Top 7 Worst Wrestling PPV Endings

AEW Revolution was the talk of the wrestling world after it took place. While that would typically be a good thing for a company, in this case it wasn’t. The in-ring action was overshadowed by the ending of the show, which didn’t come with a bang, but a whimper.

Nothing worse than an exploding ring that doesn’t explode. Or is there? This time, we’re going to take a look at some of the worst PPV endings of all time.

7. WWE Hell in a Cell 2019

Over the past few years, Bray Wyatt has been involved in a number of PPV endings that would warrant mention on this list. There was the time he attacked Dean Ambrose at the end of a Hell in a Cell match. Or the time Ambrose got taken out by an exploding TV monitor. There was a Swamp Fight with people drowning, there was the time Bray got set on fire…and there are plenty that I’ve managed to block out of my memory.

The worst Bray Wyatt PPV ending? Gotta be Hell in a Cell 2019, when the Fiend challenged Seth Rollins for the Universal Championship. You had a Hell in a Cell match stopped by a referee after Seth hit Bray with a mallet. Fiend rose from the dead and put a whimpering, cowardly Seth Rollins (who was allegedly a babyface at this point in time) out with a Mandible Claw.

6. AEW Revolution 2021

We’ve yet to see just how this will affect AEW in the long run, so the non-exploding ring might end up ranking higher on various lists of this nature in a few years. One thing I think has been underplayed in all this: AEW had already dissuaded a certain audience that doesn’t like things like exploding rings from purchasing this event. They sacrificed that audience to bring in the type of fans that love this kind of stuff. When you mess it up, those folks aren’t coming back.

Revolution reportedly generated record PPV numbers for AEW. Unfortunately, that means their biggest audience saw their biggest failure to date. What will that mean going forward?

5. WCW Slamboree 2000

Remember? #Kanyon #Slamboree 2000 pic.twitter.com/k1mtAPAh0l

— WCW/nWo (@nWo4lifeWCW) February 28, 2016

This one was pretty bad on a number of levels. We didn’t have high hopes going in, since the main event was a Triple Cage match pitting WCW Champion David Arquette against Diamond Dallas Page & Jeff Jarrett. There probably wasn’t any chance of that being some type of wrestling classic, but it managed to top expectations for how bad it could get.

Putting aside the David Arquette heel turn leading to Jarrett winning the title for whatever number reign it was at that point, the thing that really got people going had nothing to do with those three. It was Mike Awesome tossing Kanyon off the top of one of the cages through the entrance ramp. Mind you, people being thrown off of high places through things was a pretty common thing during this time period, but something about it being done in the same building where Owen Hart fell to his death nearly a year earlier made it a bit unsettling for many fans.

Context is king, as somebody likes to say. The context here made a regular PPV finish one of the worst in history.

4. TNA Victory Road 2011

The infamous Jeff Hardy vs. Sting match from Victory Road 2011 was 10 years ago today. One of the true low points of TNA history. pic.twitter.com/EVI7tLJPcv

— Garrett Kidney (@garrettkidney) March 13, 2021

Unlike our previous entry, TNA at least had a solid idea for a main event. Sting & Jeff Hardy were two of their more well-known stars & draws at the time. Sting was the franchise of WCW while Hardy was a key part of the Attitude Era. Both have maintained a certain amount of popularity over the years, so a match pitting the two against each other was bound to draw interest.

Unfortunately, Hardy had other “interests” going on at the time. He showed up for the big match in no condition to perform, leading Eric Bischoff to call an audible and have Sting finish Hardy off in mere seconds. There wasn’t much else that could have been done, as apparently nobody backstage in a position of power knew Jeff was in that state until he staggered out there. It left a sour taste in pretty much everybody’s mouth. We know Jeff wishes he could have this one back.

3. WWF WrestleMania X-Seven

Most of the entries on this list weren’t planned. TNA didn’t know Jeff Hardy was going to show up high. AEW thought that their ring was going to explode. Spoiler alert: The top two weren’t supposed to happen either. This one was planned, and it was certainly going to lead to great interest in the WWF going forward. After three years of Steve Austin & Vince McMahon feuding, now they were going to join forces. What would this lead to? It seemed like a pretty interesting idea that would lead to new, intriguing scenarios.

There was only one problem. Nobody had any interest in seeing it. Especially in Houston, where Austin was seen as a folk hero & could do no wrong. The fans cheered Austin before the match, during the match and even after the match, even if he was shaking hands with Vince & Jim Ross was yelling & screaming so loud that the whole Astrodome probably heard him. No matter what they tried in the weeks & months after, they didn’t get that heel reaction they were looking for. The people that did turn against Austin largely ended up turning off the show & moving on to other things.

You can come up with what you think it is a great PPV ending & execute it perfectly. If the fans don’t buy into it, it’s a bad PPV ending.

2. WCW Halloween Havoc 1998

What’s worse than a bad ending?

Not having an ending at all!

WCW pulled this one off at Halloween Havoc 1998. There was nothing wrong at all with booking Goldberg vs. Diamond Dallas Page as the main event. Goldberg was in the middle of his streak, DDP was tremendously popular and a legitimate contender to end the streak, and the match ended up as one of Goldberg’s best. There was only one problem…most people didn’t see it. See, there was a three hour window of satellite time back in the day. WCW’s show ran a bit long, and the main event was getting started around 11 PM Eastern time instead of coming to an end.

My cable system didn’t have this problem. I saw the whole match live, so I was a bit confused the next night when they were saying that most people didn’t see the main event, so they were airing it again on Nitro. Why, if I wasn’t watching the show on a black box, I would have felt ripped off!

1. Heroes of Wrestling

I don't know what's going on with this pull quote, but clearly the writer needs to watch the "Heroes of Wrestling" pay-per-view. pic.twitter.com/A2QPPl8EhL

— Robert (@ghostofquinones) June 9, 2020

It was a fine idea on paper. Wrestling had never been hotter than it was in 1999, and everybody was looking for a way to make some money off of it. One way could have been to do a series of PPV events featuring former wrestling stars taking part in dream matches. That’s what the idea behind Heroes of Wrestling was.

The execution was somewhat lacking. As it turned out, there was a reason most of these former wrestling stars were “former”. Most of the matches were pretty embarrassing, but none more so than the performance of Jake “The Snake” Roberts, who was trying to kick his drug habit but had a relapse the weekend of this show. He struggled through a pre-match promo, an entrance, and had some fun with a snake. Jake’s match with Jim Neidhart had to be turned into a tag team match with Yokozuna & King Kong Bundy getting involved since he was in no shape to do anything. They struggled through a match, and the show ended with Yoko beating up a random production assistant while Jake began removing his clothes.

Shockingly, there wasn’t a second Heroes of Wrestling event.