100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 44 - Sable vs. Tori
Women's Championship - Wrestlemania 15
It’s bizarre that WWE have twice run a Women’s Championship Wrestlemania match with the storyline being an obsessive stalker fan debuting to challenge the most popular woman of the time. Obsessive stalker seems to be WWE’s ol’ reliable when they need to write an actual storyline with the women.
While Trish Stratus vs Mickie James is one of the most fondly remembered women’s feuds - certainly of the pre-Horsewomen era - Sable vs Tori is from one of the darkest eras of women’s wrestling. To put in perspective the state of women’s wrestling in WWE, Sable would later drop the championship to Debra in an evening gown match that Sable actually won initially. That was until Shawn Michaels decided that Debra had a better pair of tits, and awarded her the championship instead. For all the faults you may find in today’s wrestling, be thankful how far we’ve come because this is the bottom of the barrel.
Despite this - like most acts of this time - the car crash trashy booking of the women’s division was hugely popular with the live crowds. Sable has a legitimate claim to being the most popular female wrestler in WWE history at the height of her popularity. In 1998 you can confidently say her reactions were only bettered by Stone Cold.
But this isn’t 1998, and Sable was no longer the babyface after becoming so popular that it got to her head (possibly as much in real life as it was in the storyline as we’ll touch on shortly). This is one of the matches where the interesting parts of it largely come from the backstage surrounding it. The storyline started with Tori obsessively stalking Sable, with lesbian undertones that were abruptly dropped. This is noteworthy because this was referenced in Sable’s sexual harassment lawsuit against WWE in 1999, where one of the (many) allegations against the company was that they wanted her to do a lesbian angle against her will. The issues between Sable and the company had been bubbling for a long time by this point, where her popularity made her (rightly or wrongly) feel that she was underpaid in comparison to her popularity. WWE had inadvertently booked themselves into a corner, where they put the women’s title on Sable despite her not being a trained wrestler, and not having a wrestling contract, and then were upset with Sable when she didn’t want to wrestle every week. WWE were in a difficult predicament where they had a talent that was too popular to leave off TV, but the more her popularity grew the more issues it caused. Eventually Sable became too much of a headache, and WWE started to push Debra as the new blonde bombshell babyface, which caused more tension between WWE and Sable.
While Mickie vs Trish had the sensible heel-face alignment whereby the stalker was the heel of the storyline, in this iteration the stalker was presented as a babyface. I wish I could say this was the weirdest part of this.
But it is all topped by Tori’s full bodysuit outfit, which remains one of the most infamous in Wrestlemania history. Unsure whether it’s a bizarre tribute to Giant Gonzalez (fake abs and all), or an audition for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, I couldn’t possibly say. Even Michael Cole - who I might remind you is the babyface commentator for the match - asks “what is she wearing!?” Speaking of commentary, I have to echo my comments from my Big Boss Man vs Undertaker review. Cole is a truly tragic commentator at this time, and he’s supported by Jerry Lawler at his perverted worst here. You may not find a worse 5 minutes of commentary short of 2011 Michael Cole.
There’s three women’s matches in the second half of the list that all follow a similar theme. Each of them feature at least one wrestler who was woefully unprepared for a live televised match. This is the first of those matches, with the other two TV matches still to follow. The question is, who is the unprepared one in this match? While Sable isn’t an experienced or trained wrestler, she at least had the benefit of wrestling somewhat in 1998. Tori actually wrestled in AJW, so had comparatively more experience - but this was six years earlier, and you can tell that any experience she did have had since lost its benefit.
From a work perspective, this is as bad as any match on this list. There’s worse matches in terms of overall scope, booking, or repercussions, but in terms of bell-to-bell technique this is about as bad as it gets. Tori looks absolutely lost out there, with no idea where to go, how to bump, or when to be in the right place. Sable isn’t much better, but compared to Tori she might as well be Manami Toyota out there. There’s barely a move that looks clean with the worst part being when they try a series of pinning combinations and botch just about every one. This is par the course for women’s wrestling at this time, I have no illusions about that. However given the weirdness of the storyline, the fact it was on a Wrestlemania, and of course Tori’s outfit - I felt it deserved its place here. Eventually the ref gets bumped, which leads to Nicole Bass making her debut by Press Slamming Tori to give Sable the win. Tori would stick around for a bit and become a prominent member of the roster once she aligned with D-Generation X. Sable would be gone in a few months, with an ugly departure that led to her suing the company and causing bitterness that would linger between the two sides for several years.
Ugly stuff all round, unless you like Cats, in which case you may love this.
Up Next - Am I the only one that finds it weird that there are two separate doppelganger matches and both were bad enough to make this list?
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