10 Wrestling Heel Turns That Massively Backfired
Wrestling History is littered with important heel turns, grumpy boys, and bad tantrums
that, in the best case scenario can revitalise an entire company.
Hogan turning heel in WCW made 6 bajillions of dollars and WCW won the Monday Night War,
right up until Vince McMahon turned heel and won it right the f*** back.
Sometimes heel turns don’t work, and there are plenty of those.
Becky Lynch turning heel on Charlotte and instantly becoming WWE’s biggest face, Rikishi
going from bum man to murderer, Sting turning heel in WCW and the fans refusing to boo him
because “no, Sting is a nice man”, Daniel Bryan being history’s greatest monster by
asking us to recycle and try a juice cleanse, but wrestling is wrestling, gimmicks get changed
and most of the time failed heel turns aren’t significantly damaging.
Most of the time.
This is 10 Wrestling Heel Turns That MASSIVELY Backfired
10.
Braun Strowman’s Career Momentum Gets Murdered
Always the Braunsmaid and never the Bride.
It seems that ever since Braun Strowman wasn’t Finished with Roman Reigns, and according
to the ancient prophecy, he’s still not finished with him, it seems like we’ve been
waiting for WWE to pull the trigger and turn the indestructible, double-bass playing, ambulance
flipping, grappling hook wielding looney tune into the face of the company, and indeed,
when he won Money in the Bank in 2019, we thought it was finally happening.
He got a thunderous pop at SummerSlam when it looked like he would cash in against the
Bog Dog and the Beastie Boy, and then...oh no.
He turned heel, allied himself with Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler and was immediately nerfed
beyond all recognition.
The man who could flip over the sky itself suddenly needed backup, the indestructible
monster suddenly couldn’t finish a Hell In A Cell match after Lesnar interference,
and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the audience’s patience with the
Brown Snowman.
Despite them scrapping his heel run right the f*** quick, Strowman has never again reached
that level of God-tier popularity, and now he dances.
He dances and I am sad.
9.
HBK Turns Heel, Ruins Dream Match
Ok so maybe 40 year old Shawn Michaels vs 52 year old Hulk Hogan may not be a dream
match to some of you hardcore wrestling fans who like main eventers with their original
hips, but I was excited about the main event of Summerslam 2005 goddamn it.
The match itself was a bewildering kaleidoscope of limbs and flesh.
So HBK is having, shall we say, a bit of a paddy in this match, overselling Hogan’s
offence like he’s Billy f****** Mays.
Shawn was a bit peeved with the Hulkster, because his creative control had taken over
the feud with one of the many forced changes being Shawn Michaels turning heel.
HBK was against the move, thinking it should be face v face, but Hogan got his way, and
it was clear he wasn’t in WWE for much of the 90s cos otherwise he would know, don’t
Shawn grumpy.
Well, said Mr Hickenbottom, if you can’t beat ‘em, do enough cirque du soleil to
break wrestling and so well… the match happened, and there were no rematches, nothing.
This is what HBK vs Hogan looks like, forever.
HBK turned face immediately after SummerSlam and so, the heel turn that Hulky thought would
make the match more exciting blew up in his big orange face.
8.
Bret Hart Becomes Just Another Guy In WCW
It’s been said before, but it bears repeating - 1997, weird year for Vince McManners Grand
Ham Slammers.
The weirdest, and probably most stressful part was the fact that his company had pretty
much only 2 definite main eventers and one of them f***** off to his biggest competition.
That’s one of those days you remember.
The circumstances of Bret Hart’s departure were so insane, so attention-grabbing, he
was the goddamn WWF Champion, he’d been screwed, what the hell was he going to do
in WCW?
Answer, turn heel and become just another member of the already tired nWo.
Instead of getting Hart vs Hogan on PPV, he became one of his lackeys and didn’t really
have long-term major feuds with anyone, golden sand just pouring through WCW’s fingers.
All the money they could have made by treating Bret like the huge star that he was, instead
to give you an idea of how much WCW blundered it, Bret Hart vs Hulk Hogan only happened
one time, on an episode of Nitro, and it ended in a non-finish.
Well done everyone!
Here’s your Good Job cake!
7.
Michael Cole Makes Raw Unwatchable
Should we enjoy it when a heel is onscreen?
Was CM Punk a good heel because we respected his charisma, storytelling and wrestling,
and we actually enjoyed it when he was around?
If a heel is cool, is that more a case of ego getting in the way of the product and
should we in fact hate the heel being around?
Because just taken in isolation, I think when Michael Cole turned heel in 2010, he was,
from a purist perspective, the best heel in WWE.
I think generally, because the purpose of every part of a wrestling show should be in
service of selling matches to the audience, I wanted to see someone kick the s*** out
of Michael Cole more than any other heel on the roster.
He was a swaggering phallus, a pratman jones, and a pricklord dweebstorm in a dickcup.
So, job done, except, he was also lead announcer, audible 100% of the time and dear christ there’s
only so much I can stand I can stands no more.
He was SUCH a good heel, that he broke the show, which on one hand is to be respected,
but on the other hand is the remote control which I’m using to change the f****** channel
6.
Jim Ross Turns Heel With Fake Razor and Diesel
Good ol JR has been Bad ol JR not once, not four times, but twice in his WWE career.
Before he ascended to the pantheon of wrestling legend where you’re such a cherished part
of the industry that you can never be an effective heel again, they turned him twice.
The second time, in 1999 was an immediate bust and quickly scrapped, they tried to turn
him heel by kicking Michael Cole in the bollocks, yeah that didn’t work.
The first time however, hoo boy.
The year was 1996, also known as the year that Hall & Nash defected to WCW, created
the nWo and gently placed Vince over their knees and patted his little bottom.
WWE’s plan to counter the betrayal was, basically, Dr Whoing Razor Ramon and Diesel.
Since WWE still owned those characters, they recast them with Rick Bognar and Glen That’s
Gotta Be Kane Jacobs and thought the fans would say ‘yeah seems legit’.
It would be like if I wrote the word Money on a piece of paper and tried to buy a Honda
Civic with it.
In an even more baffling move, they tried to sell this by turning JR heel and having
him be basically their manager.
So the face commentators were like “that’s not Diesel and Razor JR” and he responds
“NO YOU SHUT UP”.
What was the plan?
I don’t understand, did you want the copycats to get over?
The whole thing just blew up and made everyone involved in it look bad, and WCW’s edgier
product all the better by comparison.
5.
Vince Russo Turns The Entire Midcard of WCW Heel
Oh sorry, WCW, you might want to calm down because I’m not finished with you.
After teetering on the precipice for years, in 2000 World Championship Wrestling lost
its f****** mind.
See, my dad Eric Bishoff had seduced all of Vince’s top talent away with contractual
creative control and those bad seeds began to flourish into trees made out of cantankerous
older men who weren’t horny for putting over young talent.
In late 99 WCW decided to hire Vince Russo, the man at the time commonly credited with
creating WWE’s crash-style Attitude Era programming to come in and fix all of WCW’s
problems.
WWE had the best midcard in wrestling history at the time, hold my beer said WCW and proceeded
to turn its entire midcard heel as this gigantic uber-stable The New Blood, against the Millionaires
Club, aka Sting, Ric Flair, DDP, Hogan, aka everyone the fans were tuning in to see.
Russo appeared as an onscreen character, even going as far as firing Hulk Hogan in a promo
that went from work to shoot REAL QUICK and ended with Hogan suing the company.
A gigantic explosion of bad ideas in a time when such things could not be afforded.
4.
TNA Becomes Immortal And Slowly Dies
The New World Order was something that started small, brilliant, and explosive and gradually
ballooned into a stultifying multifaceted product-consuming blob.
TNA said, ooh let’s do that but FASTER.
Hulk Hogan and Eric Bishoff went to TNA in 2010 and started playing the old hits.
They did an autotune remix of the Monday Night Wars that resembled less two titans fighting
and more like a kid making pew pew gun sounds at his dad while he reads the paper and ignores
him.
The big plan however, debuted at Bound For Glory, when Jeff Hardy turned heel and along
with… about 60% of the roster to form Immortal, which was the nWo but, like, starting with
the bit where it was too big.
No shade on Hardy, because his antichrist gimmick was pretty good, but it got lost in
amongst the blob.
Plus he was also their biggest mainstream draw for casual WWE fans and turning him into
a corporate rage monster who did less flippy s*** didn’t help ratings or attendance at
all.
If Hardy had turned heel by himself, it could have been something really interesting, but
the mass heeling only evoked the worst memories of WCW.
Speaking of...
3.The Last Hope for WCW Turns
If this list is starting to feel like I’m dogpiling on dubsy dub, well, remember this
isn’t a list of the worst heel turns, but the most damaging ones, and well, WWE is still
here, so…
WCW in 2000, a million cats in a cardboard box, except the cat are all insane ideas,
the biggest and most insane being turning Goldberg, the last truly WCW-created megastar,
genuine unstoppable superhero, into a corporate heel, against Kevin Nash who had screwed him
out of the most famous undefeated streak of all time.
I guess it was shocking, if 25 WCW Title changes that year including David Arquette and Vince
Russo winning the belt hadn’t completely immunised the audience from the ability to
even register surprise anymore.
But compromising Goldberg was one of the last great mistakes in WCW’s death-throes.
It was dropped shortly after but the damage was done and the company’s last superhero
became just another unremarkable part of the great blurring carousel of character alignment,
motivation and consequence that was WCW.
2.
Steve Austin Ends The Attitude Era
Hooray!
Something that isn’t WCW!
If I told you to name the most famous heel turn of all time, chances are that Stone Cold
selling his soul to Muscle and Fitness Satan is probably going to be up there.
It was the exclamation point on the greatest PPV of all time, the ultimate swerve and a
brave and daring subversion of everything that had rocketed WWE to this point.
It was also a huge mistake.
Many fans couldn’t accept that Austin and McMahon could ever be friends after 3 years
of them making each other's lives hell, but some people thought Austin thrived in the
role, adding a hilarious new dimension to his character.
That’s subjective and we could go round and round, what’s undisputed is that it
was a major misstep for business.
Because who does Austin feud with?
Rock was gone until SummerSlam, Triple H was heel, Angle was heel, Jericho was midcard,
Kane was midcard, the only main eventer left was Undertaker and as much as we idolise the
Deadman, he had never truly carried the company as the top guy.
PPV buys went down, ratings went down, and the PPV hot streak that WWE had started in
2000 slowly petered out before the lacklustre Invasion cemented the Attitude era as being
truly dead.
But hey, WWE’s still here right?
1.
The Fingerpoke of Doom For WCW
So, Goldberg was WCW Champion going into Starrcade 98, he was still undefeated and sort of the
best thing going at the time.
However, he had beaten everyone on the roster pretty much and, well, it was Starrcade so
they decided to beat him via mischievous electricity.
Even though Hall had interfered, Nash was still a face at this time, denounced Hall
and offered Goldberg a rematch.
However, the title match ended up happening between Nash and a returning Hulk Hogan who
had taken some brief time away to run for president, feel free to cut out and assemble
your own Donald Trump joke out of that.
The bell rang, Hogan poked Nash in the chest, who fell out and let Hogan pin him, cue Nash
turning heel and a reunion of the original nWo lineup after months of infighting.
Fun fact, this was the same week that Mankind won the WWF title on Raw, a change that WCW
spoiled, and caused hundreds of thousands of people to change the channel to see it
happen.
Many commentators, single out the fingerpoke of doom as being the beginning of the end
for WCW, especially in the classic The Death of WCW where it was called "the single most
destructive Nitro in the history of the company.”
I guess David Arquette won the belt on Thunder so fair enough.
It’s perhaps over-simplifying things to blame one booking event for the death of a
company, but it’s hard to argue against the fact that this was the point when WCW’s
ratings began to steadily decline without ever coming back.
They promised Goldberg vs Nash the rematch, fans got a non-match and Hogan back on top.
It proved to be one betrayal too many for the fans, a sign that nothing really mattered,
no promises would be kept, the same old boys will kill all your heroes, that it wasn’t
worth investing yourself in this parade of senseless twists.
WCW didn’t sink overnight, but this poked a hole in the boat.