AEW is renowned for its consistently high in-ring quality, with each week providing new and fresh matchups, fast-paced action, and hard-hitting offense. The company houses several of the best performers from the past, present, and future, but sometimes not every match is a hit.
Dave Meltzer doesn’t give every single match a star rating, so when looking at the lowest rated matches here, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the worst, just that it is the worst of the most high-profile matches that the individual has had during their career.
10 CM Punk: Vs Big Daddy V, No Mercy 2007 (0 Stars)
CM Punk walked into No Mercy as the ECW Champion, with the show in his hometown. In classic WWE fashion, he was humiliated. Big Daddy V dominated him, and the moment Punk got a tiny bit of offense, Matt Striker interfered to cause a DQ in around 2 minutes.
After the bell, Punk got beaten down, with WWE seemingly trying to once again get Big Daddy V over as a monster heel – something which never ever worked.
9 Britt Baker: Vs Bea Priestly, Full Gear 2019 (1.75 Stars)
Britt Baker hasn’t had too many matches rated by Dave Meltzer just yet, but this one is at the bottom currently. Whilst the feud between Baker and Bea Priestly was decent, their chemistry in the ring never clicked.
This was a sloppy match on the Buy-In show for Full Gear 2019, and it marked one of Priestley’s last appearances with the company. Baker was still quite green here and has improved leaps and bounds since.
8 Matt Hardy: APA Invitational Bar Room Brawl, Vengeance 2003 (0 Stars)
The Bar Room Brawl at Vengeance certainly received some mixed reviews, with some fans enjoying whilst Meltzer clearly thought it was horrendous enough to receive a DUD rating.
It was a very odd spectacle, with it just being all-out chaos for no apparent reason, with a few big spots here and there including Matt Hardy hitting a leg-drop from the bar. It lasted under 5 minutes with Bradshaw standing tall.
7 MJF: Vs Matt Cross, All In 2018 (2.75 Stars)
MJF is still very young, but has had countless great matches already, though he hasn’t had a lot of matches rated just yet. One of his first forays into the wider view of the professional wrestling world came at the All In PPV during a match with Matt Cross.
It was a decent match though nothing overly special, with the main talking points coming from MJF’s character and promo work rather than the in-ring action itself.
6 Thunder Rosa: Battle Royal, The WRDL On GCW 2022 (0.5 Stars)
This match took place on the pre-show for this historic GCW event at the Hammerstein Ballroom, but this battle royal was a complete mess, and not in a chaotic and fun way.
Everything that happened felt random, with no rhyme or reason behind the timing of entrances into the match, with the in-ring work being incredibly sloppy too. The only good thing to happen was the pop that Thunder Rosa received upon her entrance, with her being the most popular name in the match.
5 Jon Moxley: Vs Bad News Barrett, Fastlane 2015 (1.25 Stars)
During his time in WWE, Jon Moxley was booked quite poorly at times, with the start of 2015 seeing him plummet down to the midcard title scene, despite having clear main event potential, which he certainly proved after leaving WWE. At Fastlane, he battled Bad News Barrett for the Intercontinental Championship.
The match itself was quite solid, but it ended with a truly frustrating disqualification finish which left fans both in the arena and at home groaning in despair.
4 Chris Jericho: Vs Great Khali, Raw 2010 (0 Stars)
Whilst there wasn’t anything overly wrong with this match, there was barely anything right either. Jericho targeted Khali’s leg until he found a chance to lock in the Walls of Jericho for quite a fast submission victory.
However, Khali is renowned for being one of the worst workers of all time, and his lack of selling ability might be why this match is rated so low. Jericho did the best he could, but only a select few have worked miracles with Khali.
3 Darby Allin: Casino Battle Royal, All Out 2020 (2.5 Stars)
Darby Allin is one of the hottest stars in professional wrestling, and thus far his career hasn’t been overly long, so there is plenty more time for him to receive lower ratings. However, right now his lowest rated match is just 2.5 stars.
This came during a Casino Battle Royal at the All Out 2020 PPV, with Allin being power bombed out of the ring in a body bag, in the most memorable spot from the entire match. From there, it was a bit of a mess and didn’t manage to find any sort of momentum.
2 Dustin Rhodes: Vs Ultimate Warrior, In Your House 7 (-3.5 Stars)
This is up there with the worst WWE matches of all time. Prior to the match, Rhodes (Goldust at the time) was injured, meaning that he couldn’t wrestle. He spent over 5 minutes stalling outside the ring, with Warrior doing some “comedy” spots such as smoking a cigar and trying to coax the Intercontinental Champion into the ring.
When Rhodes got into the ring, he was sent back to the outside, before being counted out. However, there was no explanation as to why he wasn’t counted out in the five minutes prior to this. It was a weird, baffling match which was awful to sit through.
1 Bryan Danielson: Vs Sheamus, WrestleMania 28 (0 Stars)
This was an infamously controversial match from WrestleMania 28. After being robbed of their spot on the show the year prior, the former Daniel Bryan and Sheamus had their chance to put on a great match for the World Heavyweight Championship.
However, it ended in 18 seconds with Sheamus hitting one move and winning, in what was a hugely shocking outcome. For Bryan, one of the best wrestlers in the world, this felt like a complete slap in the face.
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