PPV's that were a waste of YOUR money

[Jingus]

I've never once ordered a PPV. I went from "brand-new fan" to "actually working shows" in barely over two years. And lots of that period was when I was in college, where in the dorms you couldn't order PPVs anyway. Although I've sat in a couple of times when a friend ordered a show and just didn't care if extra people showed up.

The only one I've spent non-home-video money on was when WCW Superbrawl (Revenge) 2001 was in town live, and I went ahead and ponied up for tickets to that. I didn't regret it, that show was practically Great American Bash '89 by the sadly declined standards of dying-day WCW.

If forced to name the single worst PPV I've ever seen in my life, I'd probably go with WCW Bash At The Beach 1999. I've seen a tiny handful of PPVs which arguably had worse wrestling, but I don't know if I've ever seen a worse-booked show in my life. EVERY match ended with the exact opposite finish of what it should've had. And the match quality was just putrid; it says it all that the best match was the Jersey Triad vs Benoit/Malenko, a one-star affair which went on way too long and way too slowly; and the crowd was so enthralled that they spent the entire match bouncing a couple of giant beach-balls around instead of watching the show. This is also the show with the infamous Junkyard Match, which might possibly be the worst gimmick match I've ever seen in my life; at least stuff like blindfold matches and reverse battle royals don't typically feature literally half the participants receiving serious horrifying injuries.

[Casey]

You were at Superbrawl Revenge too?! For WCW on it's last legs, I thought it was a fun show to be at live.

[BoKnowsWrestling]

Went to the rumble this year. God awful except for the first match.

[Ryan]

I never did find this out. Did Superbrawl ever get its revenge?

[twiztor]

man, maybe i'm just too much of a mark for gimmick matches, but i enjoyed the Hardcore junkyard battle royale or whatever they called it.

 

and hell, while we're on the subject, i thought the king of the road match was an innovative venture.

[twiztor]

I never did find this out. Did Superbrawl ever get its revenge?

 

the revenge was ON superbrawl, hence why it never had another attempt at greatness.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Can't remember the last WWE PPV I ordered and haven't felt ripped off. Generally only order Rumble and Mania these days. Was en route overseas for this year's Mania so missed paying for that one.

 

First PPV I ordered was Spring Stampede 98. DDP/Raven had a good brawl, and that was about it I think.

[RIPPA]

 

 

The very first PPV I ever ordered was...

 

GAB '91

 

PPV BUDDIES~!

 

That was my first one too.

 

And then I got the ROyal Rumble that Mabel won

 

I was gun shy on PPVs for awhile after that

Mabel won the 1995 King of the Ring.

 

 

Yeah - I realized after I typed it that I meant King of the Ring but was far too lazy to go back and find my post

[SLKerAaron]

I have never been one to order that many PPVs. Namely because I've really never been able to afford them, but I did manage to order both GAB 2004 and No Way Out 2005. Don't get me wrong there were some decent matches on both, but not for the $35 price tag that they had on 'em back during that time. No Way Out was especially bad with all of the Diva Search competitions they threw in between matches.

[Pete]

TNA ran at least one PPV that cost $0.01 (yes, one cent) back in their early days. I joked that it was the waste of a perfectly good penny.

[Thomas Bugg]

I have never been one to order that many PPVs. Namely because I've really never been able to afford them, but I did manage to order both GAB 2004 and No Way Out 2005. Don't get me wrong there were some decent matches on both, but not for the $35 price tag that they had on 'em back during that time. No Way Out was especially bad with all of the Diva Search competitions they threw in between matches.

 

I almost considered getting that one for the novelty of the barbed wire cage match for the WWE championship. Glad I passed it up.

[goodhelmet]

I paid for Road Wild 98 and Fall Brawl 98 back to back. 

[Ryan]

Hey, you got Stevie Ray vs Chavito and Mongo vs Brian Adams back to back!

[Newb82]

TNA ran at least one PPV that cost $0.01 (yes, one cent) back in their early days. I joked that it was the waste of a perfectly good penny.

IIRC, it was a "Best Of" that at least had the AMW VS Triple X cage match.

[Chaos]

I rarely have paid for a PPV that I felt was a waste of money. I have seen many PPVs that I did not technically pay for (I was in a bar, cable company left PPV unscrambled in the PPV days, etc.) that I thought was a waste of time.

 

I even ordered a few of the $10 TNA PPVs, but the shows I ordered had moments in them that made it worth it for me. (I ordered the Raven/Jarrett blowoff 4/30/03 show and AJ Styles's first title win later that year).

 

I guess the two PPVs that I would have gotten the least value in were:

 

Hell in a Cell 2012 (A buddy and I ordered it since we decided not to go to Atlanta to see it).

Wrestlemania X8 (This was not a terrible show, but I do not think it was exactly worth its pricetag).

[Ace]

TNA ran at least one PPV that cost $0.01 (yes, one cent) back in their early days. I joked that it was the waste of a perfectly good penny.

 

The only TNA PPV I ever bought.

[Cristobal]

Worth every penny except the one.

[KidKash202]

All of them

[Curt McGirt]

So who got injured in the Junkyard match and how?

[jayhawk_in_cny]

I've been lucky in that I've never really felt like a PPV was a waste of money, but that's because I've only ordered a few.  The only one that really frustrated me was WrestleMania 11, and that was because the cable signal went out during the Hart vs. Backlund "I Quit" match,  Lost signal during the early portion of the match, and came back on right as the match had finished, so I missed out on pretty much the entire match.

[Jingus]

 

I paid for Road Wild 98 and Fall Brawl 98 back to back. 

 

Aw, Road Wild wasn't THAT bad.  Woulda been a better Nitro than a PPV, but eh, it's latter-day WCW, whaddya gonna do?  

 

-Sure, it inexplicably wasted the world champion Goldberg in a meaningless battle royale (WCW so badly misused The 'Berg on PPV during his championship reign that I wonder if it was a legit conspiracy), but at least the right guy went over and we got to see him jackhammer The Giant.  

 

-Sure, there were plenty of bad matches.  But they mostly tended towards funny-bad rather than unwatchable-and-hateful-bad.  Watching the Mongo/Crush marathon of botchery was freakin' hilarious.  

 

-And there were GOOD matches too.  We got lucharesu goodness with Rey/Psich and Juvy/Jericho, both going like fifteen minutes.  And Saturn/Raven/Kanyon was watchable trainwreck spectacle.  

 

-And finally, I'll continue to die on this particular hill forever: the Jay Leno match was good.  Smartly booked, near-perfectly wrestled, a totally acceptable celebrity match that did very little wrong.  

 

 

 

Now, Fall Brawl on the other hand WAS indeed THAT bad.  

 

-I think there were a grand total of two watchable matches on the entire show, Raven/Saturn and Juventud/Ramses The Great.  (And the latter of these was awfully short and unmemorable.)  

 

-Even stuff like Malenko/Hennig was a total bomb.  Part of the night-long subpar workrate might've been due to the Warrior's goddamn trap-door in the ring.  In the MIDDLE of the ring, right where you're SUPPOSED to bump.  The audible "THUD" of poor Davey Boy's body repeatedly bouncing off that thing will haunt me til the end of my days.  What's even worse: incredibly, nobody must have told anyone in the first three matches that the trap-door even existed, because they ALL wrestled in that ring (remember, Wargames show, two rings) before all the other matches sensibly switched to the one without a giant solid square hidden underneath the middle of the mat.  

 

-The insultingly long Scott Steiner fake injury angle caused a truly unprecedented amount of cursing in the TSM chatroom when did this one for We Watch Shitty WCW Club, a torrent of venomous rage-fueled profanity never seen before or since.  (Especially because the grand payoff was they toss Rick Steiner into a door one time and then walk away triumphant, after FIFTEEN FUCKING MINUTES of Scott down and selling.)  

 

-And the main event was actually the WORSE of the two WCW PPV matches involving Hogan and Warrior, just an offensive marathon of glacially-paced geriatric bullshit which murdered and buried the entire Wargames gimmick forever, there was never another two-cage main event Wargames in WCW again after this.  

 

 

 

 

 

TNA ran at least one PPV that cost $0.01 (yes, one cent) back in their early days. I joked that it was the waste of a perfectly good penny.

IIRC, it was a "Best Of" that at least had the AMW VS Triple X cage match.

Yeah.  It was nothing but good matches, shown in full, back-to-back.  Nobody should joke about this one, it was easily the most bang-for-your-buck paid show of all time.  

 

 

So who got injured in the Junkyard match and how?

...now that I think about it, I can't remember most of 'em, of course.  I know one was Mikey Whipwreck, who blew out his shoulder on some big dumb bump.  I think Sandman got hurt too, not sure how.  Then there was that one poor bastard (I forget who) that Brian Knobbs just KEPT hurling full-force into a shoot windshield, as if he was trying to legit KILL the guy, let alone injure him.  Anyone else remember better?  

Even aside from that, the match was like a remedial primer in How Not To Do This.  It wasn't even advertised until right before the show, iirc.  It was all filmed at night, with minimal lighting and shitty camerawork, rendering literally half the match an unwatchable dark blur.  It was all filmed in one take in real time, too, so that the cameras missed 90% of the action by focusing on Guys #1&2 over here while ignoring Guys #3-20 over there.  The company never gave us a CARD of who was even in the damn match, so we basically had to guess, based on fleeting glimpses of a bunch of random dudes (wearing street clothes, no less!  although La Parka did admittedly look like a boss in bluejeans, flannel shirt, and lucha mask) in near-total darkness.  The match featured copious use of special effects and pyro, which usually went off at the wrong time or else didn't work at all.  Some of the spots were legitimately life-threatening, with the real possibility of watching a wrestler die right before our eyes on live PPV if there had been a two-second miscue.  

 

The winner got nothing but a damn meaningless trophy, which IIRC was never mentioned again afterwards.  And it even had ESCAPE TO WIN rules, which was like the only dumb WWF thing that WCW hadn't already copied by that point.  None of the wrestlers even TRIED to escape, until after fifteen hours of fighting Finlay suddenly remembered how to win and promptly ran the fuck away.  And this assembly-line-of-abortions reportedly cost an unbelievable half a million dollars to produce.  That's insulting to the fans watching the show, the poor wrestlers in the match, the Turner brass who funded it, and the wrestling industry (if not all of entertainment media) as a whole.  

 

 

 

I've been lucky in that I've never really felt like a PPV was a waste of money, but that's because I've only ordered a few.  The only one that really frustrated me was WrestleMania 11, and that was because the cable signal went out during the Hart vs. Backlund "I Quit" match,  Lost signal during the early portion of the match, and came back on right as the match had finished, so I missed out on pretty much the entire match.

EDIT: ...ya didn't miss much.  Subpar action, with both guys working at half speed.  As if Bob had the flu while Bret had the shits.  The most dynamic thing in the match was Piper being annoying as an attempted scene-stealer, running all over the place and shrieking into the microphone and demanding to know if either guy quit if the other one even began to lock them in the simplest of holds.  

[kafkonia]

Wikipedia says Finlay suffered nerve damage so bad in that junkyard match he almost lost the use of the leg - which may explain the fact that him winning the tournament was pretty much not mentioned again, since he had to rehab for months.

[The Nature Boy]

I had the misfortune of actually physically being present for WrestleMania XI and Bash at the Beach 1999 (we were on vacation in FL). 

 

Scarring childhood memories. 

[Thomas Bugg]

I had the misfortune of actually physically being present for WrestleMania IX and Bash at the Beach 1999 (we were on vacation in FL). 

 

Scarring childhood memories. 

 

At least you got to attend a Wrestlemania, most of us never will.

[The Nature Boy]

 

I had the misfortune of actually physically being present for WrestleMania IX and Bash at the Beach 1999 (we were on vacation in FL). 

 

Scarring childhood memories. 

 

At least you got to attend a Wrestlemania, most of us never will.

 

 

Oh sorry, I went to 11, not 9, not that 11 was that much better though.

 

And I've been to two WrestleManias, 11 and 14. 14 was much better, but 11 was just an underwhelming live experience over all.