Terrible finishes

[Liam O'Rourke]

1 hour ago, wandshogun09 said:

Knew I hadn’t imagined it. I’m almost certain there was a Nash and Hall match where they did the same. Maybe when they were doing those triple threats with the Nasty Boys and Meng and Barbarian. 

It was, I think World War 3 96 they did the spot first, but it got broken up by Meng who was having none of it.

[waters44]

On 9/30/2025 at 10:41 AM, tiger_rick said:

The opening match on the Mr Perfect compilation WWE Vault put up has got a rank finish. It's Hennig vs. Bockwinkel from Chrismas Day 1986 for the AWA Title. It's a typical finish of the time, Hennig has the match won, ref taps him on the shoulders, he celebrates like a chump and it's explained that he's been DQ'd for a throw over the top rope. Audible "bullshit" chants. Most of these "Dusty" type finishes are terrible and this one isn't as bad as the old "blood stoppage" but it's still a shit finish.

They did another screwy finish in a rematch at AWA SuperClash 2 in 1987. AWA really wanted to make Hennig champ, but were petrified he was going to jump to the Fed. So they had him win the match with outside interference from Larry Zbyszko. 

They then had the AWA President refuse to acknowledge the win due to the controversial finish. So the World Heavyweight Championship was held in limbo until Hennig committed to the company. He finally did about a week later and they then officially made him champ. Palaver

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, wandshogun09 said:

That reminds me, wasn’t there a three way tag match involving the New Age Outlaws where they both got tagged in to fight each other, so one just let the other pin him and that won them the match? Even though technically the Outlaws did both the pinning and being pinned so there’s just as much a case that they lost the match. Just goofy, convoluted bollocks in the days when everything had to be a shock or a swerve.

Actually it might’ve been a Nash and Hall three way tag in WCW. Or maybe both WWF and WCW did it. Either way it was stupid. 

 

What's worse is that AEW teased it at least once - they had the Acclaimed try and do it in a multi-team match once. It would be fine if the referee told them to knock it off, that it doesn't work like that, but Rick Knox actually counted the pin for them, then told them not to do it. Ridiculous. The only thing worse was a more recent match, where Bobby Lashley dragged one of JetSpeed off the ring apron, then tagged himself in from their corner. What's the fucking point of having separate corners, then? It wasn't the finish, but it was still infuriatingly stupid, one of the worst things I've seen in wrestling in a long time.

I can't remember if I said this on here before or not, but this is something I'm beginning to associate more and more with Russo booking - the real little kid logic of, "yeah, but what if they did this...", like the kid I went to school with who tried to tell everyone that Bradshaw had won the 2001 Royal Rumble because it came down to him and Faarooq and they agreed to eliminate themselves at the same time, but Bradshaw didn't go through with it. It's the same as how pretty much every year, someone pitches that the Royal Rumble should end with number 28 and 29 eliminating each other, and then 30 entering to an empty ring and winning by default. I mean, yes, technically it could happen, and it might even be creative, but it would be shit. It's pretty much the dullest, least satisfying way you could end a match. 

In some respects, having someone in the room pitching those kind of unsatisfying nerdy rule-lawyering finishes can be really useful - that should be when you tighten up the rules, or at best your explanation of them, to justify why those things don't happen. Because stuff like "tag team partners pin each other" might feel like they come from a place of logic, but they don't, they come from a place of "what won't these stupid fans be expecting?", when increasingly I think wrestling needs to be fundamentally treated as a sporting contest first and foremost, and anything beyond that is window dressing. That starts with the rules - in what real sport would someone be able to find a sneaky way of winning the entire match that the organisers, referee, and governing body are just powerless to argue with? It's stupid, and it makes everybody involved look stupid, and it makes the fans look stupid for getting invested in this bollocks.


That said, something that I think is always worth remembering when people complain about the integrity of match stipulations or anything like that, is that pretty much every stipulation wasn't invented to act as advertised, but to convince punters that it would act as advertised. A steel cage was never about keeping people out, it was about telling the ticket-buying public that this time, with a cage surrounding the ring, there's no way the bad guy could run away, or get help from his friends on the outside. It's always a way of saying this time, the bad guy is getting his comeuppance, and you're going to pay to see it, and then being so annoyed when he still finds a way to weasel out of it that you come back again next time. So screwy finishes that undermine the stipulation are really the point of stipulations, and it's worth remembering that the very first Hell In A Cell match was built around how it was an inescapable structure, and yet they spent half the match fighting outside of it, and then the entire point of it being an inescapable structure that nobody could get in or out of turned out to be because Kane was going to get into it. That doesn't excuse ending a Hell In A Cell match by DQ because somebody got hit with a big novelty hammer, but that has more to do with the finish being utter shit than to do with the failing to adhere to the stipulation itself.

[tiger_rick]

I watched the rest of that Hennig comp on the Vault, skipping the two Bret matches I've seen a hundred times - why are they even on it? Must be hundreds of gems they could use - and there's another terrible finish I've long forgotten. It's the Flair match from World War 3 1997. It's a no DQ match after Flair was DQ'd for kicking the belt in Hennig's face at Havoc 97. It's a nothing of a no-DQ match tbh but, the finish is so weak. Flair has Hennig in the figure 4, it looks like a satisfactory end and the crowd are going mad and then Hennig grabs the title belt, hits Flair weakly in the knee to release the hold and then hits him weakly in the head for the win.

A terrible finish for numerous reasons but so poorly executed. WCW really did throw everything behind Hennig in 97. What an absolute waste of time.

[davertfnewman]

The better version of that spot is Survivor Series 1992, where Curt gets the chair and hits Flair right in the face with it while trapped in the figure four. It looks like it hits Flair right in the teeth, but of course he turns his head at the right moment.