History Website / WrestleCrap

* 2014: The Wrestling/BellaTwins feud/Wrestling/VinceMcMahon's "brass rings" (co-winners).

* 2023: A tie between Wrestling/CMPunk time in Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling & Father Wrestling/JamesMitchell snorting cocaine during an Wrestling/{{NWA}} PPV[[note]] Specifically, it completely sank the NWA's talks with Creator/TheCW for a national TV deal.[[/note]].

* 2023: ''Voting closed on January 12, 2024.''

* 2022: Wrestling/RicFlair's Last Match[[note]] Specifically, the actual match won the Gooker Award, not the overall event that hosted it.[[/note]]
* 2023: ''Voting open as of January 5, 2024.''

** '''[[https://www.wrestlecrap.com/art-is-war/ Art Is War]]''': Art O'Donnell recaps old episodes of [[Wrestling/WWERaw WWF Raw Is War]], starting from the April 14, 1997 episode.

** '''Rewriting the Book''': Jed Shaffer's AlternateHistory FanFic series that explored how wrestling's past might have gone differently with a key nudge in the opposite direction from time to time.

Each week, the [=WrestleCrap=] staff post an induction that tears one of wrestling's stranger or sillier gimmicks, feuds, or storylines apart. The site also has classic inductions as well.[[note]]The full archive is available for members only.[[/note]] Originally, the inductions were written by RD (or Merle Vincent, before his suicide); RD handed head writing duties over to his protégé Triple Kelly for a couple years. Triple Kelly subsequently left the site, and now the inductions are mainly written by [=Art0Donnel=] and occasionally Justin Henry.

** '''Weird World of Wrestling:''' Formerly a separate site, Madison Carter would take a look at the weird stuff that happened in the independent circuit. Retired as of the site redesign.

** '''Squash of the Week''': A new column, introduced in 2022 as a successor to ''Jobber of the Week'', focusing on {{Squash Match}}es.
** '''RD's Mailbox:''' A section where RD responds to the emails he receives.
** '''What Didn't You Understand, BRO!?:''' Introduced in 2022, former wrestling booker Wrestling/VinceRusso talks about some of the infamous crappy booking decisions he was a part of.

* 2017: Wrestling/JinderMahal, WWE Champion.[[note]]RD Reynolds preemptively declared the House of Horrors match between Wrestling/RandyOrton and Wrestling/BrayWyatt at Payback 2017 to be the winner on May 4, 2017, in the belief that nothing else could possibly top it that year. Mahal's reign began a few weeks after the match. The actual vote did not have the House of Horrors as a candidate, though it did have the Wyatt/Orton feud that contained the match.[[/note]]

** The [=LaVar=] Ball incident from 2017, where he essentially ad-libbed his whole appearance on a [[Wrestling/TheMiz Miz TV]] segment alongside his sons Lonzo and [=LaMelo=], failed to build up to the intended payoff for the angle, Wrestling/DeanAmbrose endorsing their sportswear brand, and had [=LaMelo=] throw racial slurs, was inducted in January 2020.

--->"Rey’s son Dominick appears on WWE TV. Remember Dominick? The kid that Eddy claimed was his own son because Rey was impotent? [[SarcasmMode What a great angle that was]]."

* ForcedMeme: In 2009, RD tried to force "[[Creator/CheechAndChong Basketball Jones]]" (Triple Kelly's nickname for Batista) as a meme, even going as far as to [[FunWithAutocensors filter Batista's name]] as "Basketball Jones" on the original forums. It failed.

** Mic Check, the TNA correspondant is an old man who has lived forever and working in the radio market.

** When the 2004 Raw Diva Search won the Gooker Award, RD noted that his fanbase was primarily males who (presumably) enjoyed looking at attractive women, and yet that didn't stop them from voting the Diva Search as the worst of the year, because when you tune into a wrestling show, the first thing you assume you'll see is...well, ''wrestling''.

* NormalFishInATinyPond: During the Gooker Award induction of Jinder Mahal's WWE Championship reign, Art argues that Mahal became this upon arriving at a [=SmackDown=] brand that had been massively shortchanged in the Superstar Shakeup, losing several of its main eventers (Dean Ambrose, The Miz, Bray Wyatt) to Raw while AJ Styles was thrown into a United States Championship feud with another new SD arrival, Kevin Owens, leaving the brand scrambling to build up a new viable WWE title contender.

* RoguesGallery: The TNA Correspondants, Johnny 6, Johnny 4, Megatrolla, Angry Jim Ross, Viewing Booth Bill Cosby, Nathaniel, Honky Tonk Mailman, Stubby, Mic Check and others.

* 2022: Wrestling/RicFlair's Last Match[[note]] Specifically, the actual match won the Gooker Award, not the overall event itself.[[/note]]

* 2022: Wrestling/RicFlair's Last Match[[note]] Specifically, Flair's own match won the Gooker Award, not the overall event itself.[[/note]]

* 2022: Wrestling/RicFlair's Last Match (not the entire event, but specifically Flair's own match).

* 2022: Wrestling/RicFlair's Last Match.

Not only has [=WrestleCrap=] become a popular online destination for wrestling fans, but its name itself has entered the SmartMark lexicon. It's also gathered quite a following inside the business, as several wrestlers have written in to say how much they love the site, including no less than Wrestling/ChrisJericho. John Tenta, known to fans as "Earthquake", gave the site an exclusive interview and wrote the foreword to RD's first book.

Every December, the site has posted inductions of some of the worst Christmas movies of all-time, including Wrestling/HulkHogan's ''Santa with Muscles'', ''Film/SantaClausConquersTheMartians'', the 1959 Mexican movie ''Film/{{Santa Claus|1959}}'', a 1986 remake of the classic holiday operetta ''Film/BabesInToyland'' (featuring Creator/DrewBarrymore, Creator/KeanuReeves, Pat Morita, and an actor named Googy Gress as Georgie Porgie with a cameltoe), and a Wrestling/{{Goldberg}}-as-a-murderous-Santa film called ''Film/SantasSlay''.

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: The induction of the 2019 angle of Wrestling/RomanReigns' attacker points out that, contrary to what wrestling announcers have been telling us for years, there is no "Isle of Samoa", the nation actually being a ten-island archipelago.

* HistoryRepeats: [[https://www.wrestlecrap.com/features/1995-wrestling-magazine-fix-wwe/ A special induction]] revolving around an article in the July 1995 issue of ''Pro Wrestling Illustrated'' was made specifically because RD noticed that a number of the problems the article pointed out about the pre-Attitude Era WWF of those days (excessive amount of rematches, bad announcers, a lack of attention of the women's and tag team divisions, etc.) were once again plaguing WWE in 2021.

** During the induction for Professional Gay Wrestling, Art mentions the promotion's {{kayfabe}} owner Francis Minks and his son Montgomery, who describe themselves respectively as an "avid heterosexual" and "incredibly heterosexual" (and the latter does so seemingly unprompted during a phone call), yet are very obviously played as CampGay caricatures.

* {{GIRL}}: The message boards were pranked by the "female" poster "Miss Kendrick" in 2009, and by [[https://web.archive.org/web/20091225203645/http://realwrestlecrap.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=viewprofile&user=starwolf "Starwolf"]] (who was dubbed "Starwang" by some posters) in 2007. This post pretty much describes it:

** The mostly inactive [[https://www.wrestlecrap.com/jobbers/ Jobber of The Week]] section focuses on the more "memorable" ones.
** A truly ''baffling'' amount of them were entrants during the 1995 Royal Rumble, most being part of absurdly bad tag teams with trash gimmicks like the Men On A Mission, Wrestling/TheHeadshrinkers and the Heavenly Bodies. The only main-eventers at the Rumble were eventual winner Shawn Michaels, the British Bulldog, Runner-up Lex Luger, Owen Hart and Bob Backlund (the last two were attacked by Wrestling/BretHart on their way to the ring and as a result didn't last very long).

** The induction on the WWE Cookbook covers how most of the recipes are named with wrestler-based puns: "[[Wrestling/ShawnMichaels Prawn Michaels]]", "Wrestling/{{Bayley}}'s Chicken Huggets", "Wrestling/RicFlair's Wooooopie Pies" and so on.

* VerySpecialEpisode: The [[http://wrestlecrap.com/inductions/armed-and-famous/ induction]] of Wrestling/TrishStratus in ''Armed & Famous'' (a RealityTV show in which celebrities, Stratus included, trained to become reserve police officers for the Police Department of Muncie, Indiana, and afterwards went on patrol) could be considered a subtle example of this. The induction was made around the time of the 2020 protests against police brutality as a result of the death of George Floyd (which, among other things, resulted in the cancellation of ''Series/{{COPS}}''), and as the induction progresses, it becomes less about Stratus's appearance on the show and more about the many negligences the show incurred, including featuring minors and ''a dead body'' on camera[[note]]The body was that of an elderly man for which a welfare check was made after he hadn't shown up to work.[[/note]] and, after being pulled from the air after only 17 days, being sued after a person was arrested by mistake and said arrest was featured on the show, while omitting the part about the arrest being wrongful.

The brainchild of "The Real Deal" RD Reynolds and "The Worldwide Menace" Merle Vincent, ''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com WrestleCrap]]'' was created as a "hall of shame" for ProfessionalWrestling, a place where they could stretch their comedic muscles by poking fun at the pseudo-sport. It has since grown into wrestling fandom's anti-SeriousBusiness, a place where people can remind themselves that wrestling is inherently silly. In short, it's the conscience of the Internet Wrestling Community.

** '''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/category/icfyt/ It Came From YouTube]]''': Where the gang takes a look at a weird and wacky video from wrestling's past.
** '''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/category/sbt/ Someone Bought This?!]]''': A look at the wrestling merchandise that ''was'', but should not have been.
** '''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/category/headlies/ WrestleCrap Headlies]]''': In a parody of various less reputable wrestling newz sites, [=WrestleCrap=] decides to take a crack at [[NewsParody making up their own wrestling news]].
** '''[[http://wrestlecrap.com/category/inductions/ye-olde-christmas-movies/ Ye Olde Christmas Movies]]''': Each December, [=WrestleCrap=] takes a break from wrestling to take a look at the worst Christmas movies of all time.

** '''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/category/more/rewriting/ Rewriting the Book]]''': Jed Shaffer's AlternateHistory FanFic series that explored how wrestling's past might have gone differently with a key nudge in the opposite direction from time to time.
** '''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/category/jobbers/ Jobber of the Week]]''': Blade Braxton's weekly salute to [[{{Jobber}} the men who lose for a living]].
** '''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/category/rdandblade/ The RD and Blade Show]]''': A podcast featuring RD and Blade Braxton musing on wrestling and life in general (with the occasional interview). The RD and Blade Show was revived as a separate series exclusive to Patreon in 2019.
** '''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/?s=Wrestlecrap+Radio/ WrestleCrap Radio]]''': A podcast featuring RD musing on wrestling and life in general (with the occasional interview). ''[=WrestleCrap=] Radio'' ran from 2005 to 2012, when the show was retired in favor of the new RD and Blade Show; the latter show itself was retired in 2015 to revive the old format. It was retired again in 2021 following Blade's passing.

* AprilFoolsDay: One year when April Fools' Day was on a Friday, RD wrote "inductions" for Wrestling/RicFlair and Wrestling/ChrisBenoit. [[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/inductions/guest-induction-shawn-michaels-vs-kurt-angle/ There was even an "guest induction"]] for the Wrestling/ShawnMichaels vs. Wrestling/KurtAngle match at [=WrestleMania=] 21 written by "[=Art0Donnell's=] cousin, Rocky Melvin," and "Melvin" writes as if clearly they have next to no idea about wrestling, when actually it's mostly agreed to have been one of the best matches of the event.[[note]]"Rocky Melvin" itself seems to a joke about the 2000 book ''The Complete Idiot's Guide to Professional Wrestling'', famous among pro wrestling fans for being filled with factual errors, one of them being claiming that the real name of wrestler The Rock (Wrestling/DwayneJohnson) is "Rocky Melvin."[[/note]]

** At the beginning of the [[https://www.wrestlecrap.com/inductions/induction-helmetmatch/ Helmet Match]] induction in June 2022, RD seems to be addressing complaints that no [[Wrestling/AllEliteWrestling AEW]] inductions have been made, and announces they are finally listening to those complaints by doing their first ever induction... of Stampede Wrestling.[[note]]That said, immediately after this comment, RD ''did'' announce [=WrestleCrap's=] first AEW induction for the following week, and the site followed through this promise by inducting the Casino Battle Royale from ''Double or Nothing 2019''.[[/note]]

* DependingOnTheAuthor: [[invoked]] Certain wrestlers tend to be viewed differently by different authors. One such example is Wrestling/JohnBradshawLayfield; one [[http://wrestlecrap.com/inductions/induction-special-the-fandango-effect-gimmicks-spared-from-induction-by-great-performers/ special induction]] in 2013 written by Justin Henry regarding the "Wrestling/{{Fandango}} Effect", about certain gimmicks that were spared from induction because their perfomers [[TookTheBadFilmSeriously took the role seriously]], mentions JBL as an example of this (going from tag team wrestler to Wrestling/TedDiBiase-like millionaire heel main eventer in the span of a month) and compliments him for it. However, in other articles written by RD, RD can barely (if ever) hide his contempt for the man, such as in [[http://wrestlecrap.com/inductions/induction-lastsnme/ his induction]] of the last ''Saturday Night's Main Event'', in which JBL is the very first wrestler to make an entrance:

* DogGotSentToAFarm: Referenced in the ''[[http://wrestlecrap.com/inductions/nxt-2-0/ NXT 2.0]]'' induction:

* {{GIRL}}: The message boards were pranked by the "female" poster "Miss Kendrick" in 2009, and by [[http://realwrestlecrap.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=viewprofile&user=starwolf "Starwolf"]] (who was dubbed "Starwang" by some posters) in 2007. [[http://realwrestlecrap.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=offtopic&action=display&thread=226124&page=1#5060629 This post]] pretty much describes it:

* HistoryRepeats: [[http://wrestlecrap.com/inductions/induction-pwifixwwe/ A special induction]] revolving around an article in the July 1995 issue of ''Pro Wrestling Illustrated'' was made specifically because RD noticed that a number of the problems the article pointed out about the pre-Attitude Era WWF of those days (excessive amount of rematches, bad announcers, a lack of attention of the women's and tag team divisions, etc.) were once again plaguing WWE in 2021.

** The mostly inactive [[https://www.wrestlecrap.com/category/jobbers/ Jobber of The Week]] section focuses on the more "memorable" ones.

* MessageBoard: After much demand, [[http://newwrestlecrap.proboards.com/index.cgi The Craphole]] was created on May 2011, around half a year after the website and its old message board (now The Website/FreakinAwesomeNetwork forums) parted ways in October 2010.

* ARiddleWrappedInAMysteryInsideAnEnigma: In the induction for TNA's Last Rites Match from 2007, on the matter of [[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/induction%20files/lastrites/lastrites1.mp3 Sting describing death as a "choice" where one of those choices is, in fact, life]], RD calls the meaning and exact point of Sting's remarks a "riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a crummy TNA storyline".

* SoBadItsGood: [[invoked]] RD makes it clear whenever necessary that some of the inducted gimmicks and storylines aren't flat-out terrible, and instead fall under this. One of the best examples of this is [[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/inductions/repo-man-he-repossessed-from-deadbeats-how-is-he-a-heel/ the Repo Man]]. He would also point out this when [[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/inductions/induction-ultimatemaniacs/ inducting the Ultimate Maniacs]], the team-up of the Wrestling/UltimateWarrior and Wrestling/RandySavage, saying that the worst thing about it was that it was so short-lived.

* TemptingFate: Every once in a while, commentary in matches or segments covered during inductions ends up sounding like this. Take for example this one from the infamous [[https://wrestlecrap.com/inductions/undertaker-vs-goldberg/ Goldberg v. Undertaker]] main event at Super [=ShowDown=] 2019:

** '''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/category/sbt/ Someone Bought This!]]''': A look at the wrestling merchandise that ''was'', but should not have been.

** '''What Didn't You Understand, BRO?:''' Introduced in 2022, former wrestling booker Wrestling/VinceRusso talks about some of the infamous crappy booking decisions he was a part of.

** Averted with Wrestling/VinceRusso. While the website is one of Russo's fiercest critics, he and RD are actually on good terms, leading to RD appearing on Russo's podcast and Russo plugging the 10th anniversary edition of ''The Death of WCW''. The two even eventually co-created a separate podcast, ''The Joker's Mustache'', focused on recaps of episodes of ''Series/Batman1966'', to celebrate their shared love for the series.

** '''RD's Mailbox:''' A section where RD responses to the emails he receives.

* 2022: ''Vote ongoing as of January 6, 2023.''

Every December, the site has posted inductions of some of the worst Christmas movies of all-time, including Wrestling/HulkHogan's ''Santa with Muscles'', ''Film/SantaClausConquersTheMartians'', the 1959 Mexican movie ''Film/{{Santa Claus|1959}}'', a 1986 remake of the classic holiday operetta ''Film/BabesInToyland'' (featuring Creator/DrewBarrymore, Creator/KeanuReeves, Pat Morita, and an actor named Gorgy Gress as Georgie Porgie with a cameltoe), and a Wrestling/{{Goldberg}}-as-a-murderous-Santa film called ''Film/SantasSlay''.

** '''[[http://www.wrestlecrap.com/category/more/rewriting/ Rewriting the Book]]''': Jed Shaffer's AlternateHistory FanFic series that explores how wrestling's past might have gone differently with a key nudge in the opposite direction from time to time.

** '''RD's Mailbox:''' A section where RD responses to emails that he receives.