wrestling / Columns
The Magnificent Seven: The 7 Worst PPV Main Events of The WWE Network Era
The launch of the WWE Network changed the game for WWE PPV. Gone were the days when WWE needed to lure viewers to shell out thirty dollars-plus for their interest in seeing a card. Instead, the incentive was to offer an entertaining show that advanced storylines and was good enough for fans not to feel sheepish about devoting $9.99 a month for their Network subscription (with the buffer that they were still getting archival footage and other original programming for their money anyway).
On the whole, PPV quality hasn’t wavered much. There have been great matches and great shows, and there have been some lackluster ones, but not so bad as to suggest a true paradigm shift for the company as some had feared, wary that the death of pay per view revenue dependence would also mean the end of the super card.
PPVs are by and large sold on their main events—the marquee match up that gets fans invested, and in the Network era, we have seen WWE grow more bold and experimental. It arguably started with unproven Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins getting the nod to main event Hell in a Cell 2014; two years later, a similar dynamic allowed Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks to headline Hell in a Cell 2016.
Those experiments worked but others weren’t so successful. Whether we’re talking non-title main events, main event squashes, or more traditional main events that nonetheless didn’t really land, WWE has tried a lot. They’ve had some hits. They’ve had some misses. This column looks at the seven worst WWE PPV main events since PPVs began airing on the WWE Network.
#7. Randy Orton vs. Brock Lesnar, SummerSlam 2016
Brock Lesnar matches tend to be special. Yes, there are some relatively lackadaisical stinkers, but whether they feature raw brutality, great demonstrations of strength, or sheer dominance, they’re often as not fun spectacles, and WWE has done a fine job of protecting the character by using him sparingly on TV.
The trouble with Orton-Lesnar? Among other things, it wasn’t fun.
While Orton had the star power to offer a reasonably credible threat to Lesnar, this one didn’t have the dream match quality that a guy like Goldberg would bring to Lesnar down the road, or the freshness of seeing Braun Strowman challenge him at No Mercy (though that match was a top runner up for this countdown). The match itself was a slog. To be fair, WWE did it no favors by putting at the end of an over-four-hour show, such that it was starting from a deficit. The match to follow represented the worst of both men, culminating in a bad finish.
I understand the theory of finishing this match on a semi-worked shoot with Lesnar beating Orton bloody. It’s just that, unlike Lesnar suplexing John Cena over and over in 2014, this iteration of Lesnar’s dominance wasn’t so much shocking or explosive as a little too realistic. Add on top of that WWE subjecting Orton to a very real risk of getting hurt by those real elbow shots and you have train wreck of a main event.
#6. Roman Reigns vs. Triple H, WrestleMania 32
While one of the premises of this column was that WWE has gotten more experimental with its main events since the advent of the Network, this match and its booking were about as traditional as it gets. It was a mastermind veteran heel defending the world title against the top up and coming face. Simple enough, right?
The trouble is, Reigns wasn’t the hero the WWE Universe, in the aggregate wanted. And while he’s better in the ring than some of his detractors will tell you, he’s still not the kind of guy who produces four-star-plus matches without a dance partner who can go. Triple H is an all time great, but his old man, slowed down veteran style doesn’t complement Reigns’s strengths in the least—and least of all capping a near five hour show.
While Reigns-Triple H was probably destined to happen, and likely as not at WrestleMania, you have to think WWE would have wanted something else for Dallas had The Rock been available, had John Cena and Seth Rollins not been on the shelf, and had Bray Wyatt not been in injury limbo. WWE may have made the most of its resources, but this was still one of the weakest main events of the last three and a half years, and it’s a shame it went down at WrestleMania. (To address those who will argue Reigns’s next ‘Mania main event was even worse, I get the argument, and it’s not without merit, but for whatever reason the Triple H match rubbed me more the wrong way.)
#5. Randy Orton vs. Jinder Mahal, Backlash 2017
This match is infamous for its outcome—Jinder Mahal getting the slingshot not only into the main event, but into history as a WWE Champion. I’m still not a fan of that outcome, less for Mahal’s deficiencies than because he simply wasn’t built up enough in advance of being handed this spot.
Even if we take away the context of Mahal’s credibility problem, though, the simple fact remains that this match was the caliber of a middling TV main event; it had no business headlining a PPV.
The match was competently worked but the involvement of the Singh Brothers was excessive and made Mahal an afterthought until he stole the shock pin. Remove star power and the charisma to sell this match as anything more than it was, and it leaned solely upon the shock of a Mahal title win, which did not go over well enough to salvage this main event.
Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt were both young stars on the rise, neither yet a world champion when they got the main event spot at TLC 2014. They were both good talkers and both capable of violence. A TLC match between the two seemed like it had the potential to be creative and hardcore—a fun, fitting cap to a year of PPVs, and great place for two young lions to prove themselves on a B-PPV.
In actuality, this match was an absolute slog. Yes, there was plunder, but there was also a complete absence of imagination with the two wailing on each other and a climactic point at which Ambrose repeatedly climbed ladders and drove Wyatt through tables while the announce team desperately tried to sell the action as electric.
Worst of all, the finish to this match was abysmal. Ambrose went to finish off Wyatt with a monitor, only for its cord not to have enough give. Then it shocked him, which set up Wyatt to steal the pin. This was the high-tech equivalent of a guy slipping on a banana peel for a fluke finish to a boring dud of a main event.
#3. Goldberg vs. Kevin Owens, Fastlane 2017
A number of matches on this countdown ranked because they were over-long and dull. Others suffered from an indecisive finish. Goldberg vs. Kevin Owens had neither of those problems.
The match was, however, a half-minute squash.
When Brock Lesnar essentially squashed John Cena at SummerSlam 2014, it was shocking for being so novel, and entertaining for all the fans who’d wanted to see Cena destroyed for so long. When Goldberg squashed Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series 2016, it wasn’t as enjoyable on as many levels, but it was shocking if for no other reason than how vulnerable Lesnar looked for the first time ever in WWE.
Goldberg-Owens sucked because it was both predictable and underwhelming. Moreover, Kevin Owens had done well enough as the Universal Champion for a half year and this squash seemed to undermine all he’d done, only to push a part timer and needlessly add the Universal Championship to his already-high-profile WrestleMania rematch with Lesnar. The only thing this match had going for it was keeping Goldberg strong, and making it feel like an accomplishment when he went nearly four minutes with Lesnar at ‘Mania.
#2. Randy Orton vs. Jinder Mahal, Battleground 2017
At Backlash, Randy Orton and Jinder Mahal put on a bad main event match with a bad outcome as WWE threw Mahal into a world championship run he was in no way prepared for. Come Battleground, there was reason to believe Mahal would retain the title, given the Mahal experiment hadn’t yet decisively flopped, and the circumstances were contrived to favor him given the match was conducted under Punjabi Prison rules. Given the reasonable success of this match’s most recent predecessor—a fun Batista vs. Great Khali battle back in 2007—there was some reason for optimism this would at least offer a fun spectacle of a match.
And the match was awful.
Save for the Singh Brothers darn near killing themselves bumping for Orton, the match had next to no drama in this match, and the sightlines through the prison structure were confounding, making it difficult for the audience to appreciate what middling action there was. The spectacle of The Great Khali returning probably should have redeemed this match to an extent, but his lumbering, lackluster offense brought back reminders of just how awful he usually was as an in-ring performer in his day, and only added to the sense of failure in this main event debacle.
#1. Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt, No Mercy 2016
There is very little about this match that wasn’t a complete anticlimax.
First of all, there’s the match itself. WWE offered up a triple threat WWE Championship match that ordinarily would have headlined, but WWE positioned it first because the show aired opposite a presidential debate, so the company purportedly wanted to make sure fans saw the most important match. That’s fair enough, but this show also featured a great Dolph Ziggler vs. The Miz Intercontinental Championship match that could have sent the crowd home happy for the drama of Ziggler putting his career on the line, and the satisfaction of him finally beating Miz.
But instead, we closed with Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt. Presumably, WWE meant to book its two biggest stars who weren’t in the WWE Championships opener in the final bout. However, out of Wyatt, Orton, and their rivalry, none of the pieces really felt like main event material. The match did nothing to overachieve—a completely underwhelming bout. And the finish? It wasn’t decisive, but rather featured a surprise twist of a return. Even that aspect of the match stunk, however, because we didn’t have the return of a main eventer or a shocking turn, but rather a come back for mid-card henchman Luke Harper that neither really surprised, nor delighted.
The lone redeeming factor for this match? Of the three Orton-Wyatt PPV matches within a year span, this first one was the least awful of the group.
Which matches would you add to the list? Roman Reigns vs. The Undertaker at WrestleMania 33, and Sting vs. Seth Rollins at Night of Champions 2015, Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman at No Mercy 2017 were my top runners up. Let us know what you think in the comments.
Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.
