2024 Moments That Sent WWE Fans Into An Uproar

2024 has, once again, been a landmark year for WWE. The company has reached a level of popularity the likes of which they haven't seen in over two decades, they have made more money than some people will make in 100 lifetimes, and considering the move to Netflix is right around the corner, things are only going to get stronger for World Wrestling Entertainment.

However, this is the professional wrestling business, so not everything is going to go according to plan. Some talent has been severely underused, others have put their whole feet in their mouths with comments they've made, and one booking decision received so much backlash that it turned one of the nicest guys in Hollywood into a raving lunatic. All of that and much more will be covered in this list of the moments in 2024 that sent WWE fans into uproar, but first, a quick disclaimer to discuss the very big elephant in the room.

Honestly, everything to do with Vince McMahon in 2024 has been so utterly horrendous that he could fill this entire list by himself, and still have enough egregious activity in his back pocket to fill up an entirely new list. The Janel Grant lawsuit is far and away the biggest wrestling news story in years, and the potential consequences of that suit could very well be felt for years to come, meaning that it absolutely deserves to be mentioned. With that said, this will be a Vince McMahon-free list, as a lot of his deplorable actions that have been reported came after he was forced out of WWE, and off of the TKO Board of Directors, which happened the day after Grant's suit became public knowledge.

If you want, you can call McMahon the "Unhonorable Winner" of this list for everything that has been linked to him in the past 12 months, with these nine entries being the best of the rest. 

WWE's purging of its own roster has certainly slowed down in recent years, but that didn't stop the company from releasing a number of talents in 2024.

The likes of Jinder Mahal, Xia Li, and Xyon Quinn were all released from their deals in April, all while an episode of "WWE SmackDown" was airing on FOX. Tegan Nox was let go in November, and was even pulled from her return to the UK indie scene at the last minute due to a "myriad of issues" discussed between WWE and UK-based promotion ATTACK!, and then there is what happened to Indi Hartwell.

Hartwell was released on the same day as Nox (which also happened to be the same day Baron Corbin left the company after his contract expired), and while the Australian star being released was bad enough, it was what happened immediately afterward that angered the WWE fanbase. On October 25, WWE taped two episodes of "SmackDown," one to be aired that day, the other to air seven days later on November 1. Hartwell would wrestle her final match for the company on the show that was taped for November 1, teaming with Candice LeRae in a losing effort against Bayley and Naomi, and if you're wondering what was so bad about his, Hartwell was released on, you guessed it, November 1. WWE decided to air Hartwell's match mere hours after the company had fired her, something that many people were not happy with.

The Australian star is currently under a 90-day non-compete clause, meaning that she will not be wrestling anywhere until the end of January 2025 at the earliest, but let's hope the next company she works for doesn't do something as heartless as showing off her last match immediately after telling her to find work elsewhere.

The rivalry between CM Punk and Drew McIntyre is not only one of the best feuds the company has produced this year, but it's one of the best feuds in the past few years across all of wrestling. Something that spawned out of Punk being legitimately injured in the Royal Rumble, making their eventual showdown so highly anticipated that had it not been for Roman Reigns returning at the end of SummerSlam, Punk and McIntyre's first showdown could have legitimately headlined WWE's second biggest show of the year.

There is just one thing that a lot of people couldn't get past when it came to the feud though, and that was the fact that once they did lock up, the feud was, at its core, over a bracelet. One of the biggest blood feuds that WWE has ever stumbled upon that had people wishing for blood, pain, and violence, and the centerpiece was a friendship bracelet? What?

Punk and McIntyre made it work to their credit, even if the bracelet was down McIntyre's trunks in Berlin and Punk kissed it once he got it back, but the blood feud over a bracelet went one step further when the creator, a woman named Victoria, discovered that WWE had started selling exact replicas of her own creation without her knowledge or permission, meaning that she wouldn't get any royalties from any of the sales. Victoria even got into a heated exchange on social media with McIntyre over the situation, before WWE pulled the bracelets and put them back up for sale later that week. The bracelet hasn't made an appearance since Punk and McIntyre's Hell in a Cell match at Bad Blood, and many will wish that it stays that way.

When done right, tag team wrestling is one of the most exciting forms of the thing we all love, but 2024 has been a far cry from where it's been in recent years when it comes to main roster WWE.

Up until WrestleMania 40, the two sets of titles had been worn by The Judgment Day, but between January 1 and the night they lost both belts in a six-pack ladder match at WrestleMania 40, Finn Balor and Damian Priest had only defended the titles twice. Now it's not a bad thing to keep title defenses sporadic, but at times it seemed that WWE didn't have a clue what to do with the titles. On the red brand, a nostalgic pop for The Miz and R-Truth turned into one of the most underwhelming reigns in recent memory, before dropping the titles back to The Judgment Day, who then proceeded to hold the titles hostage for SIX MONTHS, and in the first five of those six months, Balor and JD McDonagh defended the belts once.

The recent crowning of the War Raiders could give the tag division on "WWE Raw" a shot in the arm in the same way that the Motor City Machine Guns did on "WWE SmackDown," as those belts haven't had it easy this year either. A-Town Down Under had one defense after winning at WrestleMania before dropping the titles to #DIY, who were then squashed by The Bloodline, who themselves did very little with the belts outside of trying to make Solo Sikoa's version of the group seem better than they actually were. WWE, and to an extent most wrestling fans, want tag team wrestling to be better in 2025, so let's hope something happens.

When Triple H took over the creative direction of WWE in 2022, one of the things he brought over from his days booking "WWE NXT" was making the company's Premium Live Events like the NXT TakeOver events. Outside of WrestleMania and SummerSlam, almost all over WWE's PLEs in 2024 had five matches on them, something that was met with universal acclaim from fans when it was first introduced as it gave the matches on the card more time to breathe, fans a chance to get their energy in between matches, and made the matches that made it to the PLE's feel more important. 

That feeling of acclaim however has started to fade in 2024, with a number of WWE's "B-Shows" feeling bloated with commercials, non-wrestling segments, and wait times between matches that can sometimes fit entire shows in between them. Main roster Premium Live Events are still three hours long, and while that isn't a bad thing per se as you want to give your bigger events more time, WWE somehow doesn't have three hours' worth of content to fill these shows. Even the recent Saturday Night's Main Event on NBC was only two hours and still managed to pack over 50% of the show with segments and ads, which doesn't really sound too premium all things considered.

Triple H has claimed that keeping the shorter match cards for PLEs allows "WWE Raw" and "WWE SmackDown" to have PLE-level matches on them, but if they are worthy of being on a PLE, put them on it! It's all well and good showing the legends and celebrities in attendance, but the time you spent spotlighting these people who aren't around every week eats into the time for the people who are. Hopefully, Triple H can find a balance in 2025.

All things considered, Clash at the Castle in Glasgow, Scotland was a show that was very good. Cody Rhodes and AJ Styles blew off their feud in an I Quit match, Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn won the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships in the their hometown, and the WWE Intercontinental Championship match between Sami Zayn and Chad Gable was another example of how good their chemistry was as opponents. However, it was the final two matches that left a sour taste in the crowd's mouths.

Piper Niven never really stood a chance at dethroning Bayley for the WWE Women's Championship, but she gave it a good go in front of her fellow Scots, but there were a number of people who were sure that Drew McIntyre was going to leave Glasgow as the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. He almost had it in the bag, but thanks to CM Punk performing his best Earl Hebner impression, Damian Priest retained his title after a back-and-forth contest.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, this did a lot to further the feud between Punk and McIntyre (before the bracelet got involved), but to say that the Scottish fans were angry would be a massive understatement. Footage emerged on social media after the show was over of the 12,000 fans booing furiously, to the point where Samantha Irvin told everyone to have a good night and a safe journey home, which was met with even louder boos. The one-two punch of Scotland getting obliterated by Germany in the opening game of Euro 2024, and McIntyre getting screwed out of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship was too much for the Glasgow fans to take, so let's just hope WWE's return to Scotland in March goes a little smoother.

The main event scene in WWE has been on fire with The Bloodline saga on "WWE SmackDown," GUNTHER's quest to the WWE World Heavyweight Championship on "WWE Raw," and the revolving door of talent that sees CM Punk, Seth Rollins, and Drew McIntyre to name a few filter themselves in has been a smash hit for the company. However, if you aren't in the main event scene, things have been a little more difficult.

Many of the people who were released, or didn't get their contracts renewed in 2024 ended up in that position because of the lack of booking on the undercard in WWE. The tag team division has been so lackluster that it earned its own entry, but the level of talent that has been criminally underused in 2024 has been, well, criminal. The treatment of Dragon Lee, a man who could legitimately be the next Rey Mysterio, has been insane. Not only was he removed from WrestleMania 40 because Andrade felt he was more deserving, but he has now been reduced to being the poster child for "WWE Speed" on X.

Giovanni Vinci's booking since he became a singles wrestler has been nothing short of a farce, losing his first match against Apollo Crews in four seconds, then losing the rematch in just over 90 seconds, and has since gone on a losing streak in dark matches. The "Raw" women's division has been all over the place unless your name is Rhea Ripley or Liv Morgan, a feud that has absorbed all the momentum of every other woman on the show, and it looks like it's going to continue in 2025. Not everyone needs a story, but if you're low down on the WWE totem poll, you need to get used to wrestling on X.

Carlito was officially brought into The Judgment Day stable in August but had been hanging around the group throughout the summer and brought a sense of comic relief to an otherwise very serious group, similar to what R-Truth had been doing months earlier. Humor is, of course, subjective, and everyone finds different things funny, but one comment that Carlito made on the October 21 episode of "WWE Raw" was one that no one found funny.

Kairi Sane and IYO Sky had just spoken to "Raw" General Manager Adam Pearce when Carlito walked in and said "I've got to learn Chinese," a line that was met with overwhelming backlash considering that Sane and SKY are both Japanese, leading to many people calling Carlito out as racist. WWE has since edited out the line on all their digital platforms, although the line, which was ad-libbed by Carlito, can still be found on YouTube.

The reaction backstage was as bad as the reaction from the fans, as many staff in WWE were in disbelief that Carlito would even say such a thing, with Dave Meltzer claiming that the line was supposed to be a call back to something Shawn Michaels said in 1995 about Jinsei Shinzaki, a.k.a. Hakushi in WWE. Regardless of what was supposed to be achieved by Carlito in this segment, this was one of the rare occasions where both the fans and WWE personnel themselves were equally outraged in 2024.

Speaking of people landing themselves in hot water over comments that could be seen as offensive to a minority group, Triple H and his post-show press conferences have been eventful. The Game has had an awful time at these pressers, whether it be discussing the Janel Grant lawsuit (which he claims to have never read), discussing Brock Lesnar despite being in the aforementioned suit or taking a backhanded shot at AEW by subtly saying that the term "Forbidden Door" is stupid. Then there is this...

Many fans had picked up on the lack of black wrestlers on WWE's Premium Live Events, particularly Bad Blood in October which only saw The Rock show up for an end-of-show cameo, and Naomi, Bianca Belair, and Jade Cargill act as hosts for an event that was taking place in a city that is commonly seen as a hotbed for black culture. After the show, Triple H was asked about the lack of representation when it came to his black wrestlers, to which he uttered the now infamous phrase, "I don't see the difference in anybody. I don't see the color, I don't see the nationality, I don't see any of it, I just see talent."

On the surface, it sounds like the right thing to say, believing that everyone is on an even playing field and only the best wrestlers get the best opportunities, but when none of those wrestlers are black, it sounds like Triple H doesn't think any of the black wrestlers on his rosters are talented, and aren't worthy of the biggest opportunities the company has. The biggest foot-in-mouth comment of the year from WWE's CCO, and for comparison, Cody Rhodes once said this to his wife Brandi, who responded with "Well, you don't see my experience." 

Remember when Cody Rhodes finished the story at WrestleMania 40 and everyone except The Bloodline were happy about it? Now imagine a timeline where none of that happens because WWE wants to bend to The Rock's will, because in February that almost happened. Rhodes won his second consecutive Royal Rumble match, and pointed at Roman Reigns proclaiming that he was coming for him on the grandest stage of them all. Then, for reasons that are still complicated and contradictory to this day, Rhodes stepped aside in favor of The Rock to face Reigns at WrestleMania 40 to determine who truly was The Tribal Chief.

Take the previously mentioned reception the end of Clash of the Castle got, amplify it by 1,000, then amplify that by another 1,000, and you still don't come close to how much backlash this move got. Whether or not this was WWE actually creating something similar to 'The Yes Movement' from ten years earlier only on purpose this time is up for debate, but the #WeWantCody trend on social media got so much traction that The Rock himself clapped back at everyone wishing for the man who won the Royal Rumble (which if you win, you get a title shot at WrestleMania remember) and calling them "Cody Crybabies."

All of this eventually culminated in WWE backing down on the idea of The Rock vs Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 40 in favor of The Bloodline facing Rhodes and Seth Rollins on night one, with Rhodes getting his shot at Reigns on night two. Given the conflicting reports of whether The Rock will be at WrestleMania 41 or not means that the fight to see who the true 'Head of the Table' is might be shelved indefinitely, but the WWE fans spoke their mind and once again managed to change the main event of a WrestleMania, with 2024's event being considered one of the greatest in WWE history.