Five Times WWE Booked The Wrong Guy To Win

WWE is often criticized for who they decide to push to the top. However, despite the criticism, if you can look at someone’s push — like Roman Reigns, for example — everything they do makes sense, even if the fans don’t end up embracing that person.

Deciding who wins and loses probably isn’t the easiest job in the world, especially when both people in the match are wildly popular. However, there are times where there’s no question as to what the result of a particular match should be, but that doesn’t mean WWE always ends up making the obvious choice.

There are a ton of reasons why WWE would go against logic, and decide to have the wrong guy win, and most of those reasons aren’t good ones.

With the benefit of hindsight, you can look at matches like Chris Jericho and Fandango from WrestleMania 29 and say that the wrong guy won. However, at the time, having Fandango defeat Jericho was the right decision, as it was Fandango’s very first WWE match. This list won’t feature those matches. Instead, it’ll feature matches where the result was baffling at the time they happened.

• Chris Jericho Defeats AJ Styles (WrestleMania 32)

CODEBREAKER connects from @IAmJericho, but @AJStylesOrg kicked out! #WrestleMania pic.twitter.com/usYuLJMg1u

— WWE WrestleMania (@WrestleMania) April 3, 2016

With WrestleMania 32 being AJ Styles’ very first WrestleMania match, logic would tell you that he would defeat Chris Jericho, who has competed at the event countless times. While the match was great, the result of the match, which saw Jericho defeating Styles clean in the middle of the ring, was not.

At the time, Jericho had just turned heel, and Styles was one of the more popular babyfaces in the company. So, why would WWE decide to have Jericho go over at WrestleMania 32? The answer is simple; It was a result of 50/50 booking, as Styles pinned Jericho the very next night on Raw to become the No. 1 contender for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. So, at least Styles got the win back.

• John Cena Defeats Kevin Owens (Money in the Bank 2015)

WWE fans were shocked when Kevin Owens defeated John Cena clean in his main roster debut, but just minutes after the match, it was announced that there would be rematch between the two at the Money in the Bank show just a month later. Who really knows what the original result of the rematch was supposed to be, but there were reports that claimed WWE decided to have Cena defeat Owens in the rematch simply because Cena’s merchandise sales decreased after the loss to Owens.

John Cena has been WWE’s conquering hero for well over a decade now, as he’s won the majority of the feuds that he’s been involved in, and the Owens feud was no different. Owens’ victory over Cena in his WWE debut turned out to be his one and only victory over the fifteen time WWE World Champion

Owens’ his first loss to Cena at last year’s Money in the Bank show really cooled him off, and he turned into just another guy, as opposed to the company’s top heel.

• Triple H Defeats Sting (WrestleMania 31)

The reason why Triple H defeated Sting in his WWE debut is pretty well known. Basically, WWE had to prove, once again, that they were better than WCW, even though the war between the two companies had ended 15 years earlier.

Everybody, with the exception of the WWE brass, was puzzled by the result of Sting vs. Triple H at WrestleMania 31. However, questionable results come with the territory whenever Triple H is heavily involved in an on-screen storyline, so while the result of the match didn’t make any sense, no one was surprised when “The Game” got his hand raised at Levi’s Stadium.

Sting ended up wrestling just three matches in WWE, and his only win came in an unmemorable tag team match on Raw, where he and John Cena took on Seth Rollins and Big Show.

• John Cena Defeats Brock Lesnar (Extreme Rules 2012)

At the time of this match, Brock Lesnar had just returned to WWE after becoming the biggest pay-per-view draw in UFC history, so the result of this match should’ve been obvious: have Brock Lesnar go over. However, that didn’t happen, because, much like in the Sting vs. Triple H match at WrestleMania 31, Vince McMahon had to prove that his guy was better than his competitors’ guy.

Aside from the finish, Lesnar vs. Cena at Extreme Rules was the perfect match. It was the first time that we’d seen blood in WWE in quite some times, as both Lesnar and Cena ended up getting busted open. Lesnar took about 95 percent of the match until Cena made a last second comeback by punching Lesnar in the face with a chain wrapped around his fist.

After his match with Cena, Lesnar went on to trade wins with Triple H before WWE decided that it would be a good idea to have “The Beast” break The Undertaker’s streak. Since then, he’s only lost one match, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be losing until WWE is ready to book the Roman Reigns rematch.

• Triple H Defeats CM Punk (Night of Champions 2011)

In the summer of 2011, CM Punk was the hottest act in pro wrestling. He was able to carry that momentum into the fall of 2011, where he took on Triple H at Night of Champions. At the time, Triple H hadn’t actively wrestled since WrestleMania, so essentially he came out of retirement just to beat Punk, and after the match, he went right back into retirement.

The match at Night of Champions was supposed to be CM Punk vs. Kevin Nash, but Nash was forced to pull out of the match. Why? Well, that depends on who you ask. The official story from WWE was that Nash wasn’t able to pass his physical, but, according to the Wrestling Observer, Nash pulled himself from the match because he didn’t want to lose to Punk, which is what the result would have been had he done the match.

CM Punk was supposed to get his win back over Triple H at WrestleMania 30 almost three years later, but he decided to quit the company and pursue a career in mixed martial arts. So we never did see Punk get a win over “The Game.”

[Featured Image by WWE]