10 Worst WWE Matches Of 2001

2001 was home to one of the biggest and the best shows WWE has ever put on - WrestleMania 17! From TLC II to the main event which ended with Stone Cold Steve Austin shaking hands with Satan (Vince McMahon) himself as he recaptured the WWE Championship.

It was a beautiful night, one that will live on in the hearts and minds of wrestling fans until the end of time.

Not everything in 2001 was very good, though, and the Invasion brought a lot of rubbish to WWE TV. 

These are the 10 Worst WWE Matches of 2001. 

10. The Big Show vs. Diamond Dallas Page - Rebellion

Two weeks out from the dramatic end of the Invasion storyline at Survivor Series, WWE ran Rebellion, one of their UK-exclusive pay-per-views. 

The show was rather strange, as many of the top stars appeared to be totally out of it, cutting bizarre backstage promos that were very clearly influenced by jet lag.

Perhaps this explains why the Big Show vs. Diamond Dallas Page, which went on midway through the show, was such a stinker. To give the former WCW men their credit, the match was only allotted just over three minutes, which is hardly enough time to put on a five-star classic.

Still, surely they could have done better than this? A match that mostly involved DDP bouncing around for Show, then hitting the Diamond Cutter, only to be too beaten up to capitalise. 

One chokeslam from the ex-Giant later, and the founder of DDP Yoga was out for the count. He then tried to cut a promo about how bad the UK was, but Show’s music started playing over the top of him speaking to hilariously cut him off. 

He couldn’t even beat the man’s theme song. 2001 really wasn’t DDP’s year. 

9. Steven Richards vs. Jerry Lawler - No Way Out

Stacy Carter, aka Miss Kitty, aka The Kat, had a very unique wrestling career, mainly being used to titillate the audience with her exhibitionist character. This predictably drew the ire of Right to Censor, a moralistic group on a crusade to keep WWE programming clean. 

Kat's feud with RTC led to a match between Steven Richards and Kat’s real-life husband Jerry Lawler at No Way Out. 

Despite the dated story, the match went alright for the most part. Lawler could still go and an irate Richards was an entertaining foil. Unfortunately, as the bout reached its conclusion, several things went wrong.

First, Lawler missed his cue to stop Richards using a chair, leading to several awkward moments of standing around. Then, Kat also jumped her spot when trying to attack Richards with Ivory’s Women’s Title belt, leaving the match mired in a sloppy finish.

8. Ivory vs. Chyna - Royal Rumble

A huge part of why Chyna was so successful during her WWE career was that she would almost exclusively wrestle men for the first few years of her career.

That changed in 2001, though, as the Ninth Wonder of the World was added to the women’s division. This led to Chyna facing WWE Women’s Champion Ivory at the Royal Rumble in January.

Ivory got decimated, and completely upstaged by the much more dominant woman. It looked as if Chyna was going to easily capture the gold, when she reaggravated a kayfabe neck injury while attempting a handspring elbow. This allowed the Right to Censor member to pin and retain.

WWE treated this obviously fake and, to be frank, slightly distasteful angle with a little bit too much seriousness and solemnity, as strange as that is to say.

What was essentially an extended squash match turned into a confusing mess, all because the company had no idea how to keep Chyna looking strong without putting the belt on her. 

7. Earl Hebner vs. Nick Patrick - Invasion

The Invasion pay-per-view from July 2001 is one of the most interesting wrestling shows of all time, with the power of hindsight.

The first major step in the arc of the same name, Invasion offered up the opportunity to pit some of the biggest names from WWE up against icons from ECW and WCW. That isn’t what happened, though, and we got a six-man tag with Kanyon, Hugh Morrus, and Shawn Stasiak against Albert, Big Show, and Billy Gunn.

We also got another match nobody expected - a referee fight between WWE’s Earl Hebner and WCW’s Nick Patrick. This came about as a result of tensions between the two groups of officials backstage. 

As you can imagine, a match between two middle-aged non-wrestlers had lots of punches, lots of kicks, and lots of shenanigans with the other refs on the outside before Earl hit the worst spear of all time for the win. 

6. Torrie Wilson vs. Stacy Keibler - No Mercy 2001

On a show where Edge faced Christian for the Intercontinental Championship and Steve Austin defended his world title in a triple threat main event, Stacy Keibler and Torrie Wilson went to war in a lingerie match. 

Torrie had recently begun an on-screen relationship with Tajiri, who was a member of Team WWF. Then, to get back at her, Stacy teamed up with The Dudley Boyz. 

It was two women rolling around in their underwear for the entertainment of the despicably horny. Torrie won a match that only just went over three minutes.

5. Brothers of Destruction vs. Diamond Dallas Page & Kanyon - SummerSlam

In another example of 2001 not being Diamond Dallas Page’s year, DDP first debuted in WWE as the mystery stalker of The Undertaker’s wife Sara, revealing himself to a huge pop on an episode of Raw. After that, though, it was all downhill.

After getting beaten to a bloody pulp by Taker at King of the Ring, Page would continue to feud with The Deadman up until SummerSlam. By this point, DDP and former protege Kanyon had won the WWE Tag Team Championships, whilst Taker was WCW World Tag Team Champions champ along with Kane.

A steel cage match was made for all the marbles, and it was one of the most one-sided matches to ever take place on WWE PPV as the Brothers easily dispatched of Kanyon and Page to win both sets of gold. 

Page was already a joke by this point, but the utter humiliation he suffered inside that cage proved that one of the most popular homegrown stars in the history of WCW was nothing more than a jobber in his new surroundings.

4. Trish Stratus & Lita vs. Torrie Wilson & Stacy Keibler - Invasion

Yet another match aimed solely at that lucrative horny, testosterone-fuelled male demographic. 

The Invasion pay-per-view was supposed to be a showcase of everything the two warring sides had to offer. You had the star-studded main event featuring some of the top talent from across all three brands, and a midcard showdown between Jeff Hardy and Rob Van Dam. 

It stands to reason that a women’s match was needed on the card, so the company defaulted to their old habit of booking several ladies in skimpy outfits to rip each other’s clothes off. 

With Mick Foley as special guest referee, WWE’s Trish and Lita teamed up to take on Torrie Wilson and Stacy Keibler (in happier pre-Tajiri times). 

The action was sloppy, which isn’t a shock when you consider that the WCW women weren’t trained wrestlers. The whole thing wrapped up in about five minutes after the Alliance women were stripped down to their underwear. 

3. Chyna vs. Ivory - WrestleMania X-Seven

We mentioned earlier just how great WrestleMania 17 was, but even an almost-perfect show can have a weak spot somewhere.

This legendary pay-per-view’s Achilles heel was the sole women’s match on the card - another encounter between Women’s Champion Ivory and her mortal enemy Chyna.

The former DX member had recovered from her kayfabe neck injury to challenge her prudish foe at the biggest show of the year.

Chyna absolutely trounced Ivory, fighting off some early resistance to pin the champion whilst looking like she was chilling on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon. 

We had a new Women’s Champion - a champion who would defend the belt just three times before leaving the company under acrimonious circumstances.

Not only was the follow-up disappointing, but the actual match was too. It was hard to root for Chyna as a babyface when she was so dominant, which hardly provided a satisfactory ending to such a serious storyline.

WWE really fumbled the ball with Chyna’s one and only reign as Women’s Champ and this sorry encounter leaves an unfortunate mark against an otherwise tip-top night of wrestling.

2. Trish Stratus vs. Stacy Keibler - SmackDown

At Survivor Series 2001, Trish Stratus won her first of seven Women’s Championships by overcoming five other women in a Six Pack Challenge.

This was the culmination of a long, hard journey for the Canadian former fitness model. She’d worked her way up from humble manager to Vince McMahon’s on-air plaything to bona fide female superstar in just a couple of short years.

This title win was vindication of all her hard work and now the time had come for her to show what she was made of as champion So, two days later, she fought Stacy Keibler in a match where you had to throw your opponent into a swimming pool full of gravy. 

As Thanksgiving was just around the corner, WWE decided that the best medium for Trish to have her second-ever title defence was a Gravy Bowl match. Trish and Stacy sat down at a dinner table, threw some mashed potato at each other, and then fell into the murky-looking liquid before Stratus forced Keibler to tap out. 

1. Brothers of Destruction vs. KroniK - Unforgiven

Bryan Clark and Brian Adams were really starting to hit their stride when WCW went under. As Kronik, the pair reigned twice as WCW Tag Team Champions and were part of some prominent storylines in the company’s dying days.

Vince McMahon was keen to find a place for these two jacked dudes and so he put them in a programme with The Brothers of Destruction in the build-up to Unforgiven 2001. 

However, anything that could go wrong did go wrong and Undertaker became so frustrated at the WCW boys that he ended up loudly calling spots for all to hear, and then screaming when they went wrong.

For 10 god-awful minutes, this charade dragged on until the demonic half-brothers finally won. As for Clark and Adams, this performance was so bad that it finished them as a team in WWE.