WWE have produced a lot of wrestling matches in their time, and they’d very much like to sit you down and make sure you watch each and every one of them, Clockwork Orange style.
More wrestling, more, get it in your EYEBALLS.
After all, that is why they made their own streaming service, stuffed to the brim with their own back catalogue, although you could argue that WWE’s current performance on Peacock might mean they don’t actually want you to watch any of their matches live anymore.
WWE are their own biggest fans of course, especially when it comes to their history, documentaries, and playlists and top 10s, all about their favourite classic wrestling moments.
However, there are some wrestling matches from WWE’s past that don’t quite gel with how WWE would like to be presented today, matches that the biased historian that is WWE, would very much prefer none of us ever saw.
I’m Adam hailing from PartsFUNKnown and here are 10 Matches WWE Don’t Want You To See.
10. Roddy Piper vs. Bad News Brown – WrestleMania VI
Ah yes, the blackface match. WWE has actually dabbled in blackface a number of times, and now that I’ve said it, I really think dabbled is absolutely the wrong word, but sod it, they did it not me.
There’s the infamous DX segment where they come out dressed as the Nation of Domination and, like, way to prove the Nation right about how shit race relations were in WWE back in the 90s, doing their job for them there.
There’s a jaw-droppingly awful match between Goldust and Flash Funk where Goldie does blackface, replete with blond afro and oh Jesus Christ it’s a huge car crash, and then there’s this, blackface on the grandest stage of them all.
A match notorious for getting WWE in trouble with Peacock on Day one of their partnership, where Rowdy Roddy Piper used blackface as … I guess… mind games (?) for his match against Bad News Brown at WrestleMania 6, daubing half his face and body in black body paint.
WWE are so committed to you not seeing this throwback that it’s been cut from the Mania 6 broadcast on both Peacock and the WWE Network. Jesus wept.
9. Debra vs. Sable – Raw (May 10, 1999)
Today, WWE cares about women’s wrestling, a fact that might have passed you by if you saw that god awful belt swap segment on SmackDown, but apparently they do.
And hell, despite my sarcasm, which I cannot turn off, so just imagine what it’s like to be me every day, WWE books its Women’s Championships like Big Deals.
WrestleMania 37, the main event of WrestleMania 35, by and large, the belts mean something, which is why WWE would probably like you to forget about all the ways it pissed on the Women’s Championship back in the Attitude Era.
First of all, Harvey Wippleman won the thing, Fabulous Moolah won it in her 70s in a ludicrous match, and then there’s this.
An evening gown match on Raw for the belt, where Sable won the match by stripping Debra down to her bra and panties but then commissioner and horndog Shawn Michaels said that actually, Debra won the match AND the belt, because she got naked first.
Perhaps the single worst title change in all of WWE history and maybe the biggest indictment of WWE’s women’s division of the time.
8. Trish Stratus & Bradshaw vs. Jackie Gayda & Chris Nowinski – Raw (July 8, 2002)
Oh boy is this match a trainwreck, and a hell of a fly in the ointment of WWE’s presentation of Trish Stratus as one of the greatest women’s wrestlers of all time.
Jackie Gayda was fresh off Tough Enough and nowhere near ready to be on live television having wrestling matches, Trish was still two years away from making WWE-branded history by main eventing Raw with Lita, and oh man this match is just the drizzling s**ts.
Stratus and Gayda mistimed so many moves that they might as well have been in different time zones.
The finish involved something that was supposed to be a top rope bulldog but ended up being a top rope very light pat on the head.
It takes a certain amount of wrestling crapulence for one of the commentators to say ‘mercifully it’s over’ when the bell rings, and that goes double when that commentator is Jim Ross, one of the industry’s biggest pros. Well, back then anyway.
Easily one of the most commonly named worst matches in WWE history, that’s not even taking into account the fact that the match also features Chris Nowinski, a man who caused WWE no end of PR nightmares by being one of the biggest public figures to draw links between wrestling and CTE in the years following his departure from the company.
7. The Undertaker vs. Big Bossman – WrestleMania XV
It’s because it features a man being hanged live on TV. That’s like, something the Victorians would look at and think, ah a bit much, and they bloody loved murder.
It’s a match and moment infamous in all the wrong ways.
It was the first famously terrible Hell in a Cell match (although there had actually been two shit cell matches on raw before this which no one remembers).
It’s one of Grimdark GrimMark’s top 3 worst matches of his streak, and once more with feeling, after the match was over, they ran a segment which involved the Big Bossman being hanged and I guess killed (?) live on TV with just bloody loads of children watching.
Some of whom in the crowd who no doubt had just a BUNCH of questions for their parents.
What do you say to little Timmy when he asks you why Undertaker just murdered a man in front of you.
‘Er… it certainly does appear that way son. But to look at it another way… off to bed??”
It’s super grim and horrible, and evidently WWE agree, because even when they did include the match on The Undertaker’s Streak DVD, they cut the footage right after the bell.
6. John Cena vs. Kurt Angle – No Mercy 2003
This one’s a little sillier, but with the benefit of hindsight, you can absolutely bet that WWE would have liked to have never booked this match.
See, a cornerstone of Big Match John’s Big Match Character is that he Never Gives Up, and you know he doesn’t because he wrote it on a little towel. You can’t write lies on a little towel, it’s against Hitchhiker’s law.
True to his little towel words, Johnny C would back that up in the ring, not once ever tapping out in a wrestling match, in what’s almost been 20 years.
For real, nearly two full decades and the man has never tapped, which must really annoy WWE that John Cena has actually tapped out on camera, not once, not twice, but thrice, and this match, Cena vs Angle, that was on pay-per-view.
Look. Look at John Cena tap out, look at him give up.
This isn’t the only time Cena has tapped out, also submitting to Chris Jericho on SmackDown in 2002 and Chris Benoit in 2003, but they all will be tucked away underneath a mountain of little towels, all of which forever tainted by Kurt Angle and oh I really don’t like how I phrased that.
5. Big Show vs. Batista – ECW (August 1, 2006)
Talk about a wholesale rejection of everything your company stands for. Now it’s no secret that WWE ECW didn’t work.
Hell, WWE said as much when Vince cancelled the show live on Raw. However, WWE would very much like to project the narrative that the reason why ECW failed was because ECW itself was terrible.
It’s all the extremists’ fault, nothing to do with Vince McMahon Doorag Champion, or firing Paul Heyman, or matches like Big Show vs. Batista.
Oh man, it’s a pure schadenfreude trainwreck, the August 1, 2006 episode of ECW was filmed at the Hammerstein Ballroom, a pretty important venue for old school ECW fans.
The main event of that show was ECW Champion Big Show vs. Batista, two men who both epitomised the bigger is better model of sports entertainment and couldn’t have been more the antithesis of classic ECW if they’d come to the ring carrying big signs that ready ‘careful now’ and ‘down with this sort of thing’.
What happens next is ECW fans spend about 20 minutes bluntly informing WWE that their product was bad and they should feel bad, with chants of ‘boring’, ‘change the channel’ and a never-ending background noise of boos that made it sound like the match was happening in a field of a thousand cows.
Am I so out of touch, asks Vince, no, it’s the ECW fans who are wrong.
4. The Rock vs. Mankind – Royal Rumble 1999
Just a little bit of a heads up, pun definitely not intended, the rest of the list gets a bit serious from here on out.
We’ve already mentioned earlier in the video that WWE has had to come to terms with its own actions when it comes to the long-lasting effects of concussions on its wrestlers.
Frankly, in any concussion lawsuit against the big dub, you’d ever need to provide one bit of evidence, and it’s this match, because it’s a f**king snuff film.
At the 1999 Rumble, Rock fought Mankind in an I Quit match, and throughout the course of the match, the rock hits Mick Foley with ten full force steel chair shots to the head, including some from behind, which is the most f**king dangerous kind of chair shot you can do.
It’s absolutely horrendous for a number of reasons. First, the rock went off script with the number of shots, and Jesus Christ how terrifying is that.
Second, you can actually see Foley utterly out on his feet, trying to protect himself, but he can’t because he’s handcuffed, he’s in a dangerous environment and physically unable to stop the punishment, again terrifying, and third because foley’s wife and kids were there in the crowd, in floods of tears. Just.. urgh.
3. The 2004 Royal Rumble Match
A good Rumble, that WWE have committed themselves to erasing from history, which is always super glaring because it’s a rumble that deeply entrenched in their rumble stats.
Chris Benoit starts the Rumble at Number One and wins the whole thing, which is something that’s only happened three times, WWE will tell you, when Shawn Michaels did it, when Edge did it … what’s the third time, you ask?
Haha says, WWE, Royal Rumbles are just fun to watch.
To be honest, you could put all of Chris Benoit’s matches on the list, the WrestleMania XX main event, the SummerSlam 2004 main event, all stripped from WWE’s guided tour of its own past with completely understandable reasons.
However, trying to delete the Rumble 2004 from a format history that constantly celebrates its many winners over and over again, that’s the biggest pain in WWE’s ass, which again, is a real shame, because, as a Rumble, it’s fairly brilliant.
2. Jeff Jarrett & Debra vs. Val Venis & Nicole Bass – Over The Edge 1999
Oh man. Ok, if we didn’t tell you which event this match took place at, you’d be quite right to furrow your brow and say, ‘I don’t even slightly remember that match even taking place’, but it did.
It took place at Over The Edge 1999, and this match has the very unfortunate distinction of being the first match to take place after the tragic accident that took Owen Hart’s life.
For those who don’t know, Owen was supposed to be lowered to the ring in his blue blazer gimmick, the harness gave way and he fell to the ring below, sustaining injuries that cost him his life.
WWE then made the completely wrong decision to continue on with the show, with this tag team match.
While that is terrible enough, it makes it much worse that WWE sent Owen’s real-life best friend Jeff Jarrett to the ring to wrestle right after the accident, including cutting a live backstage promo (which has since been removed from the network, along with any other footage of JR breaking the news of Owens passing) where Jeff looks down the camera, white as a sheet and says ‘Owen Hart, I’m praying for you buddy’ before having to talk about Debra’s breasts.
Jarrett was then sent through the curtain as Owen was wheeled past him on a stretcher, and this entire match is a ghoulish example of WWE ignoring obvious trauma in the name of an attitude that has plagued wrestling throughout the years of ‘the show has to go on.’ It really, really doesn’t.
1. Droz vs. D’Lo Brown – SmackDown (October 5, 1999)
Yeah. I mean, any anti-wwe rhetoric and the sensationalist title of this video to one side, this match will never be shown, and should never be shown.
And it’s not WWE’s fault, it’s no one’s fault, sometimes terrible accidents happen, and on October 5, 1999, a terrible accident happened, when Droz wrestled D’Lo Brown for a smackdown taping.
D’Lo couldn’t get purchase on Droz’s shirt, a powerbomb was botched, which resulted in Droz being paralysed.
Darren Drozdov has regained some use of his arms and upper body in the 20 years since the accident, and has publicly stated he holds no ill will towards D’Lo, but yeah, in amongst all the outrage and opinions and sarcasm and comment sections, this is a brutal industry, where the wrong thing can happen at any given moment and you occasionally have to take a moment to put some power on that.
The match itself was taped, will never air, with the only glimpse of it ever being broadcast being a shot in a don’t try this at home vignette, showing officials lifting the stretcher with Droz on it off the canvas, accompanied by the chilling words, careers ended in an instant.
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