WWE went through some hellish times in 2020 and 2021. It seemed as though 2022 had the potential for all the madness to level out and calm down. Little did we know 2022 would be just as crazy, if not worse in some ways!
Now that 2022 is coming to a close, it is time to reflect back on the previous 12 months and try to learn some lessons to take into the next year so the same mistakes aren’t made. While we can’t force WWE to learn, we can at least point out what problems came up.
With such, it’s time for the annual Biggest Blunders and Greatest Wonders of the Year lists, starting with the bad news first and the blunders.
This means the top mistakes, flubs, mess-ups, bad booking decisions, terrible ideas, awful matches, crappy company strategies, unfortunate circumstances and anything else along those lines.
This list is in no particular order and is quite obviously opinion-based, so I invite everyone to chime in with their own ideas of the worst things from WWE in 2022 in the comments below!
Without further ado and in no particular order, let’s get started…
The McMahon Family Drama
Good God. You can make an entire list just out of this section alone.
First, going into the year, WWE had awful morale. That was made even worse with Shane McMahon’s fiasco at the Royal Rumble, which led to him being sent away.
Triple H had started the year with heart problems and questions over whether he was done entirely or even possibly dying. It was awful. He stepped aside, but returned, just to leave his boots in the ring and retire from in-ring competition. Very sad news and not something that can be considered a “blunder”, but just a bad part of the year.
A true blunder, though, is the Vince McMahon hush money scandal, which ultimately led to his retirement. That retirement, by the way, came right after Stephanie McMahon was supposed to be taking time off, only to then be named co-CEO and have to take on more responsibilities than ever.
You can say this all worked out better in the end, with the new regime in charge making some much-needed changes. It remains to be seen how successful they take WWE in comparison to Vince’s pros and cons.
But you can’t doubt that this wasn’t one of the messiest years WWE ever saw.
Nearly Everything With Both Sets of Women’s Tag Team Championships
Both the main roster and NXT women’s tag team titles went through a lot this year, proving how little WWE cares about those divisions.
We’ve always known that, but it almost seemed as though specific steps were made to drive home that point.
Vince supposedly wanted Sasha Banks and Naomi to job to Bianca Belair and Ronda Rousey “just because”, in a sense, rendering their status as champions definitively supplemental. Banks and Naomi saw the writing on the wall and decided to walk out of WWE, wherein Vince projected outward his frustration and tried to convince all the audience to hate them for it, even going so far as to have the commentary team talk about how disappointed they were in Banks and Naomi for letting everyone down.
The belts were vacated and a tournament was going to crown new champions.
Cut to a whopping near FIVE MONTHS later. They finally put the belts on a new team of Aliyah and Raquel Rodriguez. Only, surprise, they lost the belts in 2 weeks to the team everyone knew was going to be actually holding it, Damage CTRL.
Only…surprise! 48 days later, they also dropped the belts to Alexa Bliss and Asuka.
But then…surprise!!! Less than a week later, they dropped the belts back to Dakota Kai and Iyo Sky!
This hot potato b.s. happened in NXT, too.
Dakota Kai and Raquel Rodriguez beat Toxic Attraction at Stand & Deliver, only to drop the titles merely 3 days later back to Gigi Dolin and Jacy Jayne.
3 months after that, Toxic Attraction lost to Cora Jade and Roxanne Perez. Only….you guessed it. Surprise!
Jade turned on Perez in one of the most ridiculous turns this year. It made almost no sense for her to go straight into jealousy and abandon her title reign, wherein she also botched her skateboard attack and threw the belt in the trash.
Perez decided to just give up her half of the championship, too, and we now have Kayden Carter and Katana Chance holding the belts.
Speaking of tossing belts in the trash…
The Death of the 24/7 Championship
Nikki Cross gave the 24/7 Championship a fitting end when she botched throwing it in the garbage, missing the trash can and just having it flop down beside it.
This was the end of this terrible championship, following the worst year it ever had, which is saying a lot.
2022 was dominated in two major things with this belt. First was the awful love story angle between Dana Brooke, Reggie, Akira Tozawa and Tamina with R-Truth as an intermediary. No part of that was good, and those writers should be ashamed.
Eventually, it was relegated to just changing hands on house shows, but WWE wouldn’t even recognize those as legitimate title reigns. It had actually gotten so bad that the meaningless belt switches didn’t even mean nothing anymore. They just flat out existed just to pop that particular night’s crowd in attendance and be treated as if it was a fantasy.
Austin Theory’s Ascension and Downward Spiral with Money in the Bank
Although not a title in the same sense, the Money in the Bank did take a big hit this year in what didn’t even need to be a problem, but WWE managed to find a way to make it one.
Austin Theory started the year off hot. He was United States champion and heading into WrestleMania alongside Vince McMahon to be involved in a match with Pat McAfee and some stuff with Stone Cold Steve Austin. That’s great.
He lost the United States title, only to win the Money in the Bank briefcase later that night.
All signs pointed to that being a catalyst for a main event run to come, and that WWE would be building him up over the course of this next year.
Instead, he fell victim to the MITB curse, wherein they started having him lose all the time. Likely, Vince was of the mindset that the briefcase protected these people and that they could lose over and over because “eventually”, it would balance out with a big win. And when you ask someone like Baron Corbin, Damien Sandow or Otis how that worked out when they changed their minds and said “oh well”, you see why WWE can’t be trusted to “figure it out in the future” and undo their mistakes.
Since there was no chance Theory was going to beat Roman Reigns, WWE opted to flat out admit that, strangely, as an explanation for why Theory decided, instead, to go for the United States Championship again.
I’m of the rare opinion that I actually like MITB being for “all titles” and that the midcard and even tag team belts should be up for grabs. I don’t consider it a downgrade to open it up to that possibility. But I do see why people think Theory willingly took a step down, and that it hurt his perception.
But even worse, in my mind, was how they did this.
He cashed in his title shot during an open challenge, which meant it was pointless. And then, he lost, only to regain the United States title a few weeks later, meaning they could have easily had him win the cash in and it would have at least protected him from taking another meaningless hit to his credibility.
So after all that happened this year, Theory is in a worse position than he was at the start of 2022. He’s got the same belt, but he failed to be a proper Mr. Money in the Bank, was made to look like a fool, and has less momentum. Fantastic.
The Judgment Day Pretty Much Sucked All Year
Edge starting a stable called The Judgment Day with Damian Priest and Rhea Ripley so he could feud with AJ Styles sounded awesome at first. Then, everything happened, and I’m looking back on the year and wondering how all these months went by with so little for me to be happy about.
This group sucked. They feuded with the same people for months on end, just dragging these super thin and weak storylines out far past their expiration dates, and could never quite amount to nailing any part of any of these segments.
At best, Dominik Mysterio finally turned heel, but even that’s been a hit or miss thing. I think all parties can be doing better with that, to be honest.
More disappointing has been Finn Balor’s involvement. He’s a charisma vacuum every time he talks and his initiation into the group made no sense.
I dig Priest as a heel and Ripley looking stronger. I’m into the idea that Dominik will fight Rey at some point down the line. But I’ve not liked The O.C. feuding with them, nor Mia Yim’s “aaaaand here’s Mia” involvement, and I think Edge has been wasted carrying on this feud instead of just moving on to some other talent.
Lacey Evans and How to Ruin a Babyface Immediately
Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to reintroduce Lacey Evans with vignettes about how hard her life has been to garner sympathy, only to twist that into a reason to hate her even more?!
For weeks, she spat out these sob stories that are likely true, but started to come off more like whining. She’d talk about how she’s not better than anyone on the roster, but they’re damn sure not better than she is.
Okay. Maybe it’s just a bit tone deaf, but we can work with it. Clearly, she’s someone we should cheer for how much adversity she has and all she’s overcome. Right?
WRONG.
Instead, they’re going to tell the audience that they need to show some respect and cheer for her, forcing any remaining good will to just dry up immediately.
You don’t tell people “you have to respect this person and like them”—particularly a wrestling audience—and expect them to go along with it.
That means either they planned to have her booed, which boggles the mind, or they legitimately thought they could just force feed this and get away with it.
Well, it didn’t work. Instead, Evans was met with boos in the wrong way and quickly dried back up again. She popped up a handful of times for sporadic appearances and got little to no reaction.
Now, she’s being repackaged again with the same idea as the first time—a babyface playing off her military background—but this go seems to be taking the right approach.
SCRYPTS
Vignettes appear on NXT with someone talking via voice modulator, giving an ominous message about their arrival. Intimidating. Who is this SCRYPTS person going to be?
Well, it turns out to be Reggie in an awful luchador outfit. We’re talking a mask and gear that seems like his mom botched his Halloween costume.
He flips around—because that’s what Reggie does—beating Guru Raaj. You know Guru Raaj, right? Nope? Well, he’s a jobber who they’ve used for both heels and faces. So at no point in this match does it ever really showcase if SCRYPTS is supposed to be heel or face.
This gimmick makes Axiom look good. Yeesh.
Reggie is not at all fitting with this intimidating voice they keep giving him, which can’t even sustain itself, since he can’t cut any promos with that in a live capacity. The vignettes and video packages aren’t even good, either. This character has zero direction and essentially nothing to offer.
They’d have been better off just making him a silly sidekick for Axiom to add to the tag team division where he’s the Robin of the duo. Except, you know, Robin is cool.
Solo Sikoa’s North American Championship Reign
Wes Lee wins a fan vote to earn a title shot against Carmelo Hayes. Then, he’s taken out. Instead, Solo Sikoa randomly pops back up on NXT after moving to the main roster and turning heel, so he can have a super babyface moment to fight and beat Hayes, winning the title.
He brings that belt to SmackDown. Heeeyyyy, this makes no sense, but at least we’ve got the North American Championship on the main roster. That will be neat.
Except, on the next episode of NXT, Shawn Michaels explains that Sikoa wasn’t sanctioned to be in that match. He’ll have to forfeit the title. Mind you, this isn’t a situation where it is rendered moot, struck from the record and the belt is given back to Hayes. Instead, it is considered a legitimate title win, but Sikoa has to relinquish it.
Why? If he wasn’t supposed to be in the match, how does any of that count?
This type of faulty logic always bugs me. Clearly, they either had other ideas in mind that changed within the span of one weekend—meaning it wasn’t a solid plan to begin with, or they cared that little about it that they were okay with adjusting it on the fly—or they didn’t think about it whatsoever and just wanted to pop the audience with a couple surprises to get people talking.
I’m very rarely ever a fan of “shock for the sake of shock, even if it has zero value.”
Big E’s Broken Neck
Ridge Holland drops Big E on his neck on SmackDown, in an accident, and Big E suffers a broken neck. It is one of the worst injuries to happen this year, as it may have cost Big E the rest of his career.
Hell, it could have cost him his life, which is the most important thing of all.
Thankfully, his recovery has had some up-sides to it. Nobody can say whether or not he’ll ever wrestle again, but his overall health is a much bigger deal in the grand scheme.
In any fashion, one wrong move like this is certainly a blunder. Just avoiding that particular spot could have altered the timeline significantly, and I’m sure all parties involved would certainly wish they could change that with the benefit of hindsight.
Honorable Mentions
- Quetzalli Bulnes really thought it would be a good idea to not ask permission and have a friend of hers try to start an angle during a live event in Mexico? Well, now, you lost your cushy job. All you had to do, probably, was to pitch it, and if they said no, move on.
- Can we get any clarification on what’s happening with the NXT UK Heritage Cup? Is there really that little communication between departments that it hasn’t been addressed on television, nor does the website have any indication of its purpose since they keep classifying it an active title?
- You can’t talk about blunders from this year without mentioning Nash Carter’s release after his marriage dissolved and his wife buried his career.
- The acting in WWE and pro wrestling in general has never been good, but NXT has really cranked it up a notch this year with some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Nearly everyone on that roster reads their lines in such terrible form that I’m begging WWE to give them some proper acting lessons.
- The way they handled some of the renames this year was so bad. Kacy Catanzaro becomes Katana Chance because that’s a new side of her we’re going to see? What side?! Kay Lee Ray turns into Alba Fyre and starts to become obsessed with that and baseball bats? LA Knight turning into Max Dupri was a few weeks of something terrible before they decided to ignore that, but it still happened, lest we forget.
Stay tuned for the flip side of this with the upcoming Greatest Wonders of the Year post.
What do you think were the biggest mistakes and worst things to happen from WWE this year? Drop your list in the comments below!
