The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Most Satisfying WWE PPV Squashes

The squash match. Traditionally, it’s a tool to accentuate one performer’s talent at the expense of another, most often executed when a star dominates enhancement talent. The PPV squash match is a bit different, though. First of all, it’s usually a surprise. PPV matches tend to get booked between stars, and more often than not between guys with a similar place on the card, such that you’d expect an evenly contested match. The squash, therefore, has shock value. It’s an outcome we rarely see coming, besides which it has the potential to put over one talent in explosive fashion.

There are times when I’d argue the PPV squash failed, like Sheamus’s disappointing win over Daniel Bryan that denied fans what might have been a classic match, besides misunderstanding how fans felt about Bryan. There was Goldberg squashing Kevin Owens at Fastlane 2017, too, in which the result was both predictable and disheartening for fans who had started to buy into Owens a viable world champion.

This countdown, however, focuses on occasions when the squash worked. For this countdown, I was relatively liberal in defining squashes, but nonetheless focused on bouts that were mostly one-sided, and undeniably decisive. In ranking these matches, my focus was on the degree of satisfaction fans drew in the moment it happened, rather than in historical context or with consideration to long-term booking plans. As always, my personal guided the rankings.

WWE SummerSlam 2005 – Chris Benoit Vs… by WWFNetwork

#7. Chris Benoit Over Orlando Jordan at SummerSlam 2005

After Chris Benoit had chased Orlando Jordan for a period of months over the United States Championship, he finally caught up to him in the opening match of SummerSlam 2005, promptly applied the Crippler Crossface, and scored the submission victory in under thirty seconds.

Jordan had never quite connected with the audience. He won the title off of John Cena as part of the build to Cena challenging JBL for the WWE Championship—a move I’ve always felt was equal parts about adding heat to Cena-JBL and freeing up Cena from the secondary title mix, with every little to do with actually putting over Jordan. Since then, Jordan got about a half-year, largely directionless run as champ. Benoit taking the title off of him was satisfying both as a signal of Benoit, one of the best talents of the day, being taken seriously again, and for the US Championship getting a bit of a resurrection. In squashing Jordan in less time than it took Benoit to drink a cup of coffee (he demonstrated his fact in later WWE TV), Benoit and the title restored credibility to each other. Yes, Jordan came out the worse for it, but he had also already acheived his fullest potential in WWE.

#6. King Kong Bundy Over SD Jones at WrestleMania

At the very first WrestleMania, WWE was still figuring out a lot of the pieces of how to book a nationally broadcast supershow, and it was still geared away from resolving major feuds outside of the tip-top of the card, in favor the of the tradition of saving proper blow offs for when fans in different towns would lay their dollars down to see them live at house shows.

In a card that, in and of itself, was largely forgettable and had multiple matches one could argue were squashes, Bundy-Jones stands out for its novely of being a brutal nine-second squash. The match succeeded in putting over Bundy huge as a monster. The WWF was clearly serious about the guy, and this dominating win established a foundation for him to main event WrestleMania, challenging Hulk Hogan, one year later.

(A side note for those nitpickers who with undoubtedly note the original WrestleMania wasn’t actually broadcast on PPV, I acknowledge that you are technically right. Nonetheless, I don’t think there’s any denying it was a PPV caliber show before the WWF settled into its PPV system, so I’m counting it.)

WWF Chyna vs Ivory [WrestleMania X7] by WataCoolGuy

#5. Chyna Over Ivory at WrestleMania 17

It’s debatable whether The Right To Censor stable was extremely successful or a huge failure. No doubt, the group garnered heat. The question is if everything from their annoying theme music to heelish shenaginans got the goad of fans perfectly, or if turning beloved gimmicks like The Godfather and Val Venis into boring heels was a huge misstep, and the group garnered the widely debated “X-Pac Heat” through which they didn’t make fans love to hate them, but rather more literally made fans angry and disinterested.

Regardless of what kind of heat the Steven Richards-led group had, I would contend that the pay off of the four of their members losing decisively at WrestleMania 17, and the stable dissolving in the aftermath was a satisfying end for it. This was particularly true for the Ivory-Chyna sub-program, which had seen The Right to Censor group gang up on and injury Chyna, and Ivory reap the benefits by scoring a pin on Chyna when she collapsed due to previous injuries. This WrestleMania squash saw Ivory get her comeuppance, and formally launched Chyna’s rebranded character, not in the men’s ranks, but the dominant face of the women’s division for the months to follow.

#4. Goldberg Over Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series 2016

This is surely one of the most controversial PPV main events in recent WWE memory. There are fans who understandably hated it for damaging the Brock Lesnar brand, not to mention the disappointment of having a PPV main event that ran well under two minutes. On top of all of that, there’s resentment for Goldberg getting such a monster push despite not really being in the physical shape to be a full-time wrestler anymore.

I’ve been on the fence about this match, but ultimately credit WWE for what it was doing in the moment, which was crafting a match that harnessed what people had always liked best about Goldberg. The guy’s first WWE run was largely a flop because he wasn’t a dominant force, but rather just another face, and thus exposed as just OK as an in-ring worker. He got over so overwhelmingly over as the face of WCW for a time based on smashing the competition in quick, brutal fashion. This match revisited that dynamic nicely, besides working to the man’s limitations in taking minimal punishment and having to execute minimal moves to get his point across.

As referenced in the intro, I wasn’t a fan of Goldberg’s squash over Kevin Owens, which I found fundamentally less entertaining because of its absence of shock value in favor of hitting that un-sweet spot between predictable and disappointing. Goldberg’s initial comeback match, however, very much worked for me.

#3. The Shield Over Kane and The New Age Outlaws at WrestleMania 30

Call me an idiot, but I was in the minority that actually thought The Shield was going to lose this match. I didn’t want them to, but I figured that for as successful as the group had been, and for having just begun their face turn, WWE was going to pull a swerve with a very high profile turn and someone from the group—probably Dean Ambrose, maybe Seth Rollins—turning on his comrades to collaborate with The Authority.

While Rollins would ultimately make the turn I predicted, it wouldn’t happen at ‘Mania, but rather two months later after the group had had a short but pretty spectacular face run feuding with Evolution. Instead, this match was set up to affirm The Shield’s greatness, while sending The New Age Outlaws packing (in addition to wrapping up Corporate Kane as a serious heel, he mostly reverted to his monster gimmick or playing off alternating personas after this loss). The match was super short with a flurry of smoothly executed, hard-hitting offense, thus embodying what The Shield was all about at the time.

#2. The Ultimate Warrior Over The Honky Tonk Man at SummerSlam 1988

The original SummerSlam aired live from Madison Square Garden. The Honky Tonk Man had held the Intercontinental Championship for well over a year going into the show—a reign that still holds the record for longest in history. He had gotten over as a particularly loathsome heel for so often finding cheap ways to retain the title, including not only cheating to win, but absorbing more than his share of countout or disqualification losses to preserve his reign.

The Honky Tonk Man was scheduled to defend the title against Brutus Beefcake at SummerSlam. Accounts vary as to whether that match was ever supposed to happen (and if Beefcake was meant to unseat him) or if it was the WWF’s plan all along to sideline Beefcake and insert The Ultimate Warrior at the last minute. Regardless, Beefcake got kayfabe hurt and couldn’t compete, which led The Honky Tonk Man to arrogantly issue an open challenge for a title match. Warrior answered the call.

The Ultimate Warrior was getting over steadily as a muscle-bound, high-octane new face. Positively smashing The Honky Tonk Man in a half minute in Madison Square Garden was the perfect thing to push him to the moon. The victory reinstated the importance of the Intercontinental Championship by putting it on a guy with main event potential again and asserted the WWF’s confidence in Warrior who they would indeed go all the way with in the following two years.

#1. Brock Lesnar Over John Cena at SummerSlam 2014

SummerSlam 2014 stands out as one of those rare times when Cena walked into a PPV world title match as the underdog. Moreover, it’s that rare instance since Cena became a main eventer, when he wasn’t an underdog in service to a larger story of him winning in the long run, but rather because he was legitimately outgunned.

While the smart money was on Lesnar—the man who’d ended The Undertaker’s undefeated streak at WrestleMania just a few months before—I don’t know that anyone predicted how Lesnar would win this match.

At sixteen minutes, and with a few hope spots for Cena, including locking in the STF, it’s hard to call this match a pure squash. Just the same, Lesnar was in control for a wildly disproportionate amount of this match, and I’d argue that the way he escaped the STF—not by desperately scrambling for the ropes, but rather by muscling his way out of the hold—only further established his dominance on that night. Lesnar’s sixteen suplexes to Cena and two F5s were enough to seal the deal on the most crushing defeat of Cena’s career since becoming a main eventer.

I’m sure there were kids in the audience who were sad to see Cena lose, and those who contested Lesnar’s legitimacy as champ because he was a part-timer. For the rest of us, though, this was the most badass act in pro wrestling decimating the establishment guy who we’d tired of as world champ long before. And it was glorious.

Which matches would you add to the list and how would you order them? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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