10 Worst WWE Moments Of 2004

2004. Very odd year for WWE. They were happy to try new things but never stuck with them

It was the old three weeks rule, or you didn't become Steve Austin in less than a month

Now we're going to move on to what's next. The death of WCW definitely contributed because Vince McMahon felt like he had more room to breathe

And he also decided to push the envelope way too far. There are some terrible storylines that fall apart in front of your eyes

So as we are over 20 years removed, let's talk about the bottom of the barrel

I am Sam Miller. I have no hair. Let's go. Number 10, Tough Enough Goes Wrong

Now, it's only fair to say Kurt Angle was an injured mess during this, but still. It's not the best idea to tangle with a trained MMA fighter in a wrestling ring

That's the beauty of sports entertainment. You can pre-plan stuff. I don't think the Tough Enough concept helped

This is when WWE would take hopefuls and make them do weird challenges on SmackDown

A lot of these felt like humiliation. Maybe that's why one Daniel Puder was ready for war

It was the 4th of November 2004, though, and even before the show started, these rookies had been running to the ground

had to go up and down the stairs a whole wrestling training session again i think wwe wanted them at

their very worst after the on tv challenges however angle invited one of the contestants to step in the

ring with him for a real wrestle and of course kurt was a gold medalist so this should have been a

whooping when daniel put his hand up again he'd been training since he was a kid in the frat car

pewter was able to grab angle's arm in a camura lock and honestly if kurt hadn't pinned his shoulders

so referee Jimmy Cordero's could do a fast count. Who knows how this would have ended

That's a dangerous hold. You can snap somebody's arm. I would imagine Daniel Puder was at least putting some pressure on it

It, of course, didn't do anything for Dan, who was now public enemy number one. Locker room was furious

even though he was just doing what he was told. Wrestling politics back then were weird

Angle lost it afterwards on the microphone to try and save face, I suppose, and then Puder got his ass kicked in the Royal Rumble

as some sort of punishment. None of this was good, because what message did it send to new folk

You're screwed no matter what, unless the powers that be choose you. It essentially ended Daniel Puder's run in WWE

although I do believe he's a producer now. I guess it worked out

Number nine, The Miz's debut. We can stick with Tough Enough as well, as season four saw The Miz pop up too

He irritated the hell out of everyone instantly because he was a natural heel. You know the deal at this stage

The horrible part of this story is that The Miz was also bullied backstage and there's no need for that

but man, he deserved more respect. Do not forget what we said about Daniel Puder being a trained fighter

because he was stuck in the ring with the Miz at Armageddon 2004 in a proper boxing scrap

For some reason we called it a Dixie dogfight, and Mike Mizanin took some rough shots

It was essentially the brawl for all again. Nobody wanted to see this in wrestling, and it was kind of boring

I would guess they didn't actually want to knock each other out. It ended after three rounds of Puder winning on points

I don't think Miz will be mentioning this when he gets inducted into the Hall of Fame. The whole tough enough idea felt spiteful

And just for the kicks off Vince McMahon and Friends, at no point did it ever feel like they were looking for the next big superstar

Number 8 Kurt Angle Dart Gun I didn want to include this Making that clear I say more of it It so dumb and therefore it the best Wrestling can and should always have more fun On the 23rd of September Smackdown though we got Kurt Angle versus The Big Show and a ton of run and shenanigans

because it's WWE that's always been the answer. Given so much was going on, however, Angle for

some reason found a tranquilizer gun and shot it at The Big Show. Of course, that meant the big man

passed out and it's not the worst plan to take down a giant. It also meant Angle definitely

should have been taken to jail. It got even more zany as Kurt and his heavy shaved the big show

So this was a bizarre plan. They had to have chatted about this backstage, and this is what

they decided upon. I would say really though, the lowest part was the payoff. We just got to know

Mercy when Luther Reigns and Mark Jindrak were banned from ringside under pain of losing their

job and show just won. Alright, I'm glad we did that. This probably would have worked had the match

had some ridiculous stipulation attached, and this bonkers Vince McMahon of all people didn't

green lighted. It was his favorite thing. Maybe he got out of his creative juices with the knockout

gun. I think the feud mostly just told the audience there wasn't going to be a lot of weight behind

the new programs. We're just going to do them to do them. I, for one, still think the tranquilizer

should return. It's so silly, it kind of does a full 180 and clicks, for me anyway. But I am an

idiot. Number seven, the diva search. You can sum this up easily now. It would never happen in 2025

It was offensive and low-hanging fruit. Bad then, worse now. The lingerie pillow fight between Christy Hemme and Carmella at 2004's Taboo Tuesday

was seen as one of the worst matches of the year, and it wasn't even their fault

They weren't trained properly, so even with a stupid stip it didn't work. You have to do something other than swing pillows

Two months before all that too, The Rock had returned to be involved in one of these segments

and instantly, what? It's The Rock. He should always be at the top of the card

Of course, he invited them to enter a pie-eating contest, and I'm just going to leave that there because kids are watching

Christy then dished out a bunch of stink faces. All right, yeah. It was so weird because La Resistance and the coach then got their asses whipped

and Rhino and Tajiri were here too. And I don't know why. I mean, one of the main reasons we do have it here as an entry

is because after this, Dwayne Johnson and WWE fell out essentially and we didn't see him again until 2011

Seven years. So come on, man. When you have the people's champion, you've got to get the most out of him

This didn't help any of the divas either because it was so ridiculous. and also The Rock was out there

he was always going to get the headlines over anybody else. It for some reason went 20 minutes on a two-hour show

and once again fans basically wanted wrestling at this time. Look at the SmackDown 6

WWE just fought that every step of the way. Number 6, Heiden Wright goes nuts

So this was terrible. I don't get why we did it. And why WWE would want a fan that was into this

is actually horrific. It was the 16th of September 2004 SmackDown when Heiden Wright was walking backstage

age Vince McMahon was trying to push him because he was a former athlete and big that was the long

and the short of it two decades ago in the boxes you needed to tick when Heiden Wright saw commentator

Michael Cole backstage he then shoved him into a wall and started reciting poetry and it went

totally off the rails Heiden Wright sort of insinuated that maybe he was going to do something sexual to Cole So arrest this man and no I not kidding To say it was unsettling was an understatement and what did it achieve

There was no feud here. Cole wasn't going to wrestle, and Heidenreich didn't feel like a monster

He felt like a criminal. If you stop watching around here, damn right it was awful

It was just foul storytelling because WWE were desperate to get people talking

Who cares about taste? I just don't get how anybody thought this was going to be a success

In fact, it did the opposite, and it was so bad, fans tarred Harden Wright with this brush, and that was that

Basically got let go two years after this. It was terrible. Number five, Paul Bearer in the crypt

So I still don't get this. It was the Great American Bash, and as we had the brand split

WWE was trying out separate Raw and SmackDown pay-per-views. It wasn't a great idea because one, there were too many shows to begin with

and two, it meant some headliners just weren't going to draw. The Undertaker versus the Dudley Boys, for example

is such a strange matchup. WWE knew this too because they added a stipulation

If Bubba Ray and D-Von won, they could pull a lever on a crypt and Paul Bearer would be killed

Literally buried in sand. So the selling point here was death, still no police

Just to make it even stranger, The Undertaker won this two-on-one attack and then he went and killed Bearer anyway

Yep, even though the stakes were all about trying to keep Paul alive, The dead man lived up to his name and unalived this guy

You saw Bearer struggling to not be murdered as well. Then poof, he was gone

Of course, WWE had filmed this before this show and spliced that in with the live feed

But think of the fans in the arena. Bet they were baffled. Very WCW

What's more wild is that JBL versus Eddie Guerrero for the title was on this show and they absolutely should have main evented

and yet creative backed themselves into a corner. Bearer would be back in a few years time

and he re-teamed with the Phenom. Just don't worry about the crime

It also mugged off the Dudleys. They were one of WWE's best tag teams and they got beaten by one man

Just don't get it. It made no sense. Two plus two equals potato. Number four, Brock versus Goldberg goes bad

This isn't so awful these days because they rectified it in 2016 with that Survivor Series match

Before that though, sheesh. If you were at WrestleMania 20 and were part of that MSG crowd, my gosh, what a nightmare

In short, fans had figured out Goldberg's contract was up and learned that Brock Lesnar had quit WWE, so they booed the ship out of them

I suppose it was one of the early times where fans took over the show, and as such, it felt like the end of days

Thank goodness WWE had booked Steve Austin as the guest referee because New York loved him

We just made him the star of the show, and he cracks up during the whole thing

Nobody finds this funnier than Stone Cold. He clearly loves chaos. Lesnar was the opposite because he was furious, to the point Bill, who was also mad, had to calm himself down to try and get Brock to chill out

It's such a wonderful mess because the work is fine. Nobody falls over, but they have so much pausing as they try and digest what exactly is happening, you'll probably never get anything like this again

Vince McMahon also changed the finish because he was livid Brock was just walking away from the business and Austin stunned everybody to end the roller coaster There is something fun to it all because it feels like a moment in time But yeah you wouldn want to do this constantly It was utterly bonkers

Number three, Muhammad Hassan. It is an old conversation, but you can't not include it

Just a reminder that wrestling treats sensitive issues with a sledgehammer. I'm sure you know the deal too

After 9-11 and the heightened tensions in America, WWE debuted Muhammad Hassan

At first, you could probably argue this was nuanced. He, alongside Manager Jaivari, would talk about prejudice

and how racial profiling doesn't help anyone. And yeah, grouping communities together is an awful thing to do

You can't judge one based on all. And within a few weeks, that was out the door

and Hussan was evil foreign heel guy. This was so bad. If you stop watching, I get it

Now, of course, a lot of this went down in 2005, including that awful Smackdown episode that featured a terrorist angle in July

But Mohammed debuted on the 13th of December 2004. And in hindsight, just don't

If you can't handle the sensitive nature of it, do anything else. but not Katie Vick

I suppose when you go back and watch it, it's just a sign of things to come. And Mick Foley, who was involved in this too

kind of underlines it. I just don't get what the long-term plan was. I do know it was not good

Number two, Kane and Lita. So it's a trigger warning. I know people get annoyed at that term

which is ironic, but we all know what it means. Skip this if you don't want to get into

bottom of the barrel content. I'll do my best to keep it as straightforward as possible

but that's also because I don't know how else to approach it. 21 years on, I still can't believe WWE did this

But on the 26th of July, 2004, Lita got pregnant. Her boyfriend, Matt Hardy, was super happy when we learned that the father was Kane

It was then very heavily implied this happened after the big red machine forced himself onto Lita

Strike one. Of course, Kane and Hardy then feuded in a Death Do Us part match at SummerSlam

as opposed to, you know, calling the cops. Kane won this too, which meant he was now allowed to marry Lita at strike two

She didn't get a say in this, apparently. And then it got worse because, number one

WWE tried to make Kane the babyface. I mean, good grief. The whole debacle stretched due till September, though

when on the 13th of September Raw, Slitsky accidentally knocked Kane into Lita

and yep, she lost the child. This, of course, led to segments in the hospital

and Kane was beside himself, and Lita's bedside just crying his eyes out

So, yeah, WWE was actually using this to make Kane the babyface

I mean, think of that. The only innocent person here is Lita, and she was made out to be a weak victim

I hate this storyline. It's one of the reasons I stopped watching. Not interested

It's meant to be entertaining. Only weeks before, Kane had been laughing like an insane person because he had his way with her

And this is how WWE tried to retcon it. Thankfully, the audience didn't buy it and booed this man

Well, to be honest, most crowds are apathetic. Can't buy into this. It's trash

I mean, just do wrestler A once wrestler B's title when you get to this point

I will take boring over shit. excuse my language wrestling is meant to be an escape man this one was not no many other

wrestling storylines it just didn't go the way people were planning make sure you let us know in the comments below before you like the video share the video and subscribe otherwise my friends

i appreciate you have a terrific day and i'll speak to you again soon