

#5. The Big Show vs. Randy Orton, 2013

While, to its credit, this isn’t a story of Show squashing a budding star, it is another instance of The Big Show getting plugged into the wrong high profile spot at the wrong time. Coming out of the summer of 2013, Daniel Bryan was on fire and The Authority felt relatively fresh given its launch at SummerSlam and the episode of Raw to follow, with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon firmly set up as heel authority figures, Randy Orton their champion, and The Shield playing bodyguards. The storyline ultimately fell flat after a series of either unsatisfying or indecisive finishes, and it was sensible enough to move on before coming back to Bryan as challenger (if WWE was dead set against giving him an extended title reign then). But who to move on to? CM Punk was probably the only guy who rivaled both Bryan’s level and brand of overness as an indy and IWC darling. Cody Rhodes was pretty hot after his run-ins with The Authority and could have been a fun underdog challenger for a month or so.

Instead, WWE went with a reliable old hand in The Big Show, and it resulted in about as uninspiring of a run as you could imagine. While it’s arguable that John Cena had even less heat going head to head with Orton in the months to follow, at least the matches, in a vacuum, were reasonably good. Thrusting Big Show into a main event role in 2013 resulted in, well, more or less what you’d expect from Big Show in a main event role in 2013—a match that was plodding and uninteresting and largely predictable for it being clear that Show would not win the title, and all the more offensive for Show coopting Bryan’s “Yes!” chant for himself during this period.

It bears repeating that I don’t hold Big Show or Randy Orton responsible as performers for the poor angle to follow—I think the two of them did more or less all they could with the hand they were dealt. But this was one in a series of points in recent history when the WWE brass came across as largely tone deaf to what its audience wanted, and all the more frustrating because, after the seeming failure to capitalize on Bryan’s momentum (albeit that they did go back and make good with his WrestleMania 30 title win), we got a totally stale challenger for a heatless main event program.

#4. Vince McMahon vs. Bobby Lashley, 2007

When WWE launched its new ECW brand in 2006, there was reason for optimism. Ostensibly, Paul Heyman was at the creative helm of a relaunched ECW. Many of the old talents, most prominently Rob Van Dam, were involved. New talents like CM Punk suggested the brand would follow in its old tradition of providing a home for misfit stars to blossom. The brand had WWE’s financial backing and organization, which meant it wouldn’t go under the way the original version had.

However, through a combination of the WWE political machine promptly tightening its reins and RVD getting busted with marijuana, we never truly got an ECW relaunch, but rather the introduction of an underwhelming third brand. While it’s arguable that WWECW did eventually hit its stride, to a degree, under the title reigns of guys like John Morrison, CM Punk, Matt Hardy, and Christian, those early days were rough when The Big Show got plugged in as champ in RVD’s stead, which gave way to the reign of Bobby Lashley.

I like Bobby Lashley. I thought he was a blue chip prospect who has since realized much of his potential under the TNA banner, and it made a reasonable amount of sense for WWE to push him as the face of the new ECW brand. Moreover, I totally get why this athletic big man with a great look would be cast as the face in the Battle of the Billionaires program opposite Umaga, and why that program would naturally segue into Lashley having an issue with the McMahons.

The trouble is that, rather than McMahon using new (or even old) villains as his proxy to move along Lashley’s budding career, it was way-past-his-prime McMahon himself who became Lashley’s arch-rival, teaming with Umaga and Shane McMahon against Lashley for the next two PPVs and even having a horribly conceived stint as ECW Champion himself as Lashley wedged into a very, very poor man’s Steve Austin role, before Lashley finally got the best of McMahon in a Street Fight to blow off the rivalry.

As if all of the creative on this angle weren’t poor enough, it was accented by McMahon “playing black” sporting a bandana and using offensive language. While I’m confident the intent was to portray McMahon as ludicrous and loathsome as an antagonist to Lashley, the result was more off-putting than entertaining—less heat-inducing, more cringe-worthy to the point of turning off faithful fans from the fledgling (and failing) brand. Given all of this it is, perhaps, little surprise that Lashley would be gone from WWE inside of a year, and WWE would end the ECW experiment once and for all within three years.

#3. Hornswoggle vs. Chavo Guerrero, 2009

As a columnist, part of my role is to be critical—to not sit back and enjoy the show, but rather look for reasons to like what I’m watching or, just as often, to pick apart the reasons why I do not. I’m a WWE fan—fan enough to watch every PPV and most Raws, and to appreciate that different angles and programs serve different purposes.

I say all of this to arrive at the point that Hornswoggle vs. Chavo Guerrero didn’t need to be awful. It was never going to main event or be a blood feud, and that, in and of itself, is fine. Comedy feuds have their place, and particularly so as lower-mid-card fodder and, at least in the contemporary, mainstream wrestling landscape, Hornswoggle wasn’t going to have a particularly serious program.

The thing is that Chavo Guerrero still might have been a relevant act in 2009 but was rendered a complete joke via this series of bouts that stretched across the summer into the early fall—that’s not just a one- or two-off comedic bit, but a legit program, and a lengthy one at that by today’s standards, on top of which Hornswoggle won every single time until it was no longer cute or an upset, but rather it became clear that Guerrero, in the late stages of the period of his career when he might have been a serious player, had been demoted to complete jobber and joke. As if all of that weren’t bad enough, the program moved through a series of gimmick matches including traditionally hard-hitting bouts like a Falls Count Anywhere Match and a Texas Bullrope Match, and made those types of matches, too, into jokes. (Side note: in the years to follow Hornswoggle would prove that comedic gimmick matches didn’t need to be bad, via outings like this Wee-LC match with El Torito.)

All of the above would place Hornswoggle vs. Guerrero on the countdown, but the extra boost to get it into the top three is a sense of incoherence when WWE revisited the feud a bit later, heading into winter, with Guerrero seemingly sympathizing with Hornswoggle, who may have won his begrudging respect, and look to side with the little guy against Chris Masters, only for WWE to arbitrarily shift courses and cast Masters as the face instead, as Guerrero returned to his heel status. Shifts like that suggest that the creative team either doesn’t care enough to tell a coherent story, or perhaps worse yet, assumes the fans don’t care enough that they’ll notice the discrepancies and trucks along with pure nonsense to fill time rather than do the talent or the overarching product any favors. Programs like this insult the fans, and had this program gone into any higher profile spot I’d probably push it up higher on the countdown. The top two spots, however, are earmarked for programs that did garner more attention, and thus were all the more problematic.

#2. John Cena vs. John Laurinaitis

There was a very brief period of time for which I enjoyed John Laurinaitis’s work as a heel authority figure. It was the summer of 2011 and CM Punk had very suddenly blossomed into arguably the best anti-authority antihero since Steve Austin with his Pipebomb promo, followed by a getting some main event opportunities and more than delivering in the ring. And Laurinaitis was there. Vince McMahon’s stooge. The guy who constantly threatened to stab Triple H in the back. A pretty literal and reasonably entertaining manifestation of who the IWC understood Laurinaitis to actually be behind the scenes.

The thing is, he hung around. Not for a few weeks, but the better part of a year. And he didn’t remain a loathsome figure, lurking in the shadows. He rose up as one of the least entertaining heel authority figures WWE has ever seen—the embodiment of X-Pac heat who got booed more because he was legitimately unentertaining than for any of his heel antics.

Laurinaitis’s poor work in this role reached its lowest point when he entered a program with John Cena. Where the character had originally worked, to an extent, based on the realism of the ultimate corporate suit rallying against CM Punk, the dynamic utterly failed when we were supposed to believe in Cena as the rebel that the machine sought to suppress. The war of words between these two was lackluster, only to lead up to a fifteen minute PPV main event match between the two, with Laurinaitis’s job on the line. Let’s break that down. This match got the main event spot while CM Punk and Daniel Bryan were putting on a forgotten classic, competing over the WWE Championship earlier in the night. What’s more, that’s fifteen minutes of the guy booked as one of the very best in the company squaring off with a guy portrayed as a non-wrestler (despite his admitted credentials, particularly from his tenure as a wrestler in Japan). What followed was an uncomfortable squash match in which Cena largely came across as a bullying heel picking on an older man who couldn’t defend himself. To make matters worse, Laurinaitis would pick up the win when The Big Show came to his aid to launch a new round of Cena vs. Show. It’s a testament to how remarkably bad Cena-Laurinaitis was that this new, ultra-tired program actually came across as an upgrade.

For as uneven as the WWE product can be, it’s hard to fathom a time when Cena-Laurinaitis would dominate programming and main event a PPV. It was a dark time for the product, and I’d argue there’s only one program in the last decade that was worse.

#1. Jerry Lawler vs. Michael Cole

This countdown is evaluating the worst WWE programs of the last ten years but, while I haven’t thought about it exhaustively, I feel reasonably sure this rivalry would hold its own on the list of worst pro wrestling rivalries anywhere, anytime, period.

The Jerry Lawler vs. Michael Cole feuded ran on and off for two years. It ate up nearly twenty minutes of air time at a WrestleMania, and got PPV matches twice more, not to mention rematches on Raw. And for all of that? Not a single match that wasn’t actively horrible. Not a single match that I would rate at even one-star quality.

As if the over-long quality of this program and the fact that it never delivered a good match weren’t enough, it also so rarely delivered satisfying moments. That twenty minutes at WrestleMania 27? It saw Michael Cole win the match, so he could go on boasting and stretching out this program for months to follow.

OK, so this feud was objectively bad. Here’s the thing that made it the dirty-rotten-stinking-worst. While most mid-card or part-timer feuds take up maybe ten minutes to half an hour per show before the guys move on, given that Lawler and Cole worked the broadcast booth week in and week out, their rivalry had a platform on every episode of Raw and every PPV for months at a time. The most outrageous moment—the moment when the abhorrent nature of this feud most struck me—was on the go-home Raw before WrestleMania 27. All was not well with WWE booking at the time, with The Miz as non-credible champion, John Cena as the face of the company who everyone was more or less over, and The Rock working a strange part-timer role no one yet knew what to make of. Which of these headlining stars got the final word on that all important final live broadcast before the biggest show of the year? None of them, as instead, Cole slipped in the final word via play-by-play, advising fans to tune in to ‘Mania to watch him beat up Lawler.

Believe it or not, I actually don’t blame Cole or Lawler for this awful feud. Lawler was decades past his prime as both a worker and a talker and could only be expected to do so much. Cole was a legit broadcaster thrust into duel roles he was never properly trained for: wrestler and heel personality. That the WWE brass shoved these two guys into this dynamic for this long is the travesty and what made it the worst WWE rivalry of the last decade, and maybe ever.

Which rivalries would you add to the list? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.