The Wrestling Section

Man, what the fuck is WWE doing? Most people would probably agree that the pandemic era was not very kind to WWE whatsoever. That being said, outside of the Wyatt Swamp Fight, they've mostly avoided putting on truly awful matches. There have been bad matches, of course, but nothing that was straight up unwatchable. However, in the first two pay-per-views since fans were allowed back, WWE managed to have at least one trainwreck of a match on each show. WrestleMania saw Randy Orton vs Bray Wyatt , a match that featured some of the worst, most nonsensical booking WWE has put on TV over the last year, that night, and it was an early favorite for the worst match of the year. And then, just over a month later, WWE managed to top themselves with Damian Priest vs The Miz in a Lumberjack match at the stupidly named WrestleMania Backlash, which earned a negative three-star rating from Dave Meltzer and a 1.51 rating on Cagematch.net. The negative three-star rating is also the lowest rating a ...

(Special thanks to Frost for suggesting this match. If you'd like to see a match covered on the Worst in the World, leave a comment down below.) When it comes to Inoki-ism, just when I think I'm out, they pull me right back in. "They" being New Japan, of course. For those who aren't aware, "Inoki-ism" refers to Antonio Inoki's insistence on incorporating mixed martial arts into the world of professional wrestling. This would include having New Japan wrestlers participate in MMA fights, such as Yuji Nagata getting his head kicked off by Mirko Cro Cop. I know I mention that fight pretty much every time I bring up Inoki-ism, but I can't stress enough how batshit insane it is to have someone take on one of the greatest heavyweights in the sport's history. Just a wild idea. However, Inoki-ism also gave us MMA fighters entering the ring and competing in New Japan and being pushed to the moon. The early 2000s saw Bob Sapp pick up a win over Kensuke ...

 Special thanks to Frost for suggesting this match. If you'd like to see a match covered on the Worst in the World, leave a comment down below. I've done over 150 entries of the Worst in the World. If there's one common theme in this series, it's this; the lack of expectations. With the exception of a handful of matches featured here, the vast majority of the matches I cover are generally ones that were never going to be good in the first place. Because, let's be honest, how could a match between an untrained Survivor winner and Booker T's wife or anything involving the Bushwhackers be anything resembling good. Hell, even matches involving good wrestlers like James Storm vs Chris Harris or Sting vs Jeff Jarrett have some added-on schtick that handicaps the match so badly that it can't recover. That being said, every now and then I get a match that should have been great and had legitimate hype behind it rather than interest spurred by pure schadenfreude....

 Special thanks to Connor Ewens for suggesting this match. If you'd like to see a match covered on the Worst in the World, leave a comment down below. A little over two months ago at WrestleMania 37, we saw four different women's matches take place. All four matches had been built up on TV, and all four of them had some kind of stakes attached to them, whether that be a championship or a title shot. This might seem like an odd thing to praise. After all, a match with a story, stakes, and build is the bare minimum for wrestling in general, let alone matches at WrestleMania. However, when it comes to the women's division in WWE, that hasn't always been the case. And not even just in the Attitude Era, I'm talking about the early 2000s up until about 2016. I've ragged on the booking of women's wrestling during the Attitude Era (both in the WWF and WCW) more than a few times here, but I've rarely talked about the period after that and how, as a whole, it'...

I don't normally jump the gun on choosing matches for the Worst in the World so soon after they took place, but...man, what the fuck was this? WrestleMania 37 was actually a pretty good show despite having a very lackluster build. The main events of both nights were great, Cesaro had a killer match with Seth Rollins, and Bad Bunny heavily exceeded expectations and had arguably the best celebrity match in the history of wrestling. That being said, there were definitely some missteps over the course of the weekend. Big E vs Apollo Crews was going well, but the finish was pretty underwhelming, and the women's tag team gauntlet was easily the worst match of Night 1. Going into Night 2, it was going to be hard to be worse than that gauntlet match...and then Night 2 started. Randy Orton vs "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt opened Night 2 of WrestleMania 37, which proved to be a massive downgrade from the opener of Night 1. I don't mean Bobby Lashley vs Drew McIntyre, I'm talki...