WWE: Missed Opportunities.

[The Natural]

Thought we'd could do for WWE what we've done for AEW:

• The Streak at WWE WrestleMania should never have ended. However were it to have, Roman Reigns or Bray Wyatt.
• The Summer of Punk in 2011 after CM Punk beat John Cena for the WWE Championship at WWE Money in the Bank 2011. Such a missed opportunity.
• Bret Hart going to WCW after the Montreal Screwjob at Survivor Series 1997. Bret would get career ending concussions.
• The 2001 Invasion.
• Bark like a dog from 2001 and Katie Vick in 2002 are indefensible.
• Triple H defending the WWE World Heavyweight Championship vs. Booker T at WWE WrestleMania XIX especially but the entire Reign of Terror.
• Triple H beating Sting at WWE WrestleMania XXXI. So fucking stupid, the result and manner of with nWo helping Sting. The match to make by far was The Undertaker vs. Sting. WWE's Icon vs. WCW's Icon.
• Steve Austin vs. F Hulk Hogan at WWE WrestleMania X8 rather than The Rock vs. F Hulk Hogan.
• Daniel Bryan should have won the 2014 and 2015 WWE Royal Rumble match.
• Roman Reigns should have beat Brock Lesnar at WWE WrestleMania XXXI for the WWE Championship and XXXIV for the WWE Universal Championship.
• Putting the WWE Championship on Jinder Mahal was terrible.  Mahal even defended successfully against Shinsuke Nakamura at WWE SummerSlam 2017 who never fully recovered.
• Samoa Joe should have beat Brock Lesnar for the WWE Universal Championship in 2017 or AJ Styles for the WWE Championship in 2018.
• The Great Khali as WWE World Heavyweight Champion in 2007.
• Santino Marrela should have won the 2011 Men's Royal Rumble match.
• Sasha Banks should have won the first WWE Women's Championship match vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Becky Lynch at WWE WrestleMania XXXII instead of Charlotte Flair.
• Charlotte Flair defending the WWE Smackdown Women's Championship ending by submission Asuka's unbeaten streak at WWE WrestleMania XXXIV still annoys me now.
• Charlotte Flair beating Rhea Ripley for the NXT Women's Championship at WWE WrestleMania XXXVI. Flair didn't need it.
• Team Nexus should have beat Team WWE at WWE SummerSlam 2010.
• The New Daniel Bryan should have lasted longer.
• John Cena vs. CM Punk should have main evented WWE WrestleMania XXIX.
• John Cena defeating Bray Wyatt at WWE WrestleMania XXX especially and WWE Payback 2014.
• The annual WWE Hell in a Cell show.
• The Fiend Bray Wyatt dropping the WWE Universal Championship to Goldberg at WWE Super Showdown 2020.
• Randy Orton essentially squashing The Fiend Bray Wyatt at WWE WrestleMania XXXVII.
• Wrong Royal Rumble match winners: Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey in 2022.
• Chris Jericho's Undisputed Championship reign.

What say you?

Edited October 25 by The Natural

[zendragon]

Is Jinder worse than Kahli?

[The Natural]

17 minutes ago, zendragon said:

Is Jinder worse than Kahli?

I forgot about The Great Khali. Khali.

Edited October 25 by The Natural

[The Green Meanie]

The WHOLE Nexus debacle.

[Ramo2653]

Personally number one without a question is HHH beating Booker at WrestleMania. I remember us ordering the webcast version from WWE.com and a buddy using his student meal card to order some pizzas from the campus student center and we watched it in one guys dorm because he had the biggest monitor and sound system. And we all went quiet after that.

Nak should have beat Jinder at Summerslam and I can't see a reason why they didn't do it. You had "made" Jinder by that point, the extra 2 months or so of Jinder being champ didn't matter and it's not like the fans in India really took a hold of him.

Naomi getting hurt during her first title reign kinda threw a wrench into plans. 

WWE delaying on pulling the trigger on Reigns was weird. I'd love to get the thinking of Vince and Co. on that one. You could have easily had Roman at WM against Brock, then work to a Bray match at Summerslam health permitting.

Overall giving more of a crap about the tag division.

[zendragon]

Tazz getting more than one match in the main event. Would have loved to see if what would have happened if he didn't end up losing a feud to JR of all people

[BobbyWhioux]

Ted Dibiase never officially being WWF Champion.

Not doing Demolition vs The Road Warriors on PPV when they finally had both.

Not doing Hogan vs Flair on PPV when they finally had both.

Not doing Austin vs Hogan on PPV when they finally had both.

Putting Dusty in Polkadots

Bam Bam Bigelow, just in general.

Bob Backlund's 2nd Championship Run only being 3 days.

The Invasion never being anything more than Vince's extended victory lap over Jim Crockett Promotions/Ted Turner.

Painting themselves into a corner with the "guaranteed Wrestlemania Title Bout" Royal Rumble stipulation and forever rendering themselves too scared to do a true shocking dark horse Cinderella winner (i.e., Santino that one year it came down to him and Del Rio. Especially with how Del Rio would go on to squander all the resources WWE allocated to him in general).

releasing the IIconics

Team Nexus/Retribution/The NWO/The Invasion, and the WWE/F both never being willing to do what needs to be done for this type of angle to work and also never learning the lesson on why, or even just learning not to bother with this type of angle if they're unwilling/unable to to take the steps to get it right.

Arn's Spinebuster not ending The Streak.


and that's just not including "patently offensive shit that made missed opportunities out of every first-time customer who never became a long-term customer because the first time they tuned in they saw that shit" like Katie Vick et al.

 

 

[RazorbladeKiss87]

I still sometimes think about what WWE Okada would look like. 

A weird one but what if Randy had left a few years ago? I honestly would have loved to see what he'd look like in NJPW or something. 

[mystman]

If they had to let Brett go to WCW, they should've waited til April and let him put over Austin at Wrestlemania 14.

[zendragon]

Demolition v Road Warriors reminds me of the idea of Hart Foundation v Rockers v Demolition if triple threats existed back then

[zendragon]

Also never giving us a Boogeyman v Disco Inferno feud

[Technico Support]

On 10/26/2024 at 8:15 PM, BobbyWhioux said:

Not doing Hogan vs Flair on PPV when they finally had both

Why they couldn't slowly build this to a fever pitch in time for Mania 8, I have no idea.  The biggest dream match of the 1980s, right down the drain.  I understand they promised Sid the Mania main event but they did a "double main event" anyway, so who cares?

[BobbyWhioux]

6 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Why they couldn't slowly build this to a fever pitch in time for Mania 8, I have no idea.  The biggest dream match of the 1980s, right down the drain.  I understand they promised Sid the Mania main event but they did a "double main event" anyway, so who cares?

when in doubt, blame Hogan Not Wanting To Lose (even in his "last match")

[The Natural]

9 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Why they couldn't slowly build this to a fever pitch in time for Mania 8, I have no idea.  The biggest dream match of the 1980s, right down the drain.  I understand they promised Sid the Mania main event but they did a "double main event" anyway, so who cares?

This.

3 hours ago, BobbyWhioux said:

when in doubt, blame Hogan Not Wanting To Lose (even in his "last match")

"That doesn't work for me, brother." What a racist POS he is.

[zendragon]

Breaking up TWGTT, just so Shelton could have a singles run, you could have had Shelton wrestling HBK ect while still being aligned with Haus and they could have had a run comparable to FTR

[Cliff Hanger]

This is a little bleaker than this thread, but every once in a while I can't help but imagine the 2000 Owen Hart could have had with the Radz if they hadn't killed him with negligence. 

[HumanChessgame]

On 10/30/2024 at 5:27 AM, zendragon said:

Breaking up TWGTT, just so Shelton could have a singles run, you could have had Shelton wrestling HBK ect while still being aligned with Haus and they could have had a run comparable to FTR

Adding to this, breaking up American Alpha so Jason Jordan could do that cringe storyline as Angle's son. Granted his in-ring career may have ended either way, but it was still a boneheaded move.

[BobbyWhioux]

I mean, you could copy past about a hundred tag team breakups into that post/this thread.

there we go, in fact.  Missed WWE Opportunity:  Tag Team Wrestling in general/viewing tag teams as existing just to be broken up.

[StuntmanCrowley]

Cutting the legs off of Bray Wyatt every single time he had a match that mattered.

[Mister TV]

On 10/28/2024 at 1:04 PM, Technico Support said:

Why they couldn't slowly build this to a fever pitch in time for Mania 8, I have no idea.  The biggest dream match of the 1980s, right down the drain.  I understand they promised Sid the Mania main event but they did a "double main event" anyway, so who cares?

Was the "Sid was promised the WM Main Event" thing true? Way more likely that Vince put Sid in that spot purely due to his look.

[DMJ]

If I'm not mistaken, I think Bruce Prichard - and maybe others like Meltzer? - have suggested that Flair/Hogan wasn't booked because their house show matches hadn't done as well as expected both in terms of drawing and quality. 
 

I always found that very suspect.

We know that, 2 years later, a considerably "colder" Hulk Hogan would headline Bash at the Beach 94' against Flair, who you could also argue was "colder" in 94' than he was in 91'. This show was a huge success for WCW, setting a company record for buys (though, to be fair, the 225k buys would not have been considered as rousing a success in WWE). But, in 91'-92', the WWE machine was far ahead in terms of production/marketing/promotion and its hard not to think that with all of Vince's energy behind it, a Flair/Hogan match wouldn't have done a good buyrate.

Plus, if Vince was disappointed with Flair's drawing power against Hogan on house shows - which presumably occurred in late 91' - why then go ahead and push Flair so strong? What would make you believe Flair/Savage would work better than Flair/Hogan aside from the size issue? (note: One theory is that Vince didn't see Flair as physically impressive enough to work against Hogan.)

I've also heard/read that there was tension because neither guy wanted to job to the other. Again, I'm kinda surprised by this. Flair did the job for Savage, so why would he be so against doing it for Hulk? Flair has always joked that being a 16-time World Champion comes with the caveat that he also lost the World Championship that many times. He wasn't Roman Reigns. He wasn't even Hogan or Lesnar. Ric Flair lost all the time, including at WrestleMania VIII. But putting Hogan over would've somehow been a dealbreaker? I don't buy it. 

Then there's the ridiculousness of Vince worrying too much about "quality." Vince may have always wanted the WWE to be "sports-entertainment" and not 'rassling, but even Vince knew what a quality wrestling match was and what the audience wanted. That's why Bret Hart was champion and not Ludvig Borga. No way did Vince think Hogan/Sid was going to be a better wrestling match than Flair/Hogan.

I don't think Vince cared one bit about match quality, though. I think he legitimately saw Hogan/Sid as a bigger "spectacle" match and saw Flair/Savage as being the "wrestling" main event. 

But that does leave the question of maybe Vince thought he'd get another crack at it forWrestleMania IX when, presumably, Flair would've had the title back (he wins back the gold sometime after SummerSlam 92'), been a bigger star in Vince's eyes, and Hogan would've been back from his "retirement" for a big Mania payday. 

 

TLDR: I'm not sure we'll ever really know the true answer. Neither Vince or Hogan are reliable narrators. The "disappointing house shows" seems really short-sighted and uncharacteristic of Vince. Neither guy wanting to do the job is silly because Flair did jobs all the time (including to Savage at WM8). 

[supremebve]

On 10/28/2024 at 1:04 PM, Technico Support said:

Why they couldn't slowly build this to a fever pitch in time for Mania 8, I have no idea.  The biggest dream match of the 1980s, right down the drain.  I understand they promised Sid the Mania main event but they did a "double main event" anyway, so who cares?

Flair vs. Savage was the right choice, the better choice, and ultimately the Flair vs. Savage story and match are way better than what we would have got from Flair and Hogan.

[Technico Support]

6 hours ago, Mister TV said:

Was the "Sid was promised the WM Main Event" thing true? Way more likely that Vince put Sid in that spot purely due to his look.

I remember hearing Steve Beverly mention it right when Sid signed and heard it a few times since, but who really knows?

2 hours ago, supremebve said:

Flair vs. Savage was the right choice, the better choice, and ultimately the Flair vs. Savage story and match are way better than what we would have got from Flair and Hogan.

Counterpoint: sad sack, no roids, bodysuit-wearing Savage is the worst Savage.  

[BobbyWhioux]

yeah, but Worst Savage is like worst pizza or worst blowjob.  It's still really satisfying.

[twiztor]

22 hours ago, DMJ said:

If I'm not mistaken, I think Bruce Prichard - and maybe others like Meltzer? - have suggested that Flair/Hogan wasn't booked because their house show matches hadn't done as well as expected both in terms of drawing and quality. 
 

I always found that very suspect.

largely agree. i certainly question the logic of "Hogan vs. Flair didn't draw enough", because it's not like Hogan vs. Sid was setting the world on fire (in any metric: fan interest, fan eyeballs, fan attendance, match quality).

NOW, if you were to argue that having a two main event card (Hogan main event AND a Flair main event), would/could/did garner more attention versus just one all-star match, i can squint and see that logic. Don't have the numbers in front of me, but i can see that being worthy of a discussion at the time.