The Dream Match that was a nightmare

[Tim Evans]

The Battle of the Bam Bam's between Bigelow and Terry Gordy I remember being pretty bad. Also Eliminators vs Doc/Gordy wasn't great either. Of course this was after Gordy's stroke.

[Lee Casebolt]

The Hart/Michaels Iron Man match should have been about 1000x better than it was.

[Al]

I don't know if Ali/Inoki qualifies as a dream match, but that turned out as bad as a dream match could possibly be.

[Superstar Sleeze]

Road Warriors vs Demolition was definitely considered a Dream Match, but the feud stunk as it was clear that Demo was pretty much done and WWF booked it with the angle, "LOD is here to fuck up these guys who've been imitating us", which was always in the back of the minds of most fans. Front of the mind for me.

I actually really liked the Ultimate Warrior/Road Warriors vs Demolition matches. I thought SNME match was pretty tight. The Smash & Crush vs LOD match from November I thought was pretty decent. They could have gotten another two years out of Smash & Crush as a decent heel team in my opinion. I guess yeah it was underwhelming if you went in with the expectations "MY FACE IS GOING TO BE MELTED BY THE SHEER BITCHINESS OF DEMOLITION/LOD", but if you went in with none I thought it was a solid feud.

[Wolfman]

After the body slam tease on the Coliseum Video WWF intro vid, I was so stoked to see Andre and Kamala in the Cage. Terrible!

[fakeplastictrees]

I'm surprised the RVD/HBK match from Raw is getting no love in this thread. A ton of people wanted to see it and then when it happened...it felt flat. The ending of the match with the HHH run-in was the worse and killed the crowd dead.

[Jason Mann]

By the time it happened, expectations were certainly low, but a 1990 fan would have been baffled by how horrid the Warrior vs. Hogan 1998 return match was.

[DMJ]

I'm not sure any of them were necessarily "nightmares," but I'd put all of the Rock's matches in the past 3 years on this list.

 

Again, I wouldn't say Rock/Punk at Royal Rumble 2013 was terrible or that the first Cena/Rock match wasn't engaging, but I think its fair to say that there were high expectations and they weren't quite met. Unlike Rock/Hogan at WM or any of the Cena/Punk matches from that timeframe, for example, I just don't see any of the Rock's matches being things people rush to see again.

[victory]

The Bulldogs vs. RNR Express was a dream match for me that I didn't even hear about until years later.

 

That match deserved a better territory to promote it properly so they had more than 500 fans or whatever that sad crowd was. The match itself was just okay from what I remember. I might have to revisit that one in the future.

[goodhelmet]

The Battle of the Bam Bam's between Bigelow and Terry Gordy I remember being pretty bad. Also Eliminators vs Doc/Gordy wasn't great either. Of course this was after Gordy's stroke.

 

I think anything after the stroke has to be exempt.

 

 

My pick would be Lesnar vs. Angle from Mania. I was so amped for that match and besides the SSP botch, just a flat, uninspired match.

[NitroFan]

i havent seen the match since it aired and i recall liking it for what it was, but samoa joe vs liger only getting around 10 minutes on a tna ppv pissed a lot of people off

[victory]

 

 

The Battle of the Bam Bam's between Bigelow and Terry Gordy I remember being pretty bad. Also Eliminators vs Doc/Gordy wasn't great either. Of course this was after Gordy's stroke.

I think anything after the stroke has to be exempt.

 

 

My pick would be Lesnar vs. Angle from Mania. I was so amped for that match and besides the SSP botch, just a flat, uninspired match.

I actually thought the Angle vs. Lesnar was okay for how bad Angle's neck was going into that match. I guess if I didn't know about that or have that in the back of my mind while watching it I would probably agree with you.

[Loss]

I remember Dave calling it a botched SSP away from being the best Wrestlemania match in history.

[fxnj]

 

Didn't Bret and Misawa (as Tiger Mask) have a random throwaway match in the late 80's/early 90's that was kind of shitty?

 

Yeah but that was to be expected. Misawa's style didn't mesh very well with the US workers of the time (he also had a very underwhelming match with Steamboat in 89), and Bret's style certainly did't mesh at all with Japanese workers. Went to a 20 minute draw, headlock galore.

 

Why is the Steamboat match considered underwhelming? I've seen it several times and always thought it was great. They do some good 70's matwork in the beginning that's simple but really well executed with lots of nice struggle. Then it builds to some hot near falls in the stretch run that give a taste of what was to come in the 90's. I'm not sure what else people expected.

 

Also, Tiger Mask Misawa actually had some pretty good tags a few months before with the Bulldogs. I think the Bret match sucking was mainly due to Bret not caring to figure out how he could modify his style to fit in with Misawa's and not wanting to put in the effort to make it work. The only mention of the match in his book is a paragraph about Misawa not being as good as the original Tiger Mask. That should speak for how little he knew about the style given that Misawa was already working a heavyweight style completely different from Sayama's flashy junior spots.

[The Chief]

I think Lesnar/Angle very much played into what the general fanbase was looking for at the time. Lots of moves, moves, moves, high impact, lots of kickouts. Very much an early 2000's main event.

[anarchistxx]

Kawada vs Foley wasn't exactly a 'dream match' for many people in the traditional sense, but it could have been way more fun than it winded up being.

[(BP)]

Kawada/Goldberg would have been interesting. I didn't think the Foley match was underwelming, but I knew Foley was a last minute sub, so I probably had low expectations.