Minus-Star Match Reviews

Behold what might be the single worst match of the 21^st century.

When this match took place it received a torrent of bad press. It was so bad that it was given the dubious nickname of Seisan Matchi (凄惨マッチ; “Ghastly Match”) after it ended. Sometimes I browse Cagematch.net to check out different matches and this one sits comfortably at the bottom: as of April 12, 2026, this one has a rating of 0.05 based on 261 ratings. In other words, a handful of people were generous enough to give it a score of 1 out of 10 or maybe slightly higher. So I figured I’d check it out to see what the big deal is since modern joshi isn’t usually my specialty.

The Story

Yuka “Act” Yasukawa grew up in the sparsely populated Aomori Prefecture of Japan and dreamed of becoming a samurai after spending much of her childhood watching old samurai movies. That dream was shattered when she learned that samurai haven’t existed for about 150 years. She also came from a troubled home, having a poor relationship with her parents and was said to suffer from an unspecified mental illness which, coupled with her troubled life at home and at school, led to at least one suicide attempt. She found solace in drama and theatre which helped her overcome her personal demons. One of her stage performances saw her take on the role of a wrestler, which in turn led her down the path of becoming a fulltime one. However, an illness initially prevented her from pursuing that path fully. In response, Yasukawa took medications that would help her body recover, at the cost of her fertility. Anyways, Yasukawa debuted in with STARDOM in 2012 and by this point in her career was a three-year veteran. Another important note is that Yasukawa had physical ailments as well: a bout with Graves’ Disease, likely stemming from an overactive thyroid left one of her either partially or completely blind in one eye and relatively skinny, even by joshi standards.

Meanwhile, Yoshiko was one of the first signees for STARDOM, present during the company’s initial press conference in 2010. She was of similar height as Yasukawa but bulkier and more aggressive. She stylized herself as a yanki, a sort of delinquent with blonde hair.

From what I’ve gathered from various online sources, the tension between these two women stems from Yasukawa’s relatively quick push. She debuted in 2012 and was getting a solid push within only a few months. People gravitated towards her inspired by her overcoming several concurrent layers of adversity in a culture that really doesn’t place much concern on individual struggles. It was also said that she was even offered modeling contracts but chose wrestling instead. Needless to say this attention allegedly rubbed Yoshiko the wrong way.

Before the match officially begins there was an angle taped which focused on a contract singing to make the match official. Both sides’ camps argued from opposite sides of the ring and the table on which the contract was placed. Yasukawa’s side includes Kyoko Kimura, mother of deceased joshi wrestler Hana Kimura. Kimura whispers something into Yasukawa’s ear and then she and other seconds attack Yoshiko as the crowd boos. Yoshiko is sent into a table in a corner and Yasukawa almost dives onto her for a table break spot but the referee stops it from proceeding. Frustrated, Yoshiko walks over to Rossy Ogawa sitting at ringside and signs the title defense contract to make the match official. All of this is really bizarre.

The Match

This took place on February 22, 2015.

Kyohei Wada, veteran referee from peak 1990s All Japan, is stuck officiating this shit for some reason. I guess if you’re going to have a boundary-crossing violent encounter it’s best to have the most experienced ref in the entire country ensure no one dies. Neither woman so much as budges during introductions for this title match. The crowd sounds like they’re mostly behind Yoshiko at the moment. Nothing happens for the first thirty seconds and then the women start trading forearms. However, Wada, who is VERY familiar with closed-fisted punches, sees Yoshiko throwing live rounds and gets physically involved almost immediately. Yoshiko lands a few punches to the side of Yasukawa’s head. Yoshiko mounts Yasukawa again and Wada is making it crystal clear she’s entering dangerous waters with her choices. The camera zooms in on Yasukawa who now has a bloody nose. Wada admonishes her but the match still continues. The women lock-up again and Yasukawa lands more strikes of her own. However, Yoshiko overpowers her and you can hear her punches landing over all of the fan chatter. Yasukawa fires up which leads to a shoot takedown of sorts. Yoshiko lands some standing shoulderblocks and a stiff kick to Yasukawa’s head. More stiff shots from Yoshiko in a corner. Yoshiko lands another takedown and lands mounted punches to the head. I’ve seen less violent exchanges on WorldStarHipHop. Yasukawa bails to ringside where she’s swarmed by seconds. One of these has a quick exchange with Wada and he’s clearly concerned. Despite Yasukawa’s persistence on continuing, one of her seconds throws in the towel, ending the match right then and there.

Match result: no contest after 7:45

You can watch the match here, though I’m not sure you really want to.

Post-match, one of Yasukawa’s seconds rushes past Wada and gets in a tussle with Yoshiko. We get some loud screeching and pull-aparts as Yasukawa screams like a Banshee as she’s dragged backstage. It is later revealed that Yasukawa suffers fractured cheek, nasal, and orbital bones, all of which will require surgery. The orbital one is especially concerning given Yasukawa having already undergone cataract surgery. Three days later STARDOM holds a press conference during which Yoshiko surrenders her title. Three months after this show they announce that Yoshiko would retire from wrestling, likely stemming from the torrent of bad publicity that followed this incident. However, that retirement would prove hollow since Yoshiko would go on to wrestle for another promotion called SEAdLINNNG where she would continue to wrestle until at least 2022. As for Yasukawa, she had to retire temporarily but returned to wrestling and was still actively performing as of mid-to-late 2025 for a much smaller promotion called Actwres Girl’Z.

Review

This is an unfortunate example of the sort of bullshit that exists beneath the surface in most if not all wrestling companies. Pride, ego, pushes, traditions, difference of opinion, and all the other nonsense that comes with dealing with multiple competing interests and perspectives. Some say that the pre-match attack from Yasukawa’s camp led to Yoshiko acting in self-defence. Others noted that Yazukawa’s right-eye blindness left her with poor depth perception, a dangerous trait for professional wrestling. Others still interpret it to a break in the DEEPLY-entrenched seniority system in Japan which many people, accustomed to seeing in every aspect of life, find hard to accept when shattered. We don’t know the full picture and likely never will. Regardless, this is an ugly situation that goes beyond the two people in competing between the bells. Everything felt off from the moment the pre-match angle began. The hostilities weren’t clearly explained. If you really want to you can make the argument that Yoshiko disapproved of STARDOM hotshotting a young kid just because her circumstances made for a heartwarming story and wanted to remind people that those kinds of sudden pushes don’t translate into long-term success. But if that’s the case, beating the piss out of your opponent to the point that she needs surgery isn’t the solution. Locking in a painful but ultimately harmless submission hold to make her scream? Maybe. But shooting like this is unacceptable. It was a black mark of extreme proportions, and for the paying viewing audience led to the ultimate uncomfortable experience, one with zero redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Final Rating: -*****

I have nothing positive to say about this. It was a stain on wrestling history brought about by series of bad decisions from several people. You can watch it if you’d like but I don’t see why you would; even for the perverse fan who just gets a kick out of wanton violence for its own sake, this match doesn’t even have anything worthwhile to satiate that bizarre thirst. This is better served relegated to the garbage bin of wrestling history, only to be brought up when discussing worst-case scenarios of how bad things could get when disagreements or disputes are given too much room to grow and fester.

Thanks for reading.

Few moments in recent WWE history have served as much of a “what-if” as the Muhammad Hassan character. He was a lightning rod for controversy and commentary. He was pushed to the moon and pissed off an entire locker room in the process. He was rubbing shoulders with legends including Jerry Lawler and Hulk Hogan. It seemed like he was well on his way to becoming Vince McMahon’s most cherished shiny new toy…only for something completely outside of WWE’s control to screw everything up in a level no one thought possible…and gave The Undertaker’s career another black mark in the process.

You know something is bad when Vince McMahon, who has been around professional wrestling since he was a teenager, calls it “the worst thing I’ve seen in sixty years in this business.” Then again, he really should’ve been looking in a mirror when he said that because he’s the one who booked wrestling legend Jerry Lawler against RING ANNOUNCER Michael Cole at WrestleMania. To this very day many fans call it the worst match in WrestleMania history and think of the volume that covers. And with WrestleMania 42 around the corner I think it’s timely that we revisit this piece of garbage feud to, a) see why it was so bad and b) prepare ourselves mentally just in case the powers-that-be decide to book something similar this year just for the sake of ragebaiting the audience.

Few matches better encapsulate the Vince McMahon adage of “selling the sizzle and not the steak” than this one.

The Undertaker and Kane are two of WWE’s most entrenched legends. Both are highly-decorated multi-time champions. Both are Hall of Famers. Both are treated with absolute reverence by large swaths of WWE’s audience. And both of their characters had some of the heaviest degrees of smoke-and-mirrors added to their presentation. From an aesthetic perspective it didn’t get more awe-inspiring than seeing these two cross paths…but seeing them actually wrestle was, sadly, groan-inducing, as we will see here.

There might not be a better example of ‘LOLTNA’ than this match. Then again, I’m not sure if this is something worth laughing at.

Though this is one of the shortest bad matches I’ve ever looked at – even the Blog’s dear friend Thomas Hall made the joke that writing about this match took longer than the match itself – it’s hard to find something positive or redeemable about it. Even in some of the shittiest matches of all time I try to find something to laugh at because some of them end up being so bad that the only way to watch them is through the prism of comedy or parody. This one, however, was so bad that the company had to overcompensate for it and lose money by offering special refunds. The fact that TNA acknowledged that this match “fell short of standard” and tried to smooth things over with a semi-related discount on their match library should tell you how badly it affected their perception, and maybe even their bottom line. And while TNA didn’t go out of business afterwards as some might’ve expected, this match still serves as a cautionary tale about some wrestlers being allowed to come and go from the venue unsupervised.

It’s hard to tell which of these two men has had a bigger fall from grace. On one side there’s Adam Cole, once an indie darling through-and-through, adored in ROH and beyond, and a staple of NXT for several years. His style, flashy as it was, excited the diehard NXT audience and got him much acclaim. Then there’s Chris Jericho, a veteran, pioneer, legend, and industry staple who, at one point, came to fame for his ability to constantly reinvent himself and get even the most absurd and insignificant of concepts over with the audience.

But back in 2023 things were not looking good for either man. Cole’s AEW debut was completely overshadowed by Bryan Danielson’s and his career in the company was mired by injury, stop-start pushes, and extremely dubious booking. And then there’s Jericho who…erm…has become the Randy Marsh of professional wrestling and doesn’t give a flying fuck about what anyone thinks of him. One need only look at his body – I mean, his body of work post-COVID: he has become a parody of himself and gets more screentime than almost anyone else in the company. That would be fine…if all his talk and hype actually led to something satisfying.

Two weeks ago I did my first Minus-Star Review in quite a while and enough of you seemed to like it so I figured I’d do another one. And staying on the topic of bad WrestleMania events that coincidentally involve John Cena we’ve got what is quite possibly the most predictable and disappointing main-events in WrestleMania history.

I remember WrestleMania XXVII being, well, ass. Top to bottom, there wasn’t all that much to crow about with only one match being all that memorable in a positive way. Though there were a few others that ranged from okay to good, most of the card wasn’t worth the price of Pay-Per-View, much less however many thousands people would’ve spent for flight tickets, hotels, meals, merchandise, and of course, seats in this enormous venue. But there was something particularly bad about this show’s main-event. It was a patchwork of bad creative, poor hype, and misplaced priorities. I know we’re still far away from the next WrestleMania season but considering how frustrating 2025’s WrestleMania main-event was, it’s important to remember older stuff so that we, as fans, are a bit more prepared for worse shit should it come about.

The Story

Throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s the two most important stars in WWE were John Cena and Randy Orton. They were the ones winning the most titles, headlining the biggest and highest number of shows, and were being featured in the most prominent feuds. Their presence brought the company financial stability but that wasn’t going to last forever since wrestling fans get bored easily, especially when the same feuds and matchups are repeated ad infinitum. WWE’s bookers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to do something drastic and elevate someone new to the scene by way of Money In The Bank briefcase cash-in.

Enter The Miz.

There are many words you can use to describe the Miz: “reliable”, “good with PR”, and “useful as an undercard shithead heel” are the first that come to mind. But one word that doesn’t is “headliner”. Simply put, Miz was no Edge. He couldn’t take a MITB cash-in and use that as a vehicle to now rub shoulders with the company’s biggest stars. He was a career midcarder who exceled as the sniveling rat that usually cheated to win. The best comparison I can think of for him is AJPW/NOAH mainstay Yoshinari Ogawa if somehow Miz gained all of Chris Benoit’s and William Regal’s mat skills.

Anyways, for almost two years the WWE title – the most important thing in the company – was passed around in a long game of hot potato between Cena, Orton, Batista, and Sheamus. And then Miz entered the fray. One of these things just doesn’t belong here. Miz cashed in his briefcase on an exhausted Orton on a random episode of RAW to become WWE Champion.

Now, despite Miz’s obvious lack of credibility, he was still a heat magnet. He was a good talker and had a natural ability to piss people off, which is why he continued his cheap winning ways as he retained his title usually thanks to interference. One time it was from Michael Cole while on other occasions it was from Alex Riley. Still, through the end of 2010 and into early 2011 Miz was still racking up wins. Even if you don’t believe that a single thing in wrestling is real, the story of someone winning more and more does, at least on paper, improve his credibility.

Then along came Dwayne.

On February 24^th Rock made his big return and the pop for him was enormous. Everyone was excited to see him back. And what was his purpose? To be the “host” of WrestleMania. And in his promo he singled out John Cena, who hadn’t yet been officially figured into any plans for ‘Mania. Okay, so Rock is teasing a feud with Cena. Makes sense, and it makes money. But if that was the intention, why was Cena then booked to win the 2010 Elimination Chamber match six nights later to earn a shot at the Miz’s WWE Championship?

Oh, that’s right, because no one gave – to quote Rock himself – a monkey’s nutsack about The Miz. Cena set his eyes and mouth on Rock and proceeded to cut promo after promo on the host of the show…and not his opponent, the champion. Even with Miz trying to forcefully insert himself into the program that he, by virtue of being the company’s purported most important champion, rightfully earned, Cena and Rock remained focused on each other. Hell, Cena and Miz won the tag titles together and then lost them less than ten minutes later as Miz turned on Cena, giving Cena the dubious distinction of having one of the shortest title reigns in WWE history. Yet Cena still wouldn’t treat Miz as his equal, much less as the challenge he had to overcome.

Depending on how you looked at it Miz was either serving as a de facto placeholder for Rock in this match or he was simply the third wheel. Either way expectations for this main-event were pretty low. People were drawn by The Rock being host (because of course they were) and he probably helped move some tickets. But if there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years of watching wrestling events both live and in person is that the quality of the show doesn’t always match the price tag.

Sure enough, by the time this match rolled around everyone watching had already been through what was largely being considered a mediocre show at best. The high point was Undertaker/HHH, Orton/CM Punk was fine, Rey Mysterio/Cody Rhodes was average, and Edge/Alberto Del Rio was pretty fun but not deserving of jerking the curtain. There were, of course, several notable low points as well. The Corre, some bad spinoff of the Nexus, lost to a thrown-together team of veterans in less time than it took for all eight men to walk down the entrance ramp. A mixed tag match that involved someone from Jersey Shore wasted three minutes and ended up contributing nothing positive to the show. And of course, Michael Cole the announcer had a match with Jerry Lawler that was so bad Vince McMahon told him afterwards it was the worst thing he had seen in 60 years of wrestling.

So with the show already on course to be one of the most disappointing Manias in years, how would John Cena, a guy who still had the perception of needing a more capable wrestler to hold his hand through big matches, fare against an underhanded slimeball who was good on the stick but not necessarily with everything else?

I haven’t done one of these minus star reviews in a while and I was asked by a reader to do one so here we are. When picking a match I asked myself if there anything in recent memory that I could say that I left a bad taste in my mouth. Sure enough this one came up almost instantly and it isn’t hard to see why. Even though there are still four months left in this calendar year I’m pretty sure that the majority of fans would call this worst match of the year. It caused WWE’s biggest show of the year to end on a deflating note despite all the hype going in. Negative feedback came almost immediately and it was both swift and vociferous. Even the most level-headed of fans saw this as anything from an overbooked mess to an underwhelming display of panic booking in desperate need of salvaging after one of its most prominent players backed out at the last minute. And while there are two silver linings here – the rematch between Cody Rhodes and John Cena at SummerSlam more or less made up for this fiasco and WWE has severed ties with Travis Scott in the months that followed – I can’t help but wonder how boardroom politics at TKO will affect next year’s WrestleMania given that they’ll be in the same venue in 2026.

Maybe next year the show will feature better booking and less bullshit, but for now, let’s revisit this now-infamous event and see just where things went wrong.

WWE under Vince McMahon was a weird place that featured wild extremes, sometimes on the same show. On the same night as Bret Hart and Steve Austin had arguably the best match ever we got Sid defecating his tights as The Undertaker Tombstoned him. The same show that had a beloved MOTYC in CM Punk vs. Daniel Bryan had John Cena taking on a man who hadn’t wrestled a match in over a decade and when he was in his prime he was mostly carried by the better wrestlers around him. And on RAW itself, a show that, over the decades, included classics like Shawn Michaels vs. Shelton Benjamin and Austin & HHH vs. Benoit & Jericho we got…this.

WWE was pretty bad in 2012 with good matches and stories being few and far between. Long-term planning wasn’t a thing outside of a handful of angles or feuds and only one or two people were given consistent creative focus. Interestingly, Cena was one of those select few, yet for some reason WWE’s creative geniuses thought it was a good idea to bring down his stock as well. Because nothing says “smart promotion” like making your top Superman clone uber-babyface bully someone half his size just because he said a few mean words.

What’s better than one Undertaker? Two Undertakers!

If everyone loves a gimmick so much, why not give them more of it? That must’ve been the (tortured) logic behind WWF/E’s decision to put on what is widely considered one of the worst SummerSlam main-events of all time, if not the worst. It’s a match that is mostly forgotten by longtime wrestling fans and even by diehard Undertaker fans. Hell, more people remember ‘Taker’s historically bad WrestleMania IX match with Giant Gonzalez as quite possibly his worst match ever, whereas this…very well might be the only thing worse. At least that one had the unintentionally funny sight of a nearly-eight-foot-man windmilling his arms like a live-action Merry Melodies cartoon character. This match had…an oversized urn with a plane light in it. Gee, what fun.

The Undertaker and Kurt Angle are two of the most widely revered and admired wrestlers in modern times. You don’t have to go far online to find wrestling fans old and new exclaiming how much they love and respect one or both of these men. But every wrestler has an off day and these two men were no exception.

The American Badass version of the Undertaker, or ‘Bikertaker’ as some people have called him’, is one of the more controversial parts of the Deadman’s storied career. This period isn’t looked at all that fondly nowadays; most people consider this a blemish on Undertaker’s career for a variety of reasons, from his questionable attire to an alleged poor match output that didn’t justify keeping him in main-event spots. But was it really all that bad?

John Cena is one of the most successful, recognizable, and beloved wrestlers of the past 25 years. He has done everything there is to do, had some memorable rivalries, and made a lasting impact on many wrestlers and an entire generation of fans. But if we peel back the curtain and dig a bit deeper into how things went for Cena at first, any claims that he was “always destined for greatness” come off as dubious, at best.

A good example of this is his match at WrestleMania 21. As Kevin Nash once said, one of the ONLY things that actually matter in wrestling is winning one’s first world title. As such, when someone reaches that point it’s supposed to come across as a big deal. For John Cena, what was supposed to be his shining moment in the sun…came across as a wet fart in church.

The Undertaker has had his fair share of questionable opponents over his three-decade career in WWE. For over half of it he was fed monsters that were bigger than him, stronger than him, tougher than him, meaner than him, scarier than him, or some combination of these. Yet in almost every case he emerged on top. That ability to come back, and not his hokey magic powers, is what made him into the mythical figure he has become today.

Much has already been said about his supernatural rivalry with his brother Kane, so how does he fare against someone without any power beyond simply being big, hairy, and hard-hitting?

The Attitude Era is still regarded as this vaunted, exceptional period in pro-wrestling history. Even after more than twenty-five years wrestlers like Kane and The Undertaker get tons of praise for what they did during the late 1990s, as if they both had the Midas Touch every time they faced off.

But just because something was exciting in the moment doesn’t mean much in retrospect. Many moments and matches haven’t stood the test of time; whether that’s because tastes change or because people look back on what they liked when they were younger and realized they were caught up in the hoopla depends on each individual person. And when it comes to the fabled Attitude Era…well…a lot of it was overhyped nonsense that didn’t live up to the hype.

Now that John Cena has announced that he will be retiring in the coming year or so, this is a great opportunity to reflect on what he has done throughout his career…both good and bad.

It’s often said that time heals all wounds, that things get better with time, that nostalgia changes how we perceive the past and blah, blah, blah. Cena, like many wrestlers to stick around for so long, has been turned into this legendary, almost mythical figure.

But Cena wasn’t always so universally admired. There was a time when he was loathed just as much as the guy he’s always compared to in Roman Reigns, and in some ways he was hated even more. Cena had garnered such a negative perception among vocal and diehard WWE fans that he changed how fans behaved. Instead of splitting chants as “Let’s go X/Let’s go Y”, Cena would get crowd to chant “Let’s Go Cena/Cena Sucks”. Yes, he was such a lightning bolt for both positive and negative attention that sometimes people forgot he even had an opponent.

But was all this hostility truly deserved, or was Cena, like everyone else in WWE, at the mercy of bad decisions over which he had no control?

As of this writing TNA/IMPACT Wrestling has been in business for over 22 years. That’s a long time for any wrestling promotion, especially one that once tried to compete with WWE head-to-head (and failed miserably). But why did TNA fail and fall back into obscurity? Why did a company that once boasted a roster including Kurt Angle, Sting, Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff, AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, and a slew of other wrestling experts, fail to not only compete but maintain any sort of upward growth?

There are many reasons for this but most of them have one common thread: Vince Russo.

In his apparent quest to become the more controversial and despised of the two famous wrestling Vinces, Russo took his particular brand of creativity to TNA. Though he wasn’t the head of creative during his time his fingerprints could be found on many of TNA’s less savory angles and storylines. Even if he didn’t have full creative control over them, fans learned to recognize certain patterns and ideas and attribute them to him.

Such was the case here as TNA put together something so nonsensical and disinteresting that even Vince McMahon with his particular brand of “humor” would’ve probably thrown it out before it ever saw the light of day.

This is the most famous match of the past ten years. I don’t think there has been a single match featuring either The Undertaker, Brock Lesnar, or anyone else for that matter, that has been talked about more than this. People have analyzed and discussed it countless times as everything from a questionable business decision, to a genius marketing strategy (that, long-term, actually failed to generate all that much payoff), to a conspiracy surrounding Lesnar going into business for himself (because who the fuck is going to out-shoot Brock Lesnar if he wants to do something or fire him after doing the most shocking thing since the Montreal Screwjob)?

But there’s one thing that gets forgotten amidst all the talk about the match’s finish and its fallout, and that’s the match itself. Which makes sense because (cue Rock voice) it ABSOLUTELY SUCKED!

On paper the Undertaker facing Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania should’ve been a classic. It was two monsters clashing on the biggest stage in a sort of retread of a story that began over a decade earlier. Undertaker’s legend had evolved into something mythical and worthy of immediate respect and reverence within WWE’s canon universe. And for better or worse, there was no one else in the company at the time worthy of taking The Undertaker on that year so the company did their best to make the most out of the cards they were dealt.

But if WrestleMania was Blackjack then WWE drew sixteen with this match…and boy did things fall apart from there.

Triple H and Randy Orton are two of the biggest names in modern WWE history. Both of them were showered in accolades over the decades and have become famous for what they’ve contributed to wrestling. There are 28 world title reigns between them, four Royal Rumble wins between them, and eight WrestleMania main-events between them. Clearly these two were seen as big deals within WWE, but how well did they do together when they shared the show-closing spot on the biggest stage of them all?

We already covered one of the infamous TNA matches this show birthed and now it’s time to revisit the other. But whereas the first one was an unmitigated trainwreck that nearly ruined the careers of the two men involved, this one is remembered in a funnier light…despite being just as bad a concept if not worse.

I’ve tried to give AEW a chance many times but so far more often than not I’ve watched their shows and felt “this clearly isn’t for me”. With the exception of perhaps MJF there’s no one on AEW’s bloated roster to truly rally behind that isn’t either an ex-WWE guy or someone who made their name elsewhere and is employed under Tony Khan to make more money doing less. And while you might respect and appreciate the hustle that comes with that kind of work/pay arrangement, as a viewer you’re not always getting your money’s worth or any big return for your time investment with AEW.

Nowhere is this clearer than with the four guys wrongly labeled “AEW’s Four Pillars”. In one of the most laughable bastardizations of a name/concept in recent memory, only one of these guys – who were once pegged to carry AEW into the future – has done anything remotely positive and that’s MJF. The others, meanwhile, have all faltered to some degree. Darby Allin is still in the same spot as when AEW first opened: taking ludicrous bumps without rising up the card. Jack Perry is an unimposing and unthreatening little joke whose involvement in one of AEW’s biggest backstage blunders ever will overshadow pretty much whatever he does in his career.

And then there’s Sammy Guevara who…erm…has about as many suspensions and injured opponents to his name as the rest of AEW’s “Four Pillars” have singles titles between them.

Sammy’s time in AEW has been a mixed bag and today we look back at one of the earliest incidents that stained his reputation in the eyes of many fans. Many people consider this the worst match in AEW history which is a pretty bold statement given the material that covers. But is it true?