So Bad It's Horrible/WWE

WWE (formerly WWWF, then WWF), although a Long Runner in both its history and its talent, has hit more than a few snags along the way — bad wrestler ideas, bad Pay-Per-View events, and bad gimmicky storylines.

Important Note: If something bad was an isolated incident or simply stupid, it was probably a Wall Banger. Merely being offensive in its subject matter is not enough to justify a work as So Bad It's Horrible. Hard as it is to imagine at times, there is a market for all types of deviancy (no matter how small a niche it is). It has to fail to appeal even to that niche to qualify as this. To qualify as So Bad It's Horrible here, it should have actually damaged the business in some way — i.e., hurt a wrestler's drawing value or offended real-life fans to the point that they quit watching.

The Invasion
Ah, the InVasion - the greatest feud there ever could have been, and the biggest disappointment there ever was.

By April 2001, the then-WWF had bought both of its major competitors - World Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling - after both companies had gone out of business. The WCW buyout was the major acquisition, with the WWF acquiring the company's assets (including many of the contracts of its remaining roster and its extensive video library); they went so far as to have a special Nitro/RAW simulcast segment after the last match on the final Nitro to announce that Shane McMahon had (Kayfabe) bought WCW instead of Vince. If WWF's inevitable laziness stemming from being the sole major wrestling promotion in the United States for several years wasn't bad enough, here are more examples of why this storyline got Wrestlecrap's "Lost Gooker Award":


 * WCW vs. WWF was a dream match that fans looked forward to, but it quickly turned sour in the weeks leading up to the InVasion PPV. ECW wrestlers invaded an episode of Raw, and Paul Heyman himself declared the WWF vs. WCW war would be "taken to the extreme". This was the absolute high point of the storyline, as it appeared the top three wrestling promotions of the Attitude Era would be duking it out with each other in a no-holds-barred winner-take-all Battle Royale With Cheese...and then it all went downhill. Later that episode, ECW joined with WCW and became a singular entity known as The Alliance. The group would be called "the Alliance" through the rest of the storyline; mentions of ECW and WCW were kept to a minimum (partly because of trademark issues with usage of the ECW name). To top it off, Stephanie McMahon had been announced as the new owner of ECW, thus making the feud Shane and Steph vs. Vince, with the wrestlers as pawns in their family squabble. After having the Austin/McMahon feud appear to end because of the main event at WrestleMania X7, Vince threw himself and his family into the spotlight again, overshadowing everyone else in the feud and infuriating a lot of fans.
 * The very first time the WWF tried to promote a WCW match counted as this all on its own, for a whole bunch of reasons - some of which weren't even anyone's fault. The match was Booker T vs. Buff Bagwell in front of a very hostile Tacoma, Washington crowd - many of whom walked out before the WCW match even started. Booker and Bagwell didn't help, putting on a truly awful match (most of the blame went to Bagwell, who didn't exactly have a reputation for being a stellar worker to begin with, and who was in exceptionally poor form that night). The only thing that got cheers during the match was when Steve Austin and Kurt Angle, the WWF's top heels at the time, came out to beat up Booker and Bagwell before tossing them out of the arena. From this show, Vince McMahon took the belief that fans wouldn't cheer any WCW wrestlers and that WCW wrestlers didn't know how to work anyway. To put this in metaphor, the InVasion got off on the wrong step. This show was the wrong step, and WWE has rarely been back to Tacoma since. Bagwell was legitimately fired because the match was that horrible.
 * The next problem with the Invasion was the lack of star power on the part of WCW. Many top-tier WCW stars were not acquired by the WWF because their contracts were supposedly too expensive to buy out, the most notable amongst these names being Ric Flair, Sting, Goldberg, and Scott Steiner. This meant that the two biggest names on the WCW side at the beginning of the angle were Diamond Dallas Page and Booker T. This of course prevented many of the most anticipated (and presumably high-grossing) WCW vs WWF matches from happening. Instead, in a combination of trying to put higher drawing wrestlers in the main event and an unwillingness to treat WCW (and later ECW) like they were actually on par with WWF, Vince McMahon had Steve Austin and Kurt Angle turn turncoat and join the Alliance. The other Alliance members who were allowed to look halfway decent against the WWF guys were those who had already been working in WWF previously - The Dudley Boyz and Rhyno, for example. In other words, the feud for the most part was very blatantly WWF vs WWF. Most of the WCW guys were kept in the background and those that weren't were treated rather horribly.
 * Except for Rob Van Dam, who became tremendously popular almost instantly and whom the crowds adamantly refused to boo. Eventually Vince just started booking RVD against WWF heels as often as he could manage.
 * Page's treatment during the InVasion deserves its own explanation. DDP was so eager to continue his career, as well as be a major player in the InVasion, that he accepted a buyout for his WCW contract to the tune of 50 cents on the dollar. He was brought in as the stalker of The Undertaker's wife Sara, and then he and fellow WCW refugee Chris Kanyon feuded with Undertaker and Kane — and they were absolutely buried; the average match resembled a Curb Stomp Battle, and the feud ended with Page getting pinned by Sara. He was reduced to a lower midcarder with a motivational-speaker gimmick, and had only just started getting over again when he was severely concussed in a match with Bob Holly, essentially ending his wrestling career (aside from a brief run with TNA).
 * Then, finally, there was Survivor Series 2001. The final match was a "Winner Take All" Survivor Series Match between the Alliance and the WWF where the loser of the match would be forced to withdraw from the wrestling business (which should have told you who was winning right from the start). The match put Team WWF (The Rock, Chris Jericho, The Undertaker, Kane, and The Big Show) against Team Alliance (Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, Booker T, Rob Van Dam, and Shane McMahon). Of the ten men in the match, only two had been in the Alliance's originating companies when they went out of business (Booker T in WCW and Rob Van Dam in ECW), essentially making the main event an all-WWF affair. This becomes even more blatant when you know who the final two men in the match were — Steve Austin and The Rock. That's right, the fate of the wrestling world didn't hinge on a WCW star vs. a WWF star (or even an ECW star vs. a WWF star) — it hinged on the two biggest WWF stars of the Attitude Era. And guess what? Rock won thanks to Kurt Angle nailing Austin with the title belt and betraying the Alliance; both WCW and ECW were dead and buried. (Well, WCW at least. ECW would suffer a worse fate...)
 * After the InVasion ended, all the WCW main eventers who had been supposedly too expensive to bring over were hired over the years, with Ric Flair showing up the very night after the InVasion ended. Over the years every WCW main eventer except for Sting would end up in WWE.

Pay-Per-Views

 * King of the Ring 1995 had an array of bad matches, including a match that ended by time-limit draw, a match that ended by countout, a match that ended with outside interference, a match that ended with botched outside interference, and an inexplicable rise of Savio Vega (he was pitched as a guy who had an unbelievable rise to the top, but wound up getting crushed in the end). When Mabel was crowned the king, he had crap thrown at him.
 * Wrestlemania 9 remains one of the worst Wrestlemanias in history. Poor booking, poor matches it had it all. Let's go over the ways in why it sucked:
 * Since it was being held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas they decided to play up the whole Roman theme with all the commentators and announcers wearing togas
 * In the dark match, Tito Santana defeated Papa Shango in his first Wrestlemania victory since Wrestlemania I. And the didn't even show it! Fitting tribute for a guy who's been at the last 8 shows
 * The opening bout has Tatanka and Shawn Michaels fight in one of the only good matches on the card, but everything reaches shit at the ending. Tatanka hits his finisher on Shawn Michaels only the referee to refuse to count because, apparently, Shawn Michaels was counted out beforehand. Not only did this ending completely ruin what was a good match, it made neither man look strong as Shawn only won by sheer luck and Tatanka won the match but not the title and would never receive another title shot again.
 * The Steiners defeated the Headshrinkers in the only clean win by a babyface in the whole show
 * Doink the Clown beat Crush after Doink's twin brother hit Crush in the head with a loaded cast during a ref bump. No other explanation is needed for people to see this is stupid.
 * Razor Ramon defeated Bob Backlund in a match that was only remotely memorable because the crowd cheered for Razor despite Razor being a heel
 * The Mega Maniacs completely dominate Money Inc. when Hulk Hogan hits both members of Money Inc with Brutus Beefcake's facemask during the third ref bump of the night. It looks like Hogan and Beefcake win when another referee comes out an disqualifies them for using the facemask. When does this ever happen? It makes no sense considering how several matches have been won by cheating (including one ON THIS VERY SHOW) and no second ref came out to DQ the cheaters.
 * Lex Luger beats Mr. Perfect despite Mr. Perfect's feet being on the ropes especially since someone's foot being on the ropes is the one thing that referees are able to see.
 * The show goes from bad to worse with the next match, The Undertaker vs Giant Gonzalez. Largely hailed as one of the worst matches ever, Undertaker tried to pull a watchable match out of the irredeemably awful Gonzalez. After 7 and a half painful minutes, 'Taker wins the match by DQ after Gonzalez uses chloroform. Yes chloroform in a wrestling match.
 * The main event between Yokozuna and Bret Hart isn't too bad until the ending. Hart goes for the Sharpshooter, despite showing prior that he's too smart to go for moves like that in the match, and Yoko gets out easily. Then, Mr. Fuji throws salt in Bret's face and Yoko covers Bret to win the belt. While the ending was stupid what happened afterwards was far worse.
 * Hulk Hogan comes out (why?) and then Mr Fuji challenges Hogan for the belt (why?) and Mr Fuji throws the salt again only to miss and hit Yoko. Hogan then Atomic Leg Drops Yoko to win the belt. Now Yoko was planned to walk out of the show champion but Hogan lobbied against the idea citing that a babyface has to walk out of Wrestlemania the champ. But instead of getting Bret to retain, he decided that he should just come out and bury the new champion a mere seconds after he won the title.

Angles

 * Katie Vick. Murder, necrophilia, puppets. By God, this saga had it all! The angle (which Vince McMahon thought was hilarious at the time) hit absolute rock bottom in a video where Triple H "Kane" entered the funeral parlor where his dead high school sweetheart — whom he had killed in a car accident — was on display, climbed into the casket, and proceeded to have sex with the corpse. The scene climaxes in a handful of spaghetti bolognese getting thrown at the camera and the punchline "I finally did it! I screwed your brains out!" Years later, Triple H acknowledged that the whole thing was awful (and even made fun of it during a DX skit years later), and Mick Foley and The Rock said that the only people who found it funny were Vince McMahon and producer Kevin Dunn (the creator of the angle), who tried to justify the angle by claiming that it was their attempt at black comedy made popular by CSI, Six Feet Under, and The X-Files (great comedies, those)...although Dunn probably found it funny only because Vince did.
 * Even the WWE acknowledged how terrible it was a month later when new champ Shawn Michaels specifically told GM Eric Bischoff he wouldn't be pulling crap like playing with necrophilia like the last champ. When Bischoff smugly asked if it offends him as a Christian, he shot back "No! It offends me as a wrestling fan!"
 * Years later, CM Punk would mention Katie Vick in a promo, saying that watching it on YouTube "will drive you to drink. And then you can come see me, and I will save you!"
 * In 1998, the WWF Brawl For All, a boxing tournament between various wrestlers. As per Russo's Leaning on the Fourth Wall style of booking, this was booked as a "shoot" i.e. the wrestlers were actually beating each other up. Aside from the complications this puts on the kayfabe for the rest of the show, the wrestlers (who have no real boxing experience) then proceed to have real fights that look terrible and injure each other. The angle was set up to get Steve "Dr. Death" Williams over as a tough guy for a potential "who's tougher" match with Stone Cold Steve Austin. However, the very obvious variable of having unpredictable finishes in unscriped finishes meant Dr. Death injured a hamstring and was taken out in the quarter finals by Bart Gunn. The bookers then put him in his Wrestlemania XV match with Butterbean where Gunn is utterly destroyed in half a minute (Gunn was fired when he got back to the locker room). The angle led to no less than four injuries, a lot of animosity between the wrestlers who beat each other up, and the destruction of two promising careers (Gunn and Dr. Death.) And, of course, the big selling point—that these were real fights fizzled with the fans who either didn't buy that they were unscripted or wanted them to just wrestle instead.
 * When Eddie Guerrero died in November 2005, WWE decided to pay tribute to him in the best way possible — by milking the hell out of that Tear Jerker. They went so far to have Rey Mysterio, Jr. use this as the motivation to win the title at Wrestlemania in his "Road to Wrestlemania" angle. Then, when he got into a rivalry with Randy Orton after Royal Rumble 2006, the writers had the audacity to make Orton say Eddie was "in Hell".
 * That wasn't nearly the worst insult. In their first attempt to get heat off Eddie's death, The Big Show chokeslammed Rey onto the roof of Eddie's lowrider during an episode of SmackDown! less than a month after Eddie's death. Bad times.
 * The fans hated this "Eddiesploitation" so much that it topped Wrestlecrap's annual Gooker Award voting for 2006, with RD Reynolds openly admitting during the induction that offering it as a nominee was a bad idea simply because it was "the hardest induction [he'd] ever had to write". Reynolds did it because he said the site is dedicated to documenting the very worst ideas in professional wrestling history, and that the induction had to be added in the hopes that people wouldn't make the same kind of mistake in the future.
 * What made Vickie's appearances all the more heartbreaking was the ugly reality of what Vickie had become in her grief over Eddie. Before Eddie's death, Vickie was a physically-fit and even reasonably-attractive woman. By the time she became General Manager of Smackdown, she seemed to have gained at least 50 pounds...and, cruelly, the writers worked in all the fat jokes conceivably imaginable. Yes, everything from John Cena remarking that Edge (her new kayfabe husband) was in the ring with "a 400-pound beast...oh, and The Big Show as well" to provocative pictures of a naked Vickie being flashed on the Titan Tron just to disgust the audience, and most recently Michael Cole crapping all over Vickie's tribute to Eddie by calling her finisher a "Hog Splash". Note to WWE: distraught widows often turn to food for comfort, and there's nothing funny about that. Vickie has since slimmed down considerably - and is even considered attractive by a number of fans - but fat jokes still manage to find their way into promos and commentary. Jerry Lawler in particular made so many offensive fat jokes he nearly cost one of their partners a sponsor.
 * The Montreal Screwjob. Not only was it the killer of Bret Hart's ties to WWF (now WWE), but it killed the concept of Kayfabe for many. Hart, then the reigning WWF Champion, was due to become one of the highest-paid wrestlers in WCW, and potentially have a lasting role following his retirement. McMahon, however, was in a hole fiscally, what with the WCW being a very stiff competitor. He was insistent that Hart drop the title, but Hart refused to back down. Either way, McMahon decided Hart was losing that belt one way or another, and thus decided to change the script of a Survivor Series match Hart was set to win (against Shawn Michaels) behind his back. Hart was caught in a hold the two had agreed Michaels would let him out of, but refused to submit. This didn't stop McMahon himself from marching onto the ring and ordering for the timekeeper to declare Michaels the winner, at the near-exact moment where the hold broke. Michaels was confused, and Hart was pissed off; he spat in Vince's face before going to town on the nearby equipment. Mass turmoil ensued behind the scenes, the audience went bloody insane, and Vince even locked himself in his office in the hopes it would all blow over.

Individual Matches

 * The Christopher Nowinski & Jackie Gayda vs. Bradshaw & Trish Stratus match from a 2002 RAW had so many blown spots (most of them by Gayda, a member of the Tough Enough school) that Jim Ross famously declared it "bowling shoe ugly" and all but apologized to the fans at its conclusion ("Mercifully, it's over"). Most fans simply refer to it as "That Jackie Gayda Match". Bradshaw (better known now as JBL) said that it was one of the worst matches he'd ever participated in (which is saying a lot, considering the source). The "highlight" was when Trish executed a bulldog off the top turnbuckle (her finishing move) on Gayda. Gayda forgot to sell the move, so it came off looking like this — Trish jumps off the top rope and lightly taps Gayda on the back of the head, causing Gayda to pause and then collapse like her legs had turned to jelly.
 * Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell had a bit of a media feud for about fifteen seconds once. Vince McMahon, in his infinite wisdom, decided to cash in on that by staging a match on the January 8, 2007 edition of RAW between "Donald" and "Rosie" (two independent wrestlers done up in unconvincing costumes and stupid wigs). Seriously. On live TV. The match was slow, completely effortless, and overall unbearable. The fans began by chanting "YOU CAN'T WRESTLE!" before progressing to "BORING" and then, driven to out-and-out rebellion, they started a "T-N-A!" chant (which seemed to shock Vince out of his wits). There have been bad matches before, and there will be again, but nothing has ever been bad enough to get a WWE crowd to chant for TNA (and cries to actually wrestle). See for yourself.
 * Having not learned anything from that fiasco, the next year a fake Barack Obama fought with a fake Hillary Clinton (played by talented women's wrestler Lexie Fyfe) on the April 21, 2008 episode of RAW. Naturally the fans hated it.
 * YMMV: Many fans found the match to actually be okay, with the parody of Bill Clinton's hamming it up being one of the redeeming qualities.
 * There's an infamous match between the Brothers of Destruction (The Undertaker and Kane) and Kronik (Bryan "Wrath/Adam Bomb" Clarke and the late Brian "Crush" Adams) that took place during the InVasion angle. Taker was no-selling everything any WCW guy did to him with impunity, and Kane was only slightly better; meanwhile, told they were losing, Kronik decided they just wouldn't try very hard in the match. There really are no words to describe how bad this match was. Botches, no-selling, extended rest-holds, miscommunication between the wrestlers, everything. Both members of Kronik were sent to development after the match, refused to go, and were fired for real.
 * Batista vs. The Big Show for the ECW Championship in August 2006. Doesn't sound quite as bad as you'd think, and to give credit where it's due the match itself wasn't horrible. However, it was held at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Truly, it was a wise idea to hold a WWE match in a pit of Mutants that only want to see Rob Van Dam or The Sandman. See for yourself all the boos they got.
 * Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar. Two men with similar gimmicks — big, charismatic, intense wrestlers who were nigh unstoppable by most other wrestlers. What could go wrong with a showdown between them? Well, Lesnar was ditching WWE to try out for the NFL, Goldberg's contract was set to expire and he wasn't renewing, and the show they wrestled at (WrestleMania 20) was being held in Madison Square Garden, a location that skews towards the Smark section of the fanbase. Goldberg and Lesnar decided not to bother having a good match knowing each other's fate, and the viciously negative fan reaction (skewed towards Lesnar, whose decision to leave WWE was more widely known than Goldberg's and more shocking, having only been reported a week before the show) certainly didn't inspire them to give a good performance. The end result was quite possibly the worst match in WrestleMania history, and the only saving grace came after the bell when guest referee Steve Austin gave both Lesnar and Goldberg a Stone Cold Stunner as a lovely parting gift. It's widely believed that WWE purposefully laid out the match to be as awful as possible as a spiteful parting gift for both men. Given how petty people in wrestling can be, it's entirely possible.
 * During the match, two fans dressed as Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage got into a fake wrestling match. Aside from Austin giving the Stunner to Lesnar and Goldberg, this got the biggest pop of the whole match.
 * Kaitlyn vs Maxine from season 3 of NXT. Kaitlyn had barely any wrestling training and literally had her first match on NXT while Maxine was hardly trained that well herself. What followed was a disaster of epic proportions that was so bad the announcers broke Kayfabe and called it the worst match ever. Hell, Michael Cole even got up to take a phonecall during the middle of it. In the girls' defence they apparently had no time to train for it because the tech guys took too long setting up the ring for a stunt that was to happen on Smack Down later in the night.

Individual Wrestlers/Gimmicks

 * Terry Taylor, the Red Rooster. Before WWF, he was known as an excellent worker and an up and coming superstar. The storyline went that Bobby Heenan said he could make any "red rooster" a champion, and brought Taylor into his stable, and kept insisting that "the kid's name doesn't even matter". So far not so bad, right? Well, Taylor split away from Heenan...and kept on being the Red Rooster. He gave himself a red fauxhawk and clucked during his matches. While it wasn't offensive or repulsive like some gimmicks, this one literally completely ruined Terry Taylor's career. After the Red Rooster, he couldn't get over...anywhere...ever...because no matter what he tried to do the fans would just chant "rooster" at him. Oh, he also had a "small fanbase" (of plants) known as the "Rooster Boosters", and they would wear T-shirts showing a cartoon of the red-fauxhawked Taylor cock-a-doodle-dooing.
 * The story is that both Terry Taylor and Curt Hennig were being considered for the "Mr. Perfect" gimmick. Curt Hennig got the Mr. Perfect gimmick, Terry Taylor got the silver medal as the Red Rooster.
 * Beaver Cleavage was basically a take-off of Leave It to Beaver, even wearing a propeller beanie and school uniform type outfit, and was shown in a series of black & white vignettes (compete with canned laughter) that showed him acting like a little kid while his mom (played by Marianna Komlos) would make various sexual suggestive comments to him. The gimmick was Vince Russo's pet gimmick and he fought with the entire creative staff to get Beaver on the air. After only 2 weeks of the character (and hostile fan reaction), Vince McMahon stepped in and killed it off. Chaz Warrington is to this day best remembered as "That poor schmuck who had to be Beaver Cleavage".
 * Anything and everything having to do with Stone Cold Steve Austin following his semi-retirement in 2003. It's pretty sad, really. Austin could have just walked off into the sunset and his awesome legacy wouldn't have been tarnished. Instead he had to stick around as a lame "mascot" character for a number of years — and during this time, his sociopathic gimmick mutated from "Badass vigilante who speaks truth to power" to "bullying Jerkass who does whatever the hell he wants and gets away with it". As the months passed, he just got worse and worse. Beating up Rene Dupree and Sylvain Grenier of the French-Canadian tag team La Resistance because they criticized the U.S. government in the early days of the Iraq War was bad enough. But then, a few months later, when Diva Stacy Keibler — who literally weighs half of what Austin does — declined Austin's offer of a beer, he kicked her in the stomach and gave her a Stone Cold Stunner. And this while Stacy was a face, no less! That moment deservedly made a wrestling website's "Hall of Shame" for 2003.
 * How the announcers, or rather Jim Ross, responded to this was the icing on the cake. This was during the time when Stacy was in a relationship with Test and later Scott Steiner, who Ross never failed to label as Jerkasses for their abuse of her. Yet, when Austin gave her the aforementioned Stunner? It's handwaved by saying, while he didn't agree with it, that's just how he is. It's both Jerkass and Moral Dissonance at its worst where one wasn't sure who contributed to it more, Ross or the fans themselves.
 * The absolute nadir came during WWE's "Homecoming" ceremony in Fall 2005, when Austin "stunned" Vince, Shane, and Stephanie McMahon. Okay, so they kinda deserved it. But then Linda — the one McMahon who is pretty much universally respected, both in Kayfabe and in Real Life — came down to the ring and scolded Austin for attacking her entire family. Austin was initially gracious to Linda and even (albeit insincerely) apologized for his actions...and then he offered her a beer, which Linda (perhaps remembering what had happened to Stacy) accepted. Not too bad so far — but then, while Linda is sipping the beer, Austin gives her a Stunner anyway. That's right, Austin stunned a fifty-year-old non-wrestling woman, just for kicks! Things only got worse on the following episode of RAW where the McMahons showed up mad as hell — and for once, who could blame them? Problem was, instead of just firing Austin, they chose to take out their anger on seemingly everyone but Austin. Stephanie slapped ring announcer Lilian Garcia for practically no reason, and Vince lashed out at WWE's entire fanbase for somehow being responsible for what had happened to him and his family. And just when it seemed as if things couldn't get any more disgraceful, Linda (the good McMahon, remember!) told off Vince and Stephanie for throwing temper tantrums...and then, a moment later, vindictively fired color commentator JimRoss and kicked him in the crotch as all the other McMahons laughed! And this was after Ross had (quite needlessly) apologized on Austin's behalf, too! After watching the entire sequence of events, it's probable that two notions flashed through every RAW fan's mind — 1) the McMahons are really evil, power-hungry bastards and 2) thank God that Stone Cold isn't a regular on this show anymore.
 * Woohoo! Stone Cold stunned some old people, an innocent girl and two jerkasses! Man he's awesome!

Tag Teams
The WWE's tag team division has fluctuated in quality heavily over the years. 2009 was a great year for tag teams, culminating in four former world champions (Chris Jericho and The Big Show vs. D Generation X) having a serious feud over the titles. However, in 2010, the division went from prominence to shambles in no time at all, with every single tag team either breaking up or becoming irrelevant. Needless to say, smarks want nothing more than for the Tag Team division in the WWE to stop sucking so hard.


 * When Shawn Michaels turned on Marty Jannetty and split up the Rockers, a legend was born where a Tag Team died. That was a good thing. The problem now is that WWE never left the mindset that if you break up a tag team, you'll find a great singles competitor lurking within the team. Needless to say, almost every subsequent attempt to find the next Shawn Michaels merely kills a good tag team for two mediocre singles competitors who are lucky to get gigs repeatedly losing matches to Monster Heels. This method of thinking has been referred to in some circles as "the Shawn Michaels Effect". The fact that Marty Jannetty was at the time Shawn Michaels' equal in ring-ability and charisma is forgotten, although Marty's partying lifestyle and "personal demons" eventually hamstrung his career.
 * In the futile search for the next Shawn Michaels, the WWE has broken up: Men on a Mission, the Hardy Boyz, Edge & Christian, Los Guerreros, the World's Greatest Tag Team, the Gatecrashers (Vance Archer and Curt Hawkins), the Colons, Cryme Time, the Basham Brothers, Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch, the Hart Dynasty, The Dude Busters, Deuce & Domino, London and Kendrick, and even the Dudley Boyz. Very few of these guys managed to get over as singles competitors, most wound up less over than ever before, and the tag division only gets smaller and smaller each time a breakup happens.

Other

 * The Chris Benoit double murder-suicide was arguably the worst thing ever to happen in the history of the industry. Not only did it stain WWE's image in the media (and still does, to an extent), and not only did it put a huge blemish on the reputation of the industry as a whole, but WWE had to apologize for the tribute held a few hours before the actual cause of Benoit's death and the deaths of his family were announced. Not to mention WWE having to seriously Retcon and DisContinue all references to Benoit and his title reign. Essentially, they made Benoit an Unperson, and still treat him as such to this day.
 * The media coverage was just as bad. Nancy Grace, despite claiming to be a WWE fan, was one of the first to attack WWE on the subject, trumpeting the claim that steroids were the cause. She even produced a list of deceased wrestlers, attributing every death on that list to steroid abuse. While a good portion of those deaths were steroid related, many (such as Marianna Komlos {the former Mrs. Beaver Cleavage; she died of breast cancer, and never wrestled a single match}, Junkyard Dog {car accident}, Bruiser Brody {stabbed to death}, and Andre the Giant {his massive size, although he lived a decade longer than doctors thought he would}) were not. She showed more than once that she Did Not Do the Research - for example, she claimed that Benoit may have been distraught from being "demoted from the Four Horsemen to RAW".
 * Bill O'Reilly, on the other hand, actually had the gall to blame Nancy Benoit for the situation.
 * When news of the incident broke, many internet wrestling fans speculated that Nancy's ex husband Kevin Sullivan was responsible. Sullivan, conveniently enough, is/was a real life Jerkass and who played evil (and often flat-out Satanic) characters for much of his career. This circulated the internet not long after the tragedy took place.
 * The worst part? Benoit's actions were influenced heavily (albeit not exclusively) by steroids; not in a single incident of roid rage, but via physical debilitation from decades of steroid abuse. Because of the loud loonies like Nancy Grace, most people now believe that steroids had nothing to do with any of it.
 * There's also the speculation (leaning closer to fact) that the WWE, various wrestlers and especially Vince knew ahead of time what had happened beyond simply "Chris Benoit and his family were found deceased" and yet put on the tribute show anyway. The most telling bit is a tribute by a very uncomfortable William Regal who very awkwardly tries to talk only about Benoit the wrestler and not Benoit the person.
 * Tough Enough 2. Head trainer Al Snow, in just about every Confession Cam segment, was agonizing over how poorly the training was going. In fact, "These kids aren't ready" was practically the Catch Phrase for the entire season. Then when it was time to select the winners, they deviated from the "one male winner, one female winner" thing at the very last split second, to the point that the person announcing the winners was audibly confused. The first winner announced was Linda "Shaniqua" Miles, aka Linda "miss a missile dropkick by" Miles, named after an incident in a match she wrestled on Heat. Yes, Linda was worse in the ring than Jackie (The second winner) following Tough Enough 2.
 * The 2003 WWE/Girls Gone Wild PPV special. Viewers were promised all sorts of R-rated hijinks that the networks would never allow (read: Divas flashing their goods). The audience got one shot of Torrie Wilson almost flipping her skirt at the crowd. The main attraction was supposed to be the crowing of Miss Girls Gone Wild 2003 (whatever that meant); what happened was a glorified Diva Search sketch, with an occasional flash of tits (not from the Divas, of course). Even when the "contestants" would start to get frisky and start doing what girls traditionally do in a Girls Gone Wild video, Johnathan Coachman would literally jump in and break things up. Did we mention that this was a Pay-Per-View? A tremendous waste of time for all involved.
 * The entire ending sequence to NXT Season 2 was just such a trainwreck it may have stopped several careers in their tracks. It started off with Kaval winning, which was about the only thing that went well here. After the announcement was made, runner-up Michael McGullicutty was handed the mic and cut a very narmy promo where trips over his lines. In that promo, he basically promises a Genesis of the career of Michael McGullicutty. Then he leaves the ring. Kaval tries to cut a celebration promo, but is cut off when the rookies eliminated in the previous weeks come in and attack him. The WWE Pros try to intervene, and we get what ends up being the very anti-thesis of what made The Nexus work. Even the people in the nosebleeds could have heard the spots being called and the refs yelling instructions to the angry rookies. After that promo, only Kaval and Riley would find themselves appearing on television in the weeks that followed, (Kaval joined the Smack Down roster, while Riley still hangs around The Miz as his 'apprentice') and the end of NXT Season 2 was never mentioned again. McGillicutty and Harris would finally resurface at Hell In A Cell, costing John Cena his match against Wade Barrett and acting as unofficial Nexus lackeys, before being officially inducted into the group a few weeks later. If there were plans for a Genesis stable involving NXT Season 2, they were quickly axed.