Mistakes, we all make them. And when you do you’ve just got to hold up your hands and
say, I’m sorry, I F’ed up, I forgot you were vegan Sharon and I accidentally put chicken
stock in the dinner and let you eat it. Bit of a wasted apology because Sharon likes wrestling
about as much as she likes chicken, so there’s no way she’s watching this video.
See it’s hard to apologise properly. And it must be even harder to turn around and
apologise when you’re making those big mistakes in front of millions of people and not just
Sharon and her plant-based taste buds.
WWE is not the sort of company to dwell on its mistakes instead choosing to just pretend
they never happened wiping them out of history all together. And as 2018 has been a bit of
a bumper year when it comes to cock ups and gaffs it’ll be interesting to see if any
of the 2018 pages in the history books have anything written on them at all.
I’m El Fakidor Laurie Blake and these are the 10 biggest mistakes WWE made in 2018.
10. Lashley’s Sisters Talk about starting strong. We’re flying
out of the gate with the cross dressing jokes.
Bobby Lashley returned to WWE after a 10 year spell in Impact and MMA, and you just have
to look at the man to know he’s someone that could easily be pushed as an unstoppable
force, or even a walking armageddon.
So, what do WWE do with him?
Well, in a sit down interview segment with Renee Young, Bobby cut arguably the lamest
promo of the year about his three sisters, Cathy, Jessica and Frances. Explaining that
despite their differences, he still loves them dearly.
Turns out they weren’t so different after all, they all had dicks.
Because it turned out it wouldn’t only be Bobby getting burned by this nonsense, Sami
Zayn was about to feel the pain too.
Sami cut a promo about how he would expose Bobby for who he truly is, which turned out
to be him bringing three cross-dressers to the ring who pretended to be Bobby’s sisters.
Lashley then beat up the cross-dressers and that was that.
The worst thing is that someone will have written this and all the writers agreed that
it was a good idea. Just cross cross-dressing off the list of acceptable jokes for 2019
eh lads.
9. Bayley-Sasha feud
As of this video going live, Bayley and Sasha are best friends, but that friendship has
been tested, oh, around 700 times this year.
For around half of the year, we were waiting for one to turn on the other, and to give
WWE some kind of credit, at least they didn’t make it obvious who was going to turn on who.
One week it looked like Bayley was going to turn, and then the next it looked like Banks
might make a statement by turning on Bayley. This was an effective storyline...until they
did it every week for several months.
Not only did Sasha eliminate Bayley from the Women’s Royal Rumble, but she helped Bayley
get eliminated from the elimination chamber. FINALLY, it looked like the endless story
was over, as during an episode of Raw in June, Bayley viciously attacked Banks after a match
in a fit of rage. The crowd popped huge and there was a tangible sense of relief that
the turn had finally happened.
Don’t be silly. That wasn’t a turn! All they need is counselling from Dr Shelby, the
same man who helped Daniel Bryan and Kane sort out their differences in their team Hell
No! Days. And look how that turned out.
These comedy skits majorly sucked with both Banks and Bayley struggling with the comedy
timing and what they had to work with wasn’t much better, the scripts were dreadful.
The whole ‘feud’ is a perfect example of WWE making it all up as they go along without
much future planning, because the two women eventually decided that they were best friends
after all and are now a tag team in a division without tag titles...
8. Exploiting Roman Reigns’ cancer
On October 22, Roman Reigns shocked the wrestling world by announcing that the Leukaemia he
had beaten 11 years prior had returned, and that he would be relinquishing his Universal
Title in order to have treatment for the disease.
It was a truly heartbreaking moment, and one that WWE made the most of immediately. Stay
classy. You are the other C word sometimes.
Now, it must be said that Roman will almost certainly have given his blessing for everything
that WWE have done since the announcement, but that still doesn’t detract from the
fact that a lot of what they’ve done has been downright distasteful.
Not only did they turn Dean heel on the same night as Roman’s announcement, capitalising
on the shocked atmosphere in the Raw crowd, but just a few short weeks after this, Dean
Ambrose claimed in a promo that Roman Reigns deserved to have leukaemia due to his actions
while in the Shield.
The whole thing just makes you feel a bit grubby, which is probably why Dean bought
the gas mask in the first place.
7. Raw 25 Raw has been going on for nearly 26 years
now, which is roughly how long it feels like a recent episode of Raw takes to watch.
Raw 25 in January was a celebration of everything from Vince McMahon to Vince McMahon’s favourite
pastime, squashing rising stars by using old stars who can barely move.
There was nothing hugely wrong with the show itself, but WWE made absolutely no attempt
to keep it within any kind of story lines, choosing to focus solely on shoving as many
former stars into a three hour show as possible, cramming them into every little hole possible,
there’s always room for more at the poker table.
It was a missed opportunity in so many ways that it ended up just being a narrative cul
de sac. If you want to do a special celebration of all the past stars, then just hold a one
off show called “legends”. Don’t sacrifice story lines and logic for a few cheap pops.
6. Survivor Series clean sweep Remember how Raw won every single match on
the Survivor Series card and that there are no exceptions to this, particularly on the
pre-show? No? Well it doesn’t matter, because WWE forgot about all that within about a week
anyway.
Why do it then? Why make such obsess over the detail on the night and then drop it the
next day?
What’s the point of a clean sweep if it has no lasting repercussions? Beyond making
all of the fans dislike RAW even more?
And like, if you’re going to do a clean sweep, do an actual clean sweep.
Because SmackDown Live won the tag elimination match. They won it.
But apparently that doesn’t matter because it’s on the pre-show. You seem to have fallen
into a plot hole there WWE, don’t worry we’ll dig our way out.
Just don’t have the match if it’s going to take so much legitimacy gymnastics to excuse
it from the record. Or if you’re never actually going to mention the clean sweep again, just
have Raw win 6-1 and move on.
5. Every NXT call up Bit of an asterisk next to this one, because
Drew Mcintyre has had a pretty good year, but all the rest of them, well, they may as
well not have bothered.
Ember Moon? Hasn’t had a single storyline. The IIconics? Haven’t had a storyline.
Zelina Vega? Married Aleister Black but it was in secret and she hasn’t had a storyline.
Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas? Good matches but no storyline.
AOP? Raw tag champs for a while but the storyline was doused in piss.
SAniTy? When? Then Where? And then what? No Way Jose? Nuh uh...
If you don’t have a plan for them, don’t call them up. Leave them in NXT for a while
longer so that they can have good matches, develop their character and have more access
to the performance centre.
For people like No Way Jose it’s completely killed their career, and it’s not exactly
surprising. He’s Adam Rose with an afro, Adam Afrose.
It’s a crime that SAniTy, Andrade and Ember haven’t been able to show their obvious
in ring talent, but until they start making actual plans for these superstars this is
the way it goes.
4. Greatest Royal Rumble 50 people in one rumble? You can barely get
a 30 man one to pass without a big old sag in the middle.
Held in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, The Greatest Royal Rumble never got close to living up
to its name.
It was marred with problems from the start, a huge chunk of the roster couldn’t wrestle
on the show because of their gender, others couldn’t go for political and religious
reasons.
Then you’ve got the fact that the show itself was a glorified house show, where half the
audience didn’t seem like they were actually watching the matches, wandering around chatting
to their mates and on their phones.
The you’ve got Michael Cole putting over how beautiful and progressive the city of
Jeddah is like the good little propaganda mouthpiece he is.
The whole thing just felt a bit weird. Good job they never went there again.
3. Shane Wins World Cup
With a roster of near enough 100 people, WWE chose Shane McMahon to win the WWE World Cup,
which, as they kept reminding us, was to crown the best wrestler in the world.
Shane McMahon is the best wrestler in the world, and there’s no disputing it. Look,
he’s even holding a giant trophy and sweating copiously to prove it.
The tournament itself was fine, if a tad uninspiring, and the final was set to be heel Dolph Ziggler
against heel The Miz, a perfectly acceptable match, but without Shane McMahon, the greatest
wrestler on the planet, it just didn’t feel right.
But fear not fair viewer, because Miz injured his leg before the match started and so there
was only one man who could possibly fill his shoes. The match wasn’t even competitive,
with Shane hitting his three moves to pick up the win.
WWE, seemingly realising their mistake, paid it off with Shane saying the trophy was for
everyone on SmackDown Live, and other than a couple of mentions in skits with the Miz,
the win has been utterly pointless and unmentioned.
2. Ending Asuka’s streak There are two varieties of Asuka. There’s
NXT Asuka, the most dominant female superstar on the planet, having excellent matches wherever
she goes. And then there’s WWE main roster Asuka, who loses to Carmella and takes part
in dance segments with her best friend Naomi.
The biggest reason for this obvious decline is the decision to end Asuka’s unbeaten
streak, which, before WrestleMania 34, had lasted 914 days from her debut match on NXT
in 2015.
Although she hadn’t exactly been booked like a truly dominant force on the main roster,
she won the inaugural women’s Royal Rumble and maintained her undefeated streak.
Many simply assumed that she would overcome Charlotte Flair in their WrestleMania match,
because she’s Asuka and no-one can beat her. But no. The match went about 12 minutes
and Asuka tapped to the figure-8, thus ending the streak and seriously damaging her credibility.
Since then, she has lost twice to Carmella, featured in dull as dishwater feuds against
the IIconics, and generally struggled to regain that mystique she had in NXT.
1. Crown Jewel (for political reasons) Following the backlash WWE received for their
Greatest Royal Rumble show in April, many simply assumed there was no chance they would
head back there. Surprise.
Going back to Saudi was controversial enough, but it came at a time when holding an event
in Saudi Arabia was pretty much seen as corporate suicide.
Just a month prior to the show, New York Times journalist Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly murdered
and dismembered in a Saudi Government ordered attack in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul,
which obviously lead to plenty of people calling for Crown Jewel to be cancelled.
The show was audibly booed when mentioned on TV, and many politicians began pressuring
the company to pull out. But WWE went ahead with it nonetheless, and it has since been
reported that Vince never even considered cancelling the show, such was his determination
to hold the event. Because MONEY!
What’s more, they brought back Hulk Hogan for the event, possibly the most controversial
figure in recent WWE history, because once there’s been a murder, what’s a little
racism? Jesus.
Who were the 10 best wrestlers of the year, according to Oli, Luke and me the trustworthy
El Fakidor, click the video onscreen now if you want to find out. And give us a subscribe
to stay up to date on all of the latest wrestling news. I’ve been El Fakidor and that was
lucha.