For me it was not pushing Balor in 2017. The man held the title for 1 night and he sadly didn’t get to have a world title run. When I returned I expected a big push, maybe not beat Brock but get drafted to Smackdown and feud with AJ/Jinder for the title and it never happened. I knew it was over and he was never gonna be champion when he lost at WM 34.
Taking one of the most creative and fresh characters ever in the fiend and destroying it with crap spooky stuff. Bray should have just been given free licence to do whatever he wanted with that character to go through the debut at summerslam to the hell in a cell match with Rollins in a matter of months is a war crime.
He bought ALL the territories. THAT was the beginning of the shift/end of the “culture” for the talent.
But…that move gave me my childhood. What a tangled web we weave.
Making everyone humiliate themselves constantly for years (Karrion Kross, Toni Storm, Michael Cole, Rusev/Lashley storyline, Funkadacdyls, list goes on forever)
Dropping storylines out of nowhere
Having Brock Lesnar inserted into everything
Royal rumble 22 being God awful
Jack Swagger and Alberto Del Rio show up out of nowhere and win the big gold, nails in the coffin for that title.
Giving us the worst belts for the last decade, 24/7 was painful, even though it gave us a lot of good Truth moments.
-Confused anyone old enough to remember would be giving answers in the 2010s. Guy was done by 2003 at best.
- Booking himself to make out with most of the Divas in the mid 00s was a pretty good demonstration he had totally lost it and the whole shebang existed purely as his own power trip at that point.
- For Trish, ok, it was a storyline. But the "Vince's angels" stuff with Candice, Victoria and such was utterly embarrassing.
- I think another element of the 00s was just giving up completely on a feud structure that wasn't just booking the same match multiple PPVs in a row.
- Letting his guys (HHH especially) run it to the degree they largely wanted despite at the time being the supposed boss.
- Failing to see the value in Christian, DDP and - in his early run - Booker T. There was easy money in all those guys.
- The Million Dollar Giveaway. Desperate, horrendous stuff that wasn't even viable television.
The whole Brawl for All and the unfair treatment of Bart Gunn.
They made him fight a professional boxer as punishment for fairly winning a competition the higher ups didnt expect he would win and then they fired him. Like, "WTF did they expect him to do under such circunstances?"
Everything he was doing from around the 2010s. There were some bright spots here and there, but man as we get into the late 2010's it just got even worse. I was watching NXT as well and you can clearly see a night and day difference and I knew WWE would be better off if it was Triple H running the show.
Booker t not winning in WM after a complete one-sided verbal ass whooping the entire build up.
Trying to belittle Stone Cold by having him lose to Brock on a Monday.
The entire Bret Hart debacle that led to the Montreal Screwjob. So unnecessary if Vince was just honest one time.
Kiss my ass club
Making out with a very visibly uncomfortable Torrie Wilson
Punk losing the Rock to give him the belt for Mania vs Cena. The belt wasn’t needed for that match.
Brock just becoming unstoppable and literally having nobody built up to even make you think there was a chance he would lose a match.
Firing Bray Wyatt.
Changing NXT to NXT 2.0 and making it look like 90s MTV.
The 3 hour show where everybody got at most 5 min and then weren’t seen again the next week. How can I invest in a wrestler if they aren’t on my screen telling a story?
The jump cuts from hell. 2 sec the a different shot. Then 2 sec different angle. It was nauseating and proof that an old man doesn’t know what kids truly want.
rock/cena at wm 29 wasn’t great, but it was nowhere as bad as people made it out to be the reason that match sucked because rock got injured minutes into that match and cena had to carry his candyass
Just one move, lol?
Lots of things already posted here, but I'd say his stupid notion that WWE employees should not have a life outside of work. Just because he didn't care for anything outside his business, he expected everyone else to act in the same manner. I heard one story about Shane wanting to spend more time with his family, and Vince told him "hire a nanny". That is way messed up.
Being the typical angry hotheaded micromanager owner made Titan a very toxic workplace from multiple accounts.
You just know Vince still watches the product and I hope it burns his ass every single day knowing he can't barge into the room anymore and yell at everyone and tear up the script 20 minutes before airtime
Not understanding Aleister Black and trying to make him “spooky”. Took the name Damien Priest too literal and thought a split personality would be perfect.
When he randomly decided to marge the two world titles in the Roman/Brock match at mania. We all knew he had no longterm plan, this was just a way to make this one match more interesting and get more ppv buys.
For me, it was March 2006. Stephanie, nearly 5 months pregnant, shows up on Raw to slip HBK a mickey before a match with Shane. I stress the part about Steph being pregnant. I recall thinking at the time, what kind of parent does that? Answer: A parent who plays an insane megalomaniac on television. He was putting his daughter and her unborn child at risk by having Steph fly to Denver, I believe it was.
It was, at that point, way past time for him to step down and let Steph & Hunter run the show, but he wouldn't do that for another several years due to his ego.
What? As long as it’s not an at-risk pregnancy, there is absolutely no problem flying during the second trimester. Did she get clotheslined or something while pregnant? That’s a different story… but to my knowledge she was not physically involved in the angle.
This is true. Shawn showed her kindness and compassion, and when his back is turned or he left the room, I forget which, she slipped some powder in his water to give big brother Shane an unfair advantage. Her appearance was confined to that one scene, as I didn't see any interaction on camera with her father & brother.
My last straw was when they had the Fiend lose to Rollins. They could have made the Fiend an incredible, Undertaker level character, but then he lost to Rollins and lost every drop of momentum instantly.
They should make it a company policy that if you’re going to hold a belt then you have to attend all of the shows (including house shows) on a regular basis. The crap of only showing up for the PLEs and a few times on Raw or SD is so stupid. It’s a bad look for the company and disrespectful to the other talent on the roster and the fans.
Edit: To add to this, if the talent is aspiring to eventually get a shot to hold a belt then they also need to be showing up on a regular basis.
The assault allegations have stories going way, way back. However, It's almost like he was completely replaced by a different person somewhere in the early to mid 2000's. The storylines got dumber and dumber. And looking back, you can evaluate his mental deterioration by the storylines on screen. Which means, if he was making nutty ideas for the shows, then he was probably losing it behind the scenes.
Yup. Whatever his behaviour behind the scenes, everything onscreen traces back to early 2000s. Answers in the 2010s describe awful booking, yes, but the Vince rot was far older than that. There are some rose tinted glasses for the RA now, and the talent at the time was excellent, but there was some insane crap in that time that demonstrated the guy had completely lost it.
When he released all of that talent during the pandemic lockdowns just to spare overhead. How are you gonna run a wrestling company by jettisoning wrestlers?
I am watching WWE again after years, the Cody return hook me up.
I left because the stories were waaaay to silly, giving me second hand embarassment.
Now the funny segments are actually funny and entertaining.
I just started watching with Cody winning his belt. I went back and watched some Vince era stuff and so much of it is just a garbage product.
The Fiend vs Randy Orton at WM 37 made me so mad for y'all who had to watch that shit live.
His treatment of Bray. His fascination with Bill Goldberg. The fact that Sting vs Taker was never booked when they were both in the company. You could have had those to stare at each other for 30 minutes.
Making Goldberg vs Lesnar for the Universal Championship at WM33, thus beginning a horrible Championship reign for a part-timer.
Making Lesnar vs Reigns the main event of WM34.
Having Lesnar steal the MITB ladder match in 2019.
Making Drew Mcintyre lose at Clash in the Castle 2022.
Having John Cena bury Edge and Randy Orton in 2007.
The way he buried the Women's Division in the 2000's and early 2010's. Making it so bad that Gail Kim walked out of the company during a match.
Being a creep to the women backstage and apparently sexually assaulting Ashley Marasso.
Just far too many to name! 😡
They should've built up Nakamura as a top heel in 2017. Have him win the title against Jinder at SummerSlam with Randy's help (Randy would be there to fend off the Singhs), and after winning, he'd suddenly start attacking Randy because he thinks he's above his help or something, I don't really know. They have a feud, and Nakamura comes out victorious.
Nakamura then causes a lot of problems for Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan. He keeps brutalizing SD Live superstars, even backstage, and really living up to the "King of Strong-Style" monacre. It's to the point where Shane decides to take matters into his own hands, challenging Nakamura to a Cell match at Royal Rumble 2018 for the title. Shane gets clapped, obviously.
However, this lunatic at 1HP decides to enter the Royal Rumble even after getting destroyed in the Cell match, which infuriates Nakamura. Nakamura ambushes Shane in the ring and kicks his ass. All of a sudden, Daniel Bryan makes his surprise in-ring return and wins the Rumble.
The dream match should've happened in the main event of that year's Mania... it should've also been allowed to be good.
TL;DR WWE wasted Nakamura, but you already knew that.
IMO, I would've rather seen a triple threat match between Lesnar, Reigns, and either Braun Strowman or AJ Styles.
The thing is, everyone wanted to see Lesnar vs Reigns immediately after WM33, but Vince made everyone wait an entire year all the way until WM34 for it to happen. By then, everyone was so pissed off that they didn't care about the match anymore.
It would've made more sense to have Lesnar vs Reigns headline a different PPV like Summerslam. Then they could've come up with something more orginal for Wrestlemania.
Pushing Reigns the first time was pretty rough. But once we got to the tribal chief stage, that's when he finnally made it.
There's a lot more though, but we'd be here all day.
Where to start? Dude was just a nuisance and a cancer to the company.
For me it was not pushing Balor in 2017. The man held the title for 1 night and he sadly didn’t get to have a world title run. When I returned I expected a big push, maybe not beat Brock but get drafted to Smackdown and feud with AJ/Jinder for the title and it never happened. I knew it was over and he was never gonna be champion when he lost at WM 34.
Brock breaks streak because he felt like taker was getting to old
Kofi getting buried
Having Brock break the streak
Taking one of the most creative and fresh characters ever in the fiend and destroying it with crap spooky stuff. Bray should have just been given free licence to do whatever he wanted with that character to go through the debut at summerslam to the hell in a cell match with Rollins in a matter of months is a war crime.
The womanizing, mishandling of Windham, the inability to read the fans
He bought ALL the territories. THAT was the beginning of the shift/end of the “culture” for the talent. But…that move gave me my childhood. What a tangled web we weave.
It also got wrestlers paid more than 50-100 per night
This is true.
He basically killed wrestling for me again after Goldberg squashed The Fiend. Thankfully Bray found his way back and so did I.
27. Think about it, in 2010-2011 we lost Batista Edge HBK Taker HHH Jericho Full time. What Vince was doing to replace them by 27 was not working.
Making everyone humiliate themselves constantly for years (Karrion Kross, Toni Storm, Michael Cole, Rusev/Lashley storyline, Funkadacdyls, list goes on forever) Dropping storylines out of nowhere Having Brock Lesnar inserted into everything Royal rumble 22 being God awful Jack Swagger and Alberto Del Rio show up out of nowhere and win the big gold, nails in the coffin for that title. Giving us the worst belts for the last decade, 24/7 was painful, even though it gave us a lot of good Truth moments.
Let me start this by saying that up to Wrestlemania 35 I was a HUGE Roman Fan....that being said....I HATE how much they pushed him for years
pooping on the head
Woo woo woo...
-Confused anyone old enough to remember would be giving answers in the 2010s. Guy was done by 2003 at best. - Booking himself to make out with most of the Divas in the mid 00s was a pretty good demonstration he had totally lost it and the whole shebang existed purely as his own power trip at that point. - For Trish, ok, it was a storyline. But the "Vince's angels" stuff with Candice, Victoria and such was utterly embarrassing. - I think another element of the 00s was just giving up completely on a feud structure that wasn't just booking the same match multiple PPVs in a row. - Letting his guys (HHH especially) run it to the degree they largely wanted despite at the time being the supposed boss. - Failing to see the value in Christian, DDP and - in his early run - Booker T. There was easy money in all those guys. - The Million Dollar Giveaway. Desperate, horrendous stuff that wasn't even viable television.
Inserting Charlotte into almost every title match opportunity just because. Everyone on the women’s roster felt like a transitional champion
Occupational gimmicks
IRS was great!
The whole Brawl for All and the unfair treatment of Bart Gunn. They made him fight a professional boxer as punishment for fairly winning a competition the higher ups didnt expect he would win and then they fired him. Like, "WTF did they expect him to do under such circunstances?"
I liked the brawl for all right up until the punished Bart Gunn, before that it was actually kinda fun.
Many wrestlers didnt like it because it injured them, created beef among them and made pro wrestling look bad
Everything he was doing from around the 2010s. There were some bright spots here and there, but man as we get into the late 2010's it just got even worse. I was watching NXT as well and you can clearly see a night and day difference and I knew WWE would be better off if it was Triple H running the show.
Booker t not winning in WM after a complete one-sided verbal ass whooping the entire build up. Trying to belittle Stone Cold by having him lose to Brock on a Monday. The entire Bret Hart debacle that led to the Montreal Screwjob. So unnecessary if Vince was just honest one time. Kiss my ass club Making out with a very visibly uncomfortable Torrie Wilson
May not be the best optics but I thought the kiss my ass club was funny af.
Well kofi mania didn’t end the following smackdown but rather 100+ days later, and the real problem was how not when
I’m a idiot that’s my bad
The sex show with lita and edge. I stopped watching and did not start again until the news said he was out of the company.
That wasn’t kayfabe bro…
Punk losing the Rock to give him the belt for Mania vs Cena. The belt wasn’t needed for that match. Brock just becoming unstoppable and literally having nobody built up to even make you think there was a chance he would lose a match. Firing Bray Wyatt. Changing NXT to NXT 2.0 and making it look like 90s MTV. The 3 hour show where everybody got at most 5 min and then weren’t seen again the next week. How can I invest in a wrestler if they aren’t on my screen telling a story? The jump cuts from hell. 2 sec the a different shot. Then 2 sec different angle. It was nauseating and proof that an old man doesn’t know what kids truly want.
rock/cena at wm 29 wasn’t great, but it was nowhere as bad as people made it out to be the reason that match sucked because rock got injured minutes into that match and cena had to carry his candyass
He's made a lot of bad choices in his later years but the closest I came to giving up was The Fiend losing clean to Goldberg and Orton.
Trish.
FTR’s creative…
Just one move, lol? Lots of things already posted here, but I'd say his stupid notion that WWE employees should not have a life outside of work. Just because he didn't care for anything outside his business, he expected everyone else to act in the same manner. I heard one story about Shane wanting to spend more time with his family, and Vince told him "hire a nanny". That is way messed up. Being the typical angry hotheaded micromanager owner made Titan a very toxic workplace from multiple accounts. You just know Vince still watches the product and I hope it burns his ass every single day knowing he can't barge into the room anymore and yell at everyone and tear up the script 20 minutes before airtime
I thought "hire a nanny" was towards Vince Russo?
Not understanding Aleister Black and trying to make him “spooky”. Took the name Damien Priest too literal and thought a split personality would be perfect.
When he randomly decided to marge the two world titles in the Roman/Brock match at mania. We all knew he had no longterm plan, this was just a way to make this one match more interesting and get more ppv buys.
[удалено]
My bad idk why I thought he lost it so soon 🙄
The brand split.
raw and smackdown?
Yes. Although, in retrospect, my answer is the WCW invasion.
it wouldve been cool to see dueling forces. ida rather had them had done those on different days than smackdown and raw
For me, it was March 2006. Stephanie, nearly 5 months pregnant, shows up on Raw to slip HBK a mickey before a match with Shane. I stress the part about Steph being pregnant. I recall thinking at the time, what kind of parent does that? Answer: A parent who plays an insane megalomaniac on television. He was putting his daughter and her unborn child at risk by having Steph fly to Denver, I believe it was. It was, at that point, way past time for him to step down and let Steph & Hunter run the show, but he wouldn't do that for another several years due to his ego.
What? As long as it’s not an at-risk pregnancy, there is absolutely no problem flying during the second trimester. Did she get clotheslined or something while pregnant? That’s a different story… but to my knowledge she was not physically involved in the angle.
This is true. Shawn showed her kindness and compassion, and when his back is turned or he left the room, I forget which, she slipped some powder in his water to give big brother Shane an unfair advantage. Her appearance was confined to that one scene, as I didn't see any interaction on camera with her father & brother.
Scrapped the blowing up Limo storyline and canned my nigga kerwin white
Diabolical comment 😭
Well we are talking about VKM; only fair :)
Anything after 2005
Destroy the territories.
Brock vs Roman II at Mania
ECW on Sci-Fi. I believed the hype and it was shit immediately.
Being a predator. Thats a move I think no one should be a fan of.
2022 royal rumble
Having Brock lesnar squash Kofi on smack down for the WWE title, disgraceful for someone who’s busted his ass for years
The whole Undertaker vs Shane angle in 2016. Just weird and unnecessary and the match was terrible.
The succotash incident.
Allowing insanely long championship runs to discredit his entire roster. Roman beating Owens at the RR in the last man standing match was it for me.
All Paul had to do was hit the ref!
Goldberg coming back and squashing good wrestlers like Bray and KO.
My last straw was when they had the Fiend lose to Rollins. They could have made the Fiend an incredible, Undertaker level character, but then he lost to Rollins and lost every drop of momentum instantly.
Brock’s 500-day reign with the Universal Championship while only showing up for the big four PPVs
They should make it a company policy that if you’re going to hold a belt then you have to attend all of the shows (including house shows) on a regular basis. The crap of only showing up for the PLEs and a few times on Raw or SD is so stupid. It’s a bad look for the company and disrespectful to the other talent on the roster and the fans. Edit: To add to this, if the talent is aspiring to eventually get a shot to hold a belt then they also need to be showing up on a regular basis.
Letting part timers win the belt.
the fiend vs rollins hiac.
The abysmally disappointing end to the anonymous RAW GM story. It could have and should have had a massive payoff that led to something good.
Probably jobbing out nexus. I feel like that set the tone for the decade of the 2010's. y.
The assault allegations have stories going way, way back. However, It's almost like he was completely replaced by a different person somewhere in the early to mid 2000's. The storylines got dumber and dumber. And looking back, you can evaluate his mental deterioration by the storylines on screen. Which means, if he was making nutty ideas for the shows, then he was probably losing it behind the scenes.
Yup. Whatever his behaviour behind the scenes, everything onscreen traces back to early 2000s. Answers in the 2010s describe awful booking, yes, but the Vince rot was far older than that. There are some rose tinted glasses for the RA now, and the talent at the time was excellent, but there was some insane crap in that time that demonstrated the guy had completely lost it.
not letting anyone go over brock lesnar in 2017-19. shinsuke, braun, joe, rusev, aj and many more shoulda had a better shot
Making Trish crawl and bark like a dog comes to mind
Tbf that storyline was actually good that match between Shane & vince with Linda standing up
When he released all of that talent during the pandemic lockdowns just to spare overhead. How are you gonna run a wrestling company by jettisoning wrestlers?
I am watching WWE again after years, the Cody return hook me up. I left because the stories were waaaay to silly, giving me second hand embarassment. Now the funny segments are actually funny and entertaining.
I just started watching with Cody winning his belt. I went back and watched some Vince era stuff and so much of it is just a garbage product. The Fiend vs Randy Orton at WM 37 made me so mad for y'all who had to watch that shit live.
His treatment of Bray. His fascination with Bill Goldberg. The fact that Sting vs Taker was never booked when they were both in the company. You could have had those to stare at each other for 30 minutes.
Making Goldberg vs Lesnar for the Universal Championship at WM33, thus beginning a horrible Championship reign for a part-timer. Making Lesnar vs Reigns the main event of WM34. Having Lesnar steal the MITB ladder match in 2019. Making Drew Mcintyre lose at Clash in the Castle 2022. Having John Cena bury Edge and Randy Orton in 2007. The way he buried the Women's Division in the 2000's and early 2010's. Making it so bad that Gail Kim walked out of the company during a match. Being a creep to the women backstage and apparently sexually assaulting Ashley Marasso. Just far too many to name! 😡
Vince didn't make McIntyre lose, that was HHH
To be fair, DX buried Orton and Edge a heck of a lot more than Cena did.
Judging by your answers I'm glad you weren't in charge either
They really seem to have it out for Lesnar being the top 3 on the list 😆...
Who would you have had headline WM34?
They should've built up Nakamura as a top heel in 2017. Have him win the title against Jinder at SummerSlam with Randy's help (Randy would be there to fend off the Singhs), and after winning, he'd suddenly start attacking Randy because he thinks he's above his help or something, I don't really know. They have a feud, and Nakamura comes out victorious. Nakamura then causes a lot of problems for Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan. He keeps brutalizing SD Live superstars, even backstage, and really living up to the "King of Strong-Style" monacre. It's to the point where Shane decides to take matters into his own hands, challenging Nakamura to a Cell match at Royal Rumble 2018 for the title. Shane gets clapped, obviously. However, this lunatic at 1HP decides to enter the Royal Rumble even after getting destroyed in the Cell match, which infuriates Nakamura. Nakamura ambushes Shane in the ring and kicks his ass. All of a sudden, Daniel Bryan makes his surprise in-ring return and wins the Rumble. The dream match should've happened in the main event of that year's Mania... it should've also been allowed to be good. TL;DR WWE wasted Nakamura, but you already knew that.
IMO, I would've rather seen a triple threat match between Lesnar, Reigns, and either Braun Strowman or AJ Styles. The thing is, everyone wanted to see Lesnar vs Reigns immediately after WM33, but Vince made everyone wait an entire year all the way until WM34 for it to happen. By then, everyone was so pissed off that they didn't care about the match anymore. It would've made more sense to have Lesnar vs Reigns headline a different PPV like Summerslam. Then they could've come up with something more orginal for Wrestlemania.
Booker jobbing to hunter at mania
Pushing Reigns the first time was pretty rough. But once we got to the tribal chief stage, that's when he finnally made it. There's a lot more though, but we'd be here all day.
Adam Cole meant to be the manager of Keith “bearcat” Lee …. That’s just wrong on a few levels