Bottom of the barrel

[tiger_rick]

What is one sentence that just hammers home a period of strife for your favourite promotions? Like, if anyone was still an ECW fan by then, the words "ECW Champion Justin Credible" would tell you everything you need to know.

I'll start with a couple.

"Saraya as AEW Women's Champion". Parts of 2022 and most of 2023 was the real rough between the smooth for AEW and nothing makes me shudder more than TAFKA Paige absolutely stinking up the top end of their women's division.

"New Blood vs. Millionaire's Club". Man, I still wanted to love WCW in 2000. Man, there was nothing highlighting how far and fast the company was falling than this feud. You could probably replace it with "Mike Sanders" or "General Rection" or "Hey Sid, no scissors" or a million other things but they all, ultimately, say "20 year monopoly of the wrestling industry coming up".

[Lorne Malvo]

 I actually didn't mind Saraya's run as champ (and I'm not a fan of her at all), her smoke-and-mirrors style was a million miles away from your typical AEW match and made a nice change. I think the issue is that it was with their main womens belt - it probably would've gone down a lot better if she was doing the same run with the TBS belt.

Although, celebrating with her dickhead family probably got the reign off to a bad enough start anyway.

Every now and again I remember the 'Wild Card rule' which came about in 2019 and was an excuse to have Raw guys show up on Smackdown and vice versa. I think it allowed 5 wrestlers to show up on the other show each night, or something along those lines, but then it was never adhered to or the rules were never enforced and it just became a confusing vague mess. it summed up 2019 WWE for me, the year I packed WWE in after watching weekly since 2001. A year where the two main feuds for about 3 months were Kofi vs Dolph and Baron Corbin vs Seth Rollins. Man, 2019 WWE was bad.

[air_raid]

3 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

What is one sentence that just hammers home a period of strife for your favourite promotions?

“I have received an email from the anonymous Raw General Manager.”

[Supremo]

“Shane McMahon’s punches against Randy Orton.”

Edited August 4, 2025 by Supremo

[Guest]

Heel Michael Cole. 

[Gus Mears]

DX reunite.

[Callum1993]

Raw Guest Host Era. 

[CleetusVanDamme]

This three hour false advertisement campaign always springs to mind. Just utter desperation. 

[wandshogun09]

People bring up David Arquette winning the WCW title as a low point but this felt even worse for me. The quality of Nitro and Thunder had been steadily dropping off a cliff since late 98/early 99 anyway but Russo becoming champ (however brief) in 2000 was probably the moment when I had to finally accept that they were never gonna steer the ship back in the right direction. They were done. That whole feel of the show by then, Russo being all over it, heel Goldberg, the aforementioned Millionaire’s Club vs New Blood shite and even the actual look of the shows themselves with everything being grey. Rotten. But the first person/face/image I associate with that period is fucking Russo and his baseball bat and him acting hard and cutting promos swearing and shaving Flair’s hair and winning the title. The extent of the decline in Nitro from 97 to 2000 was jarring. There are obviously a lot of people to blame for that but Russo trying to make himself the main character on screen was shite and one of the worst early examples of the shooty insider bollocks being shoehorned into the show for the sake of it. 

[Cannibal Man]

47 minutes ago, Gus Mears said:

DX reunite.

Professional wrestling simply does not get any lower than this.

Edited August 4, 2025 by Cannibal Man

[Chili]

10 minutes ago, Cannibal Man said:

Professional wrestling simply does not get any lower than this.

And it had TWO revival runs that BOTH sucked. Genuinely impressive.

[Carbomb]

4 minutes ago, Chili said:

And it had TWO revival runs that BOTH sucked. Genuinely impressive.

Have to disagree. The feud with Legacy on the second run was good, and had some of the best tag matches you'll ever see. The 2009 Summerslam is a classic.

[Chili]

3 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Have to disagree. The feud with Legacy on the second run was good, and had some of the best tag matches you'll ever see. The 2009 Summerslam is a classic.

Two good tag matches. The first run had some decent matches too, but both runs still sucked. As good as the Legacy matches were you had them fucking about under the ring with Hornswoggle in a small persons wrestlers court and Shawn Michaels working in a burger restaurant for some reason. Absolute bunkum AND Triple H trying to be funny. 

Edited August 4, 2025 by Chili

[Carbomb]

7 minutes ago, Chili said:

Two good tag matches. The first run had some decent matches too, but both runs still sucked. As good as the Legacy matches were you had them fucking about under the ring with Hornswoggle in a small persons wrestlers court and Shawn Michaels working in a burger restaurant for some reason. Absolute bunkum AND Triple H trying to be funny. 

Agreed on the other stuff, but I think the moment you have at least one good feud and some decent matches, it can't really be said to be "bottom of the barrel", or that it sucked, no?

[LaGoosh]

Move to the music

Play that funkin music

move it to the music

yeah let's get it on

Really felt like the good times were over when you heard that shit before Raw.