10 Massive WWE PPV Events That Were Extremely Disappointing

Maybe we should label this "Dishonorable Mentions." There are plenty of shows that we could've included, but were lucky enough to miss the mark for various reasons. We limited ourselves to just two of WWE's recent Saudi Arabia supercards but easily could've included more. We're also excluding In Your House: Beware of Dog, a PPV where only two matches aired due to a power outage. That's disappointing to be sure, but it seems kind of unfair to put it on this list, one full of shows that all worked much harder to truly earn that dubious distinction.

We've also tried to focus on shows that were disappointing for various reasons, rather than just purely bad. Sure, In Your House: Great White North, "deserves" to be on this list from a quality standpoint, but how many people remember that show, let alone were disappointed by it? We would like to give a special shoutout to WWE's Battleground PPVs, the 2013 and 2014 editions both narrowly missing the cut, despite being real slogs to watch. If you're desperately trying to rack your brain right now to remember what even took place on those shows, trust us, don't. It's better that way. Instead, join us as we get to the ten PPVs that were actually too disappointing to forget.

It took five years for WWE to churn out another contender for the worst WrestleMania in history. In terms of wow factor, this Mania might have the worst card in history. The two biggest draws? Yokozuna challenging Bret Hart for his WWF Championship and Hulk Hogan uniting with Brutus Beefcake as The Mega-Maniacs to take on Money Inc. It was a weird time for the promotion, with Hulkamania having peaked but the company still hesitant to fully commit to a new era. That was made very clear at the end of the night, when in an unannounced match, Hogan dethroned new champion Yokozuna just minutes after he had won the title. Rather than a triumphant comeback, it felt like a desperation move.

All of that could've been forgiven if a few of the matches had overperformed in the ring, but pretty much none of them did. The best match on the card is the opener between Tatanka and Shawn Michaels, which ranks as decent. Apart from that, the pickings are slim, with everything else being average at best. Perhaps most tellingly, one of the most memorable parts of this show is the setting. An open-air show happening at Caesars Palace, the event had an ancient Roman theme and gave us an opportunity to see Jim Ross in a toga. It's a memory that will live on far longer than many of the matches he commentated on this night.

This event may not be as big as most of the others on this list, but The Great American Bash was one of WCW's longest-running annual events and seeing WWE relaunch that brand with one of the dirt worst PPVs in company history let us down quite a bit. Now, add in that this was the place where Eddie Guerrero's feel-good WWE Title run ended at the hands of JBL of all people. Throw in an absolutely dreadful undercard, filled with many random matches that were actively terrible — Kenzo Suzuki vs. Billy Gunn into Sable vs. Torrie Wilson into Mordecai vs. Bob Holly stands as quite possibly the worst three-match stretch in WWE PPV history.

But wait, it gets worse. Watch the main event. The Undertaker took on the Dudley Boys in a handicap bout billed as a "Concrete Crypt" match. The stipulation said that if Undertaker lost, his manager Paul Bearer would be suffocated to death in a glass crypt by quick-drying cement. After a poor match, 'Taker stood victorious but Paul Heyman tried to throw the switch that would seal Bearer's fate anyway, only to be prevented by a bolt of lightning. Undertaker, having saved his mentor then ... threw the switch himself, "killing" Bearer with the cement. It was corny, it didn't make sense, it was the cherry on top of a terrible sundae. From disappointing booking to terrible matches to whatever that cement thing was, Bash 2004 covered all the bases of bad.

Long seen as one of the big four tentpole PPVs on the WWE calendar, Survivor Series has seen some highs and lows in its long history, but none may have left as bad a taste in people's mouths as 2008's. The show was main evented by John Cena returning from neck surgery to defeat Chris Jericho for the World Heavyweight Championship. The match was good but not great, perhaps hampered by Cena rushing his recovery. Everything else on the show fell below even that middling bar, in particular a casket match between Undertaker and Big Show where the Dead Man seemed to be grappling with physical issues of his own.

The main reason this PPV makes the list is just one match. The WWE Title Match had been scheduled as HHH defending against Vladimir Kozlov and Jeff Hardy, but the morning of the show, WWE's website reported that Hardy had been found unconscious in his hotel and was rushed to a hospital. The deliberately vague announcement played into Hardy's well-known history of substance abuse and had fans fearing the worst, in addition to fooling a few news outlets into thinking it was legitimate. Instead it was all a cheap angle, with Hardy making a run-in at the end of a terrible match that started as a Kozlov/HHH singles match and ended with Edge victorious when it was turned into a three-way on the fly. Tasteless and misleading, it was WWE at its worst.

On a night where fans expect the absolute best, the 32nd WrestleMania was full of matches that underdelivered to different degrees. Some were only minor disappointments. For example, the Becky Lynch/Charlotte/Sasha Banks three-way was pretty darn good, but it also left you thinking that a singles match between any combination of the three would've been even better. AJ Styles had a match against Chris Jericho that was also enjoyable, but not near the level of matches Styles was having during that multi-year hot streak of work. The Intercontinental Title ladder match finally gave Zack Ryder a big victory ... until he lost the title the next day.

Elsewhere on the card, the disappointments were more than minor. Dean Ambrose vs.  Brock Lesnar was not terrible, but it was clear the two just didn't click. Undertaker and Shane McMahon wrestled for half an hour in a match that wasn't that good at all and will be mainly remembered for one of Shane's trademark stunt bumps. The Rock made a rare appearance to ... shoot a flamethrower and beat Erick Rowan in six seconds. It was all capped off by Roman Reigns defeating HHH for the World Heavyweight Championship in a bloated epic that ended with a result many live fans didn't want to see. This WrestleMania was not a terrible wrestling show but it seemed capable of so much more on paper.

Even by the low standards of WWE's Saudi mega-events, Super ShowDown 2020 was a disappointment. The opener, a gauntlet match for the Tuwaiq Mountain Trophy, was won by The Undertaker in an unannounced appearance. Pinning AJ Styles in just 20 seconds after hitting one move, a chokeslam, this would serve as Taker's final in-ring match before his farewell at WrestleMania's cinematic Boneyard match. Unfortunately, it would not be the last time on this show that a major star showed up to do almost nothing. Brock Lesnar retained the WWE Title in a 90-second squash over Ricochet where the challenger got not a moment of offense. In the main event, Bill Goldberg won the Universal Title from The Fiend in a three-minute affair that left Bray fans shocked and angry.

The matches that went longer did little to make up for those big letdowns. Roman Reigns had a subpar cage match with Baron Corbin. Bayley took on Naomi in a mediocre outing where both women had to be covered head to toe to conform to Saudi Arabia's modesty laws, a measure of progress from earlier events where women were kept off the card entirely. If nothing else, the massive budgets afforded to the Saudi shows usually made for some crazy spectacles, but at Super ShowDown 2020, WWE committed an even greater sin than being bad in a fascinating way — they put on a show that was just flat-out boring.