10 WWE Matches Vince McMahon Personally Hated

If you think you’ve seen a lot of WWE matches, it still won’t be as many as Vince McMahon sat through during his decades at the head of WWE. 

It will come as absolutely no surprise that someone so notoriously temperamental might have let it be known when he sees a match he doesn’t like.

These are 10 WWE Matches Vince McMahon Personally Hated. 

10. Randy Savage vs. Ric Flair - Prime Time Wrestling

A televised WWE Title match between Randy Savage and Ric Flair should, by default, have been no less than very good. When The Macho Man defended the strap against The Nature Boy at a Prime Time Wrestling taping on September 1, 1992, however, Vince McMahon himself was so dismayed with what the two future Hall of Famers were doing out there that he ordered the match be stopped, summoned them to the back and then sent them back out to do it again .

According to Flair, Vince was most irked by the amount of ringside meddling from Mr Perfect and what he perceived as a low lack of effort overall. 

Slick Ric contends that Randy’s heart wasn’t in the bout, since he was annoyed about dropping the title that night. In any event, the two pros listened to their boss and did the whole thing over to his specification. 

It should also be noted that, while McMahon may not have hated their match at WrestleMania 8 months earlier, he was ticked off with Flair’s decision to do a bladejob during it, in contravention of WWE policy at the time.

9. The Revival vs. Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson - Royal Rumble 2018

If you were one of the people who actually bothered to watch the Royal Rumble 2018 kickoff show, we’re willing to bet you’d struggle to remember any of the matches that took place on it, least of all the tag match between the Revival and Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson.

Sandwiched between a 205 Live six-man and Bobby Roode defending his United States Title against Mojo Rawley, their tag team went a shade under 10 minutes and was just fine. 

Not according to Vince McMahon, mind. As per Cash Wheeler (then Dash Wilder), the WWE Chairman told the foursome it was ‘the worst wrestling match’ he had ‘ever seen’ in his ‘entire life’. 

Dax Harwood (then Scott Dawson) laughed off the criticism while speaking about the incident on his short-lived podcast, saying that he took the label as a badge of honour. 

The odds are high that Vince just had a bee in his bonnet about something that day and likely forgot about the match as quickly as the fans.

8. Diesel vs. The British Bulldog - In Your House: Great White North

Kevin Nash and Davey Boy Smith are both deserving members of the WWE Hall of Fame with long-lasting legacies in the wrestling industry. 

Paired with the right opponent, Big Daddy Cool and the British Bulldog could tear the house down. It’s just that those opponents were usually Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, not each other. 

Headlining the fourth In Your House pay-per-view, Diesel and Bulldog had a deathly dull 20-minute stinker that, to make matters worse, ended in an unsatisfactory disqualification. 

According to Bret Hart’s autobiography, Vince was so disgusted by what he saw from the commentator’s table at ringside that he threw down his headset and stormed off muttering the word ‘horrible’ once the match was over. 

Nash got chewed out after the fact and the match pretty much sealed his fate, as he dropped the WWE Title to The Hitman at Survivor Series a month later.

When Vince got backstage, he continued his tirade by ripping producer Bruce Prichard a new one. Davey Boy, for his part, reportedly realised how bad the bout (which he was calling) had been and apologised for it.

7. Cesaro vs. Gran Metalik - September 18, 2020 episode of SmackDown

The global pandemic was a strange time for the entire world, but also in the wacky world of WWE. One of the only entertainment organisations to plough ahead in the face of a deadly virus, WWE continued to operate in front of zero actual fans. 

While fans may not have been in the building, Vince McMahon would have been keenly aware that millions of isolating people were still watching his product from their homes. Thus, everything had to continue to run like clockwork and to the main man’s liking. 

A report emerged following the September 18, 2020, edition of SmackDown that McMahon disliked a match between Cesaro and Gran Metalik so much that he, at one point, demanded they end it during the commercial break. 

That didn’t end up happening, but it’s believed Vince managed to get four minutes shaved off an outing which caused him to rant and rave at his monitor backstage. 

It was never revealed just why McMahon hated this particular match, which seemed to be perfectly acceptable if unexceptional.

6. Shayna Baszler vs. Natalya - May 18, 2020 episode of Raw

It didn’t take long for Shayna Baszler to be introduced to the quirks of WWE’s former head honcho after getting called up from NXT to Raw. 

In one of her first matches on the flagship show, Vince McMahon was so aghast at what Shayna and Natalya were doing that he demanded they try it all over again. 

Speaking about the incident during an appearance on the Oral Sessions podcast, the Queen of Spades told Renee Paquette that her boss was puzzled by their MMA-influenced grappling, telling them that ‘it looked like you guys were just fighting each other’. Shayna was a tad flummoxed by this critique, since she had kind of assumed that was the whole point. 

Natalya promised her less experienced opponent that she’d make sure things were to Vince’s taste on the second attempt, kicking off a long period where Baszler would try to wrestle for an audience of one, rather than attempting to have the best match possible.

5. Rhyno vs. Tajiri - SmackDown House Show on August 31, 2003

Vince McMahon didn’t typically make a habit of appearing at non-televised house shows, but he hit the road in the Summer of 2003 in an attempt to beef up attendances for SmackDown brand live events. 

You’d think everyone in the locker room would be on their toes with the boss skulking around the hallways but, evidently, that was not always the case. 

During a show at the Nassau Coliseum on August 31, fans began chanting ‘boring’ during a match between Rhyno and Tajiri. 

The Man Beast, as the heel, did as he was instructed to by road agents and sat on the hold, in theory to let fans get the chant out of their system so they could transition to a more exciting sequence.

McMahon – already irked after hearing ‘boring’ chants during the tag title match between the World’s Greatest Tag Team and the APA that had gone on previously - came out, cut a promo about how boring the match was, ordered both men to the back and wheeled out the divas for a bikini contest instead. 

Rhyno felt humiliated and was angry afterwards, though he did later reveal that Vince beefed up his payoff as a way to subtly say ‘sorry’ for the whole thing. 

4. Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins - TLC 2018

Seth Rollins has a history of having matches that didn’t best please the man who previously signed his paycheques. 

There was a match against Kofi Kingston during his first run as WWE Champion that Vince ordered to be redone because he thought he gave Kofi too much offence during it. 

There was the infamous Hell in a Cell clanger with The Fiend, which left McMahon seething and Rollins wanting to strangle the owner of the company for placing him in such an unenviable position. 

Then there was his Intercontinental Title match with former Shield stablemate Dean Ambrose at TLC 2018. Placed in the middle of a cracking Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles WWE Title match and a barn-burning triple-threat TLC main event for the Women’s Championship, The Architect and The Lunatic Fringe produced a 23-minute slog that had fans chanting ‘This is boring!’ and ‘We want Becky!’. 

In the back, Vince was reportedly ‘furious’ with how the match played out and the reaction it received. 

The two men had proven chemistry with one another, but this was a definite off-night for them and the man in charge knew it. 

3. Michael Cole vs. Jerry Lawler - WrestleMania XXVII

You have to feel for Jerry Lawler, in a way. The King had waited patiently for eons to finally get his own proper WrestleMania moment and to be able to swap the announce booth for the squared circle on the grandest stage. 

Unfortunately for Lawler, his dance partner at the Showcase of the Immortals was fellow commentator Michael Cole and the match was rubbish. Vince knew it, too, telling Cole – who had lost a tooth during the encounter, to go with one he lost due to CM Punk horsing around earlier in the day – that it was the single worst thing he had seen in 60 years. 

2. JeriShow vs. Legacy - Night of Champions 2009

Chris Jericho is one former WWE star who has been unafraid to make public his spats with Vince McMahon, either through his series of autobiographies or via his podcast. 

Despite being easy to work with and consistently delivering in the ring, there were at least a few Chris Jericho matches that Vince had issues with. 

One of them was the opener of Night of Champions 2009, where Jericho and Big Show successfully defended their tag titles against Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase. 

It emerged after the event that McMahon ‘threw a fit’ following the match, which included throwing his headset across the Gorilla Position. 

Vince was supposedly critical of the contest’s slower pace, figuring it would have been a a bit livelier in a bid to get the crowd pumped for the rest of the night’s action. 

To be fair, throwing two heel tag teams out there might have had something to do with the tepid reaction, too, since fans didn’t exactly have anyone to cheer for.

1. Chris Jericho vs. Kevin Owens - WrestleMania 33

Another appearance from Chris Jericho, but it wasn’t the Ayatollah of Rock n Rollah who bore the brunt of his boss’ wrath on this occasion. 

The first-ever WWE Undisputed Champion was, admittedly, miffed about his United States Title grudge match with Kevin Owens being put on second at WrestleMania 33, since the original plan, in his mind, had been for Jericho and Owens to be fighting over the Universal Title in one of the headline attractions. 

Second match out seemed like an insult, but at least he got the ‘thumbs up’ from McMahon when he got through the curtain after dropping the strap. The new champ wasn’t so lucky. As shown during his candid WWE 24 documentary, The Prizefighter asked his boss if they were ‘good’, to which McMahon gave a blunt ‘no’. 

Worse still, McMahon told Owens it was ‘the worst match in WrestleMania history’ later in the evening.

That was according to Jericho, who theorised Vince was probably in a phase of being critical of the former NXT Champion’s work as a heel, as well as suggesting McMahon may have felt Owens was carrying a little extra weight at the time. 

Whatever the reason, the overwhelming negative feedback was a bitter pill to swallow.