5 Worst wrestling matches of 2008
DISCLAIMER: These are the views of the writer and do not reflect those of Sportskeeda
One of the most challenging things about putting on a good wrestling show is managing fan expectations. Different fans want different things, so trying to make everyone happy is hard. Even with a specific core or target audience, there’s always a chance someone won’t like what you’re showcasing.
To deal with this issue, one can take different approaches. If you were a smart booker, you’d try to make your wrestling show as diverse as possible, in the sense that you showcase different styles to give as many different people as possible.
If you’re an arrogant booker, you showcase only what you know and what has become expected from your die-hard fanbase, never straying out of your comfort zone.
And if you’re a spiteful booker, you put on matches and storylines that either disappoint your own fans or are done just so that you can get a kick out of other people's anger.
The five matches on this list are a combination of options two and three (but mostly three) as the creative figureheads in these cases thought making people mad was a great way to make money.
Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
#5 Honky Tonk Man vs. Santino Marella
This match might’ve only lasted just over one minute, but WWE still put considerable time into the pre-and-post-match segments. While Santino was playing a sort of comedy heel at this time, he fell victim to WWE’s style of ‘awkward’ humor.
It was too cheesy to be slapstick, not risqué enough to have mature humor, and filled with so much awkward nonsense that fans sat on their hands in response. Santino and Honky had a dance-off, which WWE seems to have a strange fascination with before the expected cheapshot occurs.
Of course, Beth Phoenix got Santino intentionally disqualified, because apparently, Santino couldn't beat a real old-timer like Honky by himself. It continued post-match, leaving fans scratching their heads over what they had just witnessed.
Although a lot of people that watched the match did at lease praise Honky for being in relatively good shape, that doesn’t really help much when your entire match lasts just over a minute and features very little actual wrestling.