I am a big anime fan and last night I stayed up till 11:30 at night watching One Piece until I got to episode 236 (note I started at around the 220 mark) for one reason, I wanted to see the Luffy/Usopp fight. I was excited for it and it lived up to the hype but it got me thinking, what if it had let me down? And so to relate this to wrestling I got to thinking about those "Big Shows" that just let you down in retrospect. I'm only going to look at 5 shows and I'm going to highlight the lesser known ones before the shows that everyone knows but they are still big shows to me.
FWA British Uprising 3-13th October 2004
If you're not a British wrestling fan you may not know about this company but let me explain. The FWA (Frontier Wrestling Alliance) is one of the longer running & bigger British wrestling companies, there big shows were known as British Uprising. The company decided to go big for this show and got some bigger names for the show including Colt Cabana, D'Lo Brown, Jimmy Hart, Terry Funk and AJ Styles. A lot of the matches on the card were feud ending matches and were built up well, at the time the FWA had a TV slot on the Wrestling Channel (I miss you channel) which helped show the story and build the feud. As a result the company decided to risk it and hold the show at the Coventry Skydome, a bigger arena that held 3,000 plus people. Sadly they did not get close to filling it and the show overall wasn't get. The 6 man tag with Funk was just a mess which was only highlighted by Funk, an overly gimmicked Hampton Court duo won the tag titles in a silly match, Alex Shane vs. Doug Williams for the FWA title was a Raven vs. Sandman/Dreamer run in over the top type match that did not help things. Luckily James Tighe vs. AJ Styles main evented the show in an Ironman match which was probably the best match on the show. And as a side note the Wrestling Channel would hold a Supershow called "International Showdown" at the Skydome and it would sell out the place, it would rely heavily on US talent & Japanese talent (it even got Mitsuharu Misawa in a 6 man tag) and is one of the reasons why so many UK companies rely on outside talent to draw a crowd which is a sad state of affairs.
CZW Cage of Death X-13th December 2008
Cage of Death is the final show of the year and it basically ends the bigger & longer feuds within the company (something other shows do as well but we'll get there). Throughout 2008 the main feud in CZW was Danny Havoc vs. Necro Butcher, Necro had appeared in the Wrestler and had changed his gimmick to "Hollywood" Dylan Summers, the two hadn't touched and was originally planned to end it within the Cage of Death. However John Zandig, then owner, got pissed at Necro for him choosing a ROH show over CZW and didn't book him destroying everything that had happened. The month before they rushed with some stupid storyline of the talent wanting more money. So the Cage of Death match was a 6 way to grab £10,000 which was above the cage, Zandig was the surprise last entrant and won it. It was a huge mistake and the match was a huge mess, everyone involved admits that it was a horrible match including Zandig himself. Elsewhere on the card we got a "Who are they" 6 man tag involving Adam Cole, this was early on in his career, the overly done teams of the H8 Club going against BLK Out was just a waste of time, Deranged against DJ Hyde was another rushed storyline and just an excuse to do a deathmatch on the show, oh and we also got Jon Dahmer killing some kid just because. Luckily we got a 6 way Ladder match, which had a special referee for some reason, a 4 Team Tag title match and B-Boy vs. Sonjay Dutt to save the show a little bit. But overall the biggest show of the year just seemed to deflate the fans when it should of excited them for more to come.
ROH Final Battle-23rd December 2011
Much like Cage of Death ROH's Final Battle is the last big show of the year and is done to end or begin certain feuds, the Steen/Generico feud started and ended on Final Battle shows. This show was really built around Davey Richards defending the ROH World title against Eddie Edwards and the potential full time return of Kevin Steen. Sadly one of these killed the crowd and partly the show. Looking at the show the Tommaso Ciampa vs. Jimmy Rave match should have had more importance but was just another match, the 5 team gauntlet got a lot of time but it didn't us it well, Chris Hero's surprise return (he had signed with WWE but was yet to move to FCW) against Roderick Strong fell extremely flat, the Briscoes vs. WGTT was the beginning of an endless feud and then the main event happened. Davey is known for doing/wanting to do too much in his matches and this was an example of that. Him and Eddie went over 40 minutes and it just never ended, it really dragged and potential had the fans turn on them. The only saving graces on the show was Jay Lethal vs. El Generico vs. Mike Bennett and the incredible weapons brawls between Steen and Corino, which started off the best thing in ROH which is Kevin Steen.
WWF Wrestlemania 15-28th March 1998
The Grand Daddy of them all came off as just another "B" show in 1998. This was my second wrestlemania as a fan and that's sad in retrospect. This was done during the "Boom" period of wrestling and shows that wrestling was just hot at the time very little could go wrong. Usually the main event of Mania has at least some build to it but this one was just kind of thrown out there. The Austin/McMahon feud ate up most of January and February, the Rock/Mankind feud for the WWE title started in November and lasted until February. The match between Austin/Rock at Mania was just gonna happen as Austin had to be the main event and Rock was the heel in the other feud, this match didn't have the big time feel their other matches would become known for it didn't help that Austin went to the ring in a t-shirt because he legit forgot his vest. The match wasn't bad but it was the typical crazy brawl the Attitude era was known for. It was probably the best match on the show. Elsewhere we got a random duo challenging for the tag titles, held by another random duo which strangely could happen in today's WWE. We got Butterbean killing Bart Gun in seconds, Triple H getting DQ'd over Kane, an abysmal Sable/Tori "match", Shane McMahon being carried by X-Pac as best he could and the forgotten Hell in a Cell between Taker and Bossman, a match that didn't even match the Hell in a Cell DVD set showing how bad it was. Oh we also got a Triple Threat hardcore title match, a 4 way match for the Intercontinental title but was more about 3 guys banging Ryan Shamrock and Mankind vs. Big Show. Overall this has to be known as one of the worst Mania's ever, 25 and 11 are considered some of the worst but I haven't watched them so I'm putting 15 here.
WCW Starrcade -28th December 1997
WCW did many things wrong during it's run but one thing they did right was build up the Sting/Hogan feud. When the NWO formed in mid-1996 this feud really began and was one of the longest feuds in modern wrestling, partly because it wasn't overkill. It was the perfect slow build and by Starrcade 1997 it was a big match everyone wanted to see. Sadly when it happened everything died, the 2 have never been known for their work rate (Hogan more than Sting) and it showed here. The match was just terrible and the finish was meant to have referee Nick Patrick fast count Sting leading to Bret Hart saving the day, sadly Nick counted normally and it looked like Hogan was screwed. Sting would win the match and the show ended with a big celebration in the ring but 24 hours later the mess became clear. Another problem with the show was that this should have been WCW's big win over NWO but an NWO team beat a WCW team and Buff Bagwell beat Lex Luger earlier in the show, don't know why they should of lost to make it look like a turning point in the feud in my book. We got another confusing referee finish in the Larry Zbyszko/Eric Bischoff thankfully it was Bret Hart so at least it was consistent. The Raven/Benoit match just didn't happen and we got Saturn replacing Raven for the simple reason of "I don't know just cause" and an awful, AWFUL Goldberg/Steve McMichael match. While Eddie Guerrero & Dean Malenko started the show off hot and DDP/Curt Henning put on a good showing the show just came off as bad. It really showed off WCW's weakness at the time which is old guys not getting out of the way, something Hogan still is doing, and that they have no clue what they were doing. Hell they had Bret Hart, who after Montreal 1997 was the hottest wrestler on the planet, and they wasted him so badly.
Now I understand this is subjective and while I may find this shows as a let down other may not so please let me, I'm all for discussion. So thank you for reading and let me know what you think.
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