Star-BREAKING Matches

By Scott Keith on 14 October 2017

Hey Scott,

A recent e-mailer asked about star-making matches. To counter that, how about some star-breaking matches? The ones where you could look back and say, “Yep. They never recovered for that.” Or “Yep. It took them a LONG time to recover from
that.”

Off the top of my head:

-Booker T/HHH at WrestleMania 19

-CM Punk/HHH at Night of Champions 2011 (killed the Summer of Punk)

-Cena/Rusev at WrestleMania 31

-Sting/Hogan at Starcade 1997 (funny enough, the WINNER breaking here)

To be fair to Hogan, Sting was dead the moment he stepped foot in the ring, because the whole appeal of his character was that people were waiting for him to return. Once he actually DID return, there was no where left for that particular character to go. It's really astonishing how palpable the feeling was even watching the ring entrance, where we had been waiting for 18 months for the payoff and it's like 'Oh yeah, it's Sting, I forgot.' and then boom, he's just a guy again.

Booker, 100% yes. That match killed him dead for a long time.

I'd also add Rey Mysterio losing the WWE title to John Cena immediately after winning it. Just made him look like a complete clod.