WrestleMania season is here, baby! The Showcase of the Immortals is about to put out its 42nd edition, the somewhat dubiously billed WrestleMania Vegas (considering this will be the third time the event has been held there… as recently as last year, in fact).

Even if WWE isn’t your preferred provider of grapps, it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the pomp and circumstance surrounding the industry’s biggest PPV. We’ve been blessed with both all-time great moments and absolute trash fires over the years, but sometimes the biggest storylines are the ones that occur in the writing room.

With that being said, we’re going to reel off some of the most mindboggling booking decisions in WrestleMania history. This won’t necessarily include the altogether worst matches — so rest easy, Giant Gonzalez fan(s) — as much as it’ll look at the stuff that never should have been greenlit in the first place.

These are in no particular order, as recency and/or primacy bias are sure to influence anyone’s opinion. Are you ready to tread the halls of opulent mediocrity? Then let’s get into it!!

Travis Scott Takes His Sweet Ass Time at WrestleMania 41

You knew we’d mention it eventually, so let’s just get it out of the way early.

For a man who has headlined three simultaneous WrestleManias, Cody Rhodes has had to deal with more indignity than you’d expect from a top guy. The long-term booking combination of the previous two events made his initial defeat at the hands of Roman Reigns much more tolerable, and at WrestleMania 41 he was entrenched as the valorous champion against the immortal John Cena.

The match itself was an underwhelming affair completely unbecoming of a WrestleMania main event, with the majority of us left waiting for The Rock to make his inevitable run-in and alleviate our boredom. Then, it happened: a new threat appeared on the ramp; not Dwayne Johnson but his lackey, Travis Scott.

Considering Cody had been capably fending off one of the most decorated wrestlers in WWE history, it was rather inexplicable how he looked so distressed by the oncoming rapper — made worse by Scott’s leisurely pace as he sauntered from the entranceway for several minutes (though some say he is still walking toward the ring to this day).

This isn’t Brock Lesnar or Andre the Giant we’re talking about here, but Travis freakin’ Scott, who had the yearlong WWE Champion frozen on the spot.

We all know how it ends from here. Scott meddles, Cena boops Cody with the belt, and the reality sinks in that The Rock didn’t show up to our weekend slumber party.

Aside from Rocky’s no-show, the rest of the finish is fine on a conceptual level. It’s the way it was executed that was so egregious, with Travis Scott’s smug stroll capping off what many consider the worst finish in WrestleMania history. Somebody buy that man a goddamn bicycle.

Brock Lesnar Ends the Streak at WrestleMania XXX

Of all the misfires on this list, this is perhaps the one you could most easily make an argument for. Regardless, putting Brock Lesnar over The Undertaker to end his 21-0 WrestleMania streak is best described as puzzling.

Part of the appeal of Taker’s Mania matches was the allure of a potential upset, whether the guy to do it would be Shawn Michaels, Edge, or CM Punk. By 2014, Brock was a made man who only wrestled big money matches. He didn’t need the rub of besting The Undertaker, and the only plausible explanation is that they were trying to position him as the federation’s all-time final boss. Or Brock had picked the writers up and threatened to eat them alive unless he won. Take your pick.

There’s also the tricky issue that the match itself was quite subpar, thanks in no small part to Taker’s concussion six minutes into the 25 minute bout. While you can’t blame bad booking for that, it just further tarnishes the shock of the moment that 21-1 graphic appeared on screen.

At the very least, we got a pretty solid meme out of it.

Triple H Defeats Booker T at WrestleMania XIX

If I had the power to change any result in WrestleMania history, this may well be the one I’d choose.

The 2003 build between fan favorite Booker T and the unstoppable Triple H is about as gross as anything put out during the Ruthless Aggression era. Triple H frequently chided Booker with uncomfortable torment such as throwing money at him and telling him to go fetch him a towel, with the real kicker being the infamous statement that, “people like you don’t get to be world champion”.

As an African American man, the way Booker was being treated could only be seen as racially charged. For years, Triple H and the producers have sworn that it was directed at Booker’s criminal past and the fact that he had only been a world champion with the inferior WCW, but few people really buy that claim.

However you feel about the build, the payoff was simply abhorrent. Although Booker controlled most of the match, Triple H hits a Pedigree and then pins his opponent for the win… 23 seconds after landing the finisher.

It was an insult to wrestling fans in general, as it went against everything sensible about storytelling: the bully won, and the hero was slain before our very eyes. When you factor in the nasty road we took to get here, it makes this even more unforgivable.

Hulk Hogan Defeats Yokozuna at WrestleMania IX

It’s no secret nowadays that the peak of Hulkamania was a balancing act between cashing in on the marketability of Hulk Hogan, and placating the ego of the man behind the character, Terry Bollea.

WrestleMania IX’s advertised main event was supposed to be a showdown between the valiant Bret Hart and the enormous Yokozuna, which ended in shocking fashion when Yokozuna’s manager Mr. Fuji interfered to secure the win for the villain.

But of course, this was 1993, and a heel had never emerged victorious in the big show’s main event before (a fact that was true until WrestleMania 2000). So what happened next? Did then-president Jack Tunney restart the match, allowing Bret to score his rightful 1-2-3?

No, of course not! Instead, Hulk Hogan ran to Bret’s aid, and Mr. Fuji infamously put Yokozuna’s newly minted title on the line against the Hulkster. Bret Hart was left cheering Hogan on as he stormed the ring, flattened Yokozuna in 22 seconds, and captured his fifth WWF Championship after being absent from the company for an entire year.

There’s something to be said for the fans going home happy, as the cheap pop from the Vegas crowd is undeniable. But Hogan’s time with the company was all but over by this point, and somehow he was the only one who looked strong from this whole mess.

Your hitherto monster Yokozuna? Squashed in under a minute. Your rising babyface, Bret Hart? Made to look like a chump. It’s an antithesis on everything you should be doing to build new superstars, and it’s about as ugly as the shiner Hogan was sporting on his left eye.

WrestleMania IV (Pretty Much All of It)

It might seem odd to consider an entire WrestleMania as being a booking mistake, but it is clear that the fourth iteration was an absolute shemozzle from wire-to-wire (the main event excluded, of course).

The gimmick here was that the world heavyweight title had been vacated, and so a 14-man tournament was arranged to crown a new champion. That’s fine and dandy, except for the fact that the entire tournament took place at this one event.

Including a smattering of non-tourney bouts, this brought the match total to a blistering 16 — with the majority of them having to be condensed into a few minutes to allow us to sit through them all.

Had the preliminary matches taken place prior to the PPV, this concept could have been fascinating, but instead, the only one worth watching is the finale between Randy Savage and Ted DiBiase. Thankfully, it’s a real beaut, and Savage climbed the mountain to claim his first WWF World Championship. Yes, Hulk Hogan is also in the ring for no particular reason. Thank you for noticing, maybe he’ll flex for you as a treat.

WrestleMania XXVII’s Main Event is a Preview

For Mike Mizanin, main eventing WrestleMania against John Cena should have been the highlight of his decorated career. A former reality TV star who clawed his way up the ranks through Tough Enough, he had taken his lumps to go from an unwelcome sideshow to a legitimate WWE Champion.

What ended up happening instead is the wrestling equivalent to being left at the altar, even though Mizanin won the damned thing.

The match was middling to begin with, owing to a concussion suffered by The Miz partway through. The kicker, however, is that the real storyline was the interference run by the guest host; one Rocky Maivia. After restarting the match following a double count-out, The Rock hit Cena with the Rock Bottom, allowing Miz to claim a victory better suited to an episode of SmackDown than the main event of WrestleMania.

The rationale behind this was to set up next year’s WrestleMania main event, a “once in a lifetime” showdown between Cena and Rocky (that they ended up doing twice). What are you trying to say to Miz and the 71,000 people in attendance? “Thanks for coming, we’ll see you next year for the one that actually matters”?

Adding injury to insult, Miz got laid out by The Rock after his win, robbing him of even a brief moment of glory at his own main event. It was a pedestrian finish to one of the worst WrestleManias in history.

Michael Cole vs Jerry Lawler at WrestleMania XXVII

Speaking of which, let’s dive into a large part of why the aforementioned WrestleMania was so godawful. Bad matches are an unfortunate fact of life, and sometimes they’re unavoidable for one reason or another. But when you book a gimmick match, you do not give it 14 torturous minutes.

Jerry Lawler is a wrestling legend, and the fact that he’d never gotten a WrestleMania spot prior to 2011 is surprising. By then, however, he was 61, and had no business sharing a ring for an extended period with heel announcer Michael Cole.

Not even bringing Steve Austin in as a special referee could save this from being a turgid stinker as the competitors bumbled about for what felt like an eternity. If you include entrances and whatnot, this whole affair took close to half an hour, and even after all of our suffering, Cole somehow walks away with the win thanks to a dubious disqualification.

If this was six minutes of goofy mayhem, we could wave it off as inoffensive. With its protracted length, it is a sheer disaster that is rightfully derided as one of WrestleMania’s lowest points. Showcase of the Immortals, indeed.

The Wrong Main Event

This is such a frequent complaint throughout WrestleMania history that it’s impossible to narrow it down to just one example. The whole purpose of a main event is that it’s supposed to wrap everything up in the biggest way possible, leaving us with an impactful moment as the cameras fade to black.

It’s easy to second guess a lot of these decisions with the power of hindsight, but there are several glaring examples that they really should have seen coming right from the get-go.

The most infamous instances often occur when the world championship is contested as the headliner; a notion that makes sense on paper, but should be reconsidered when something truly significant is booked for the undercard.

The Undertaker vs Sycho Sid at WrestleMania 13 is the biggest offender in this department: this sluggish no-DQ bout is one of Taker’s less-than-spectacular performances during his vaunted winning streak, and came two matches after Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin put on one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time.

Five years later, Chris Jericho and Triple H were put in an unwinnable position when they headlined WrestleMania X8, an event that is almost exclusively remembered for the legendary match between Hollywood Hulk Hogan and The Rock. The main event was fine, really, but got swallowed up in the supernova that was Hogan v Rocky.

On the flip side, there are times when the world championship was made to feel less than special, deferring to main events that could be best described as puzzling. Diesel vs Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XI wasn’t particularly good, but it makes more sense to end the show than Bam Bam Bigelow vs Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants — a serviceable spectacle that was booked solely for the publicity, and required some heavy lifting by the veteran Bigelow to be as half-decent as it was.

Much more vexing, of course, was the absolute debacle that was Hulk Hogan vs Sid Justice at WrestleMania VIII. Even if you put aside the botched finish, the match was booked to end in a DQ, regardless. A run-in save by the returning Ultimate Warrior offered a modicum of intrigue, but can you honestly say that’s the superior ending to Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth basking in the glory of overcoming the dastardly Ric Flair? Get out of here with that nonsense, Vince.

WrestleMania XIX Pillow Fight

Call this a personal vendetta if you will, this just had no right being part of WrestleMania. Sandwiched between a spectacular match from Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels and the dreaded Triple/H Booker T disaster we’ve already spoken of, approximately five minutes of the show was assigned to a pillow fight.

A. Pillow. Fight.

Hosted by Jonathan Coachman, Stacy Kiebler and Torrie Wilson duked it out alongside Tanya Ballinger and Kitana Baker — the latter pair apparently being “Miller Lite Girls”, whatever that means.

The “match” ends when the girls decide to depants Coachman, which I guess qualifies as a victory stipulation in the vaunted arena of pillow fights. It isn’t listed in the WrestleMania XIX lineup, so I’m unsure who actually won. Certainly not the ring crew who had to lug the bed to the ring and back.

It’s a holdover of the sleaziest aspects of the Attitude era, and its presence on the card meant that the tag team title match was bumped to the Sunday Night Heat pre-show. This effectively robbed Lance Storm of his only official WrestleMania appearance, and that just feels wrong to me (in case you were wondering why that was the featured video for this entry).

Also, it is worth noting that very little pillow fighting actually occurs.

Steve Austin Turns Heel at WrestleMania X-Seven

Not even a spectacular main event at one of the greatest WrestleManias is immune from criticism, and sometimes the impact of a memorable moment is outweighed by the expectations of the business as a whole.

For nearly half an hour (aka the time it takes Travis Scott to make it to the ring), Steve Austin and The Rock pummelled one another in a no-DQ match for the WWF Championship. When the nefarious boss man Vince McMahon arrived at ringside, tensions were high that he would somehow cost Austin the W.

Their rivalry had been the catalyst for the WWF’s unprecedented success for almost four years, so it was enough to drop our mouths agape when Vince instead handed Austin a steel chair. After wailing on The Rock with the weapon multiple times, Stone Cold secured the victory and shook hands with Vince, erasing everything we held true about the Texas Rattlesnake. He done sold his soul, y’all.

On the one hand, it was a true WrestleMania moment unlike any other: a swerve that keeps us talking to this day. But it was at the cost of the WWF’s most bankable star, particularly when The Rock was beginning to wrap up his time as a headliner.

Austin has gone on the record to acknowledge the error, stating on Chris Jericho’s podcast that, “I wish I would’ve never done it and I wish I would’ve called an audible”.

Put simply, nobody wanted to boo Steve Austin in 2001, despite his best efforts to make us hate him. On the plus side, this heel run gifted us with one of the best backstage segments of all time, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Header Image Credit: WWE