Worst Turns in Wrestling History

[theironshake]

Should have gone full im not special. It was all for the money heel. 

Anyway that Goldberg Heel turn was a travesty. You had Russo saying it was going to be the biggestmoment ever and there iis nothing Vince Mcmahon can do about it. Awful idea.Goldberg as aid earlier wasthe only person the fans could get behind.

Also stings heel turn in 1999 was so bad too.

Honerable mention for havksaw duggans Candian heel run

[tiger_rick]

I liked the Duggan turn. I've always thought he was a massive spenk so any reason for him to be booed is fine by me.

Didn't mind the execution of the Demolition/POP double turn. It was certainly different but I think the crowd were ready for it and took to it well. My problem with it was Demos were the tag champs so it made Fuji look a mug for binning them. The explanation for it was weak.

[Kaz Hayashi]

2 hours ago, Uncle Zeb said:

 

Na, you're a lost cause. Ha

It needs no justification. it's not 1 specific thing that happened on the night like a missed bump. It's the fact he was a super over face, undefeated, for 2 years, then they turned him heel because of paying his taxes on a fucking head dress, then he barely won a match and fucked off.

[Bukamania]

I have to say Lex Luger in 1993.

He came in as The Narcissist in early 93 as a smug heel who would cause damage to his opponents with a metal plate in his arm. He beat up fan favorites like Perfect, Hart and Virgil (lol). Then all of sudden he's Captain America, defeating the evil foreigner by count out in the main event of SS 93 and celebrating like he won the title. He could never replace Hulk Hogan or compete with Bret Hart as it showed as the Lex Express was put to a stop by Mania X.

[GordyM]

Turning Cesaro heel on Raw the day after he won the first Andre the Giant Battle Royal. When he slammed Big Show over the ropes (in a nice call back to Hogan bodyslamming Andre) the crowd popped big time (pun intended) and Cesaro's babyface turn was complete. Everything was neatly set up for him to have a heated feud with his ex-tag partner Jack Swagger and then carry on up the card.

And then 24 hours later some fucking idiot (most likely Vince) decided to turn him back to a heel on Raw by allying him with Paul Heyman. At any other time this might actually have been a career boost but with Lesnar having ended the Streak the night before, both he and Heyman truly had white-hot heel heat and Cesaro now had guilt by association. Heyman has admitted in interviews that Cesaro was basically a prop, a way to justify Heyman coming out every week to cut promos and keep that aforementioned Streak-ending heat white-hot while Brock too his usual long sabbatical. Poor Cesaro was left with nothing to do but lurk in the background looking as useful and wanted as an erection at a lesbian party.

Cesaro went from being a super-worker and ever-growing crowd fave with a big 'Mania win to an after thought in one day and it took years to recover. An absolute fucking waste.

[air_raid]

19 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

Anyway, my pick is Randy Orton’s face turn in 2004. I liked Orton before then - the RNN news updates were fun, the Legend Killer stuff was cool, and he had one of the better runs of the period with the Intercontinental Title. Then they have him win the belt and go full sympathetic goody overnight. I just lost interest in Orton, and to be honest, I’ve never managed to get it back. Nothing he’s done since has really grabbed me and it all goes back to the sour taste of that terrible terrible face turn.

You make a great point in terms of it being a bad turn in concept - can I get in on execution? In having Orton get betrayed by Evolution as he did, they made him look stupid. By having him run off into the crowd after spitting in Hunter's face on Raw, they made him look a coward. In having him lose the belt in his first PPV defence, they made him a loser. "Stupid, cowardly loser" is not a recipe for a top babyface. Thankfully they saw sense pretty sharpish. I still think he'd have beaten The Undertaker at Mania 21 to complete his rehabilitation ahead of chasing Batista in the summer, if they didn't know Randy needed time off to get his shoulder sorted.

My own pick is the Hogan/Flair double turn at Uncensored 99. You've already done a marvelous job on the timeline of summarizing what a terrible idea both artistically and commercially it was, but let's not leave any doubts. Turning Ric Flair on it's own merit when as a babyface he's one if your biggest ratings winners, by itself, is a bad idea. Better as a heel Flair might be (for me, and plenty of others) by 99 he's such a fixture of WCW and has been so good for so long, nobody wants to boo him. It just feels wrong.

But it crosses the line into FUCKAWFUL when it's juxtaposed to Hogan turning babyface after nearly three years of being the biggest cunt ever. In the Flair feud alone the nWo repeatedly threatened Flairs livelihood, beat the shit out of him and his mates, buried him alive, whipped his son in front of him, managed to corrupt said son into betraying him through the most vile and evil of the dark arts - an attractive woman - .... do I really need to go on? OH NO, Flair cheated a bit to get the belt off him in the nonsensical cage/First Blood match. (1) Shall we forgive a bit of cheating because its RIC FUCKING FLAIR and that's part of why we love him and (2) Hogan deserves to get fucked over, surely? This isn't a heel turn, it's poetic justice! I've never known a promotion be so out of touch with its audience than WCW was here... except, maybe, when about a year later they tried to turn Goldberg too.

Honourable mention to ROH trying to turn Alex Shelley face for roughly the same reasons as Hogan above, after he'd spent half a year being chief antagonist as Gen Next hindered all the babyfaces. Fell so flat that in no time at all they had to turn him back and dump him in the Embassy because nobody really wanted to cheer him and his main enemy, Austin Aries, was gradually becoming a defacto babyface on account of simply being too good to boo. Also, he was a smug twat.

[LEGIT]

4 hours ago, Bukamania said:

I have to say Lex Luger in 1993.

He came in as The Narcissist in early 93 as a smug heel who would cause damage to his opponents with a metal plate in his arm. He beat up fan favorites like Perfect, Hart and Virgil (lol). Then all of sudden he's Captain America, defeating the evil foreigner by count out in the main event of SS 93 and celebrating like he won the title. He could never replace Hulk Hogan or compete with Bret Hart as it showed as the Lex Express was put to a stop by Mania X.

I'd put Luger's face turn among the best in wrestling history.

 

As for the worst? Not sure. But my biggest gripe in when you have two bland midcarders made acceptable in a semi-decent tag team, only for one to turn on the other for no good reason and little furore, resulting in them becoming boring and unused singles wrestlers again before an eventual release.

[GPW Kristian Zane]

Sting joining the Main Event Mafia on Impact I didn't really like Sting in the Mafia cause he didn't really fit with the others and then lost to Foley in one of the worst Cage matches I've ever seen.

Then later as a heel conspiracy theorist  (knocking the snot out of RVD who had only just debuted) only for it to turn out Sting was, "right all along".

[Supremo]

Seth Rollins turning babyface in the lead up to his Wrestlemania match against Triple H is easily the worst turn of all time. To this day I’m still convinced that someone was sabotaging him on purpose. It left his character in tatters and it was only his performances these last few months that’s made him feel like he’s back on track.

Whoever came up with the concept should’ve been sacked on the spot. Triple H, his best mate at the time, simply decides to handpick Kevin Owens instead. Seth didn’t come to any type of realisation himself. There was no story or character arc. He didn’t have some huge change of motive. There wasn’t any grand moment where he proved he was a goodie afterall. He was just a bad guy who other bad guys decided to bin off. How is anyone supposed to feel sympathy or support for such a loser? He acted a prick for ages, then all his dickhead mates decided to go with someone else instead. So you’re still a prick, just a prick with no friends. Some babyface.

Then he lost and lost and lost. Every month he’d face Kevin Owens and every month he’d lose. So not only has he still not given us a single reason to cheer him, but now he’s being continually outsmarted by Jericho and Owens. Again, you’re not a babyface mate, you’re just a shitter heel than the guys you’re facing.

The biggest crime though was that NXT invasion angle. That should’ve been dynamite, but was anything but. The idea of someone feuding with Triple H and invading a Takeover event to fuck with him is such an awesome concept. Imagine if a properly defined character did it and caused complete havoc. It’d be incredible. Instead we got Seth jumping the rail, threatening to take over the show, only to be easily removed by security, never to return. All in the space of about ten minutes, too. What a fucking wally. 

I’m sure there were other moments of ridiculousness. Didn’t Stephanie stop Seth from entering the Royal Rumble, which he just accepted like a complete chump? And didn’t Hunter and Samoa Joe continue to batter him every single week leading to Mania? It was so tone deaf from beginning to end. Honestly, he may as well have lost to Triple H at Wrestlemania because by that point he was dead in the water regardless. 

The only thing stopping that version of Seth Rollins from being the worst babyface of all time is the 2018 booking of Roman Reigns. It is the worst turn though. By far.

[GeronimoJacksBeard]

^ Yeah, i was going to reference that Seth turn. Face turns are always rotten when they effectively become default face because they've been ditched and turned on by other heels, much like the aforementioned Orton switch. How can that ever be a good way to go about it. It's happened far too many times since the Orton shambles, always with poor results.

With that Seth turn, it really felt at the time like they'd missed the boat with making him baby, it came too late and in a nonsensical fashion. It seemed, when he got shelved with such a horrid injury in the midst of a long title run, that the crowd were properly gutted for him, being the champ, now missing WrestleMania, all of that. And the whole "redesign. rebuild. reclaim" seemed to add to it and i was imagining he was going to get the big hype job on just how much he was rehabbing like a man possessed and how much this meant to him, chronicling his road to recovery and back to the championship ala 2002 Triple H Desire - U2 - Beautiful Day, you know the one. Triple H went out there as one of the top heels. He turned face just from being absent and the tone of those videos. He returned a hero and seeming as bigger a deal as he ever had (for a bit at least).

Seth should have got similar treatment. His special on the network was decent, had that kind of tone and he came across likeable in it. But something should have been all over tv, reminding you he's been working his arse off to come back and his return should have been announced and i'm certain the audience at the time would have welcomed him back with open arms, as in his absence Reigns had got the big push and the backlash to that was in full effect. He returned and attacked Reigns, but then instantly made it clear he's still heel come the following Raw and you could sense the disappointment and confusion of the crowd, because they wanted him back and wanted to cheer him for being back. Felt like a real missed opportunity and then they went and did it not long after anyway, in terrible fashion as Supremo detailed and it totally killed him for a good while.

It's interesting that he's starting to really gain some babyface momentum now, pretty much through matches alone. Besides whats mentioned above, when The Shield first turned babyface as a unit, early on Seth really looked like the standout and that he could be money as a babyface. They ran with him, but went heel, which also seemed a bit of a missed chance, but that scenario can sometimes result in becoming an even hotter babyface later on. Finally could be happening for him. Having him hold the IC title, be a traditional "workhorse" type champion and make that belt THE belt on Raw in Lesnars absence could be a great way to go about it. He could be a great contender to take the Rumble come January.

[Briefcase]

On 8 May 2018 at 10:29 AM, Glenryck Pilchards said:

Anyway... the worst heel turn has to be when Eugene turned heel on Hacksaw Jim Duggan in 2006. Who in the right mind would want to boo a 'special' person?

The thing with Eugene is it only ever had a short shelf life with that character. I still think they could have made him gone proper heel and could have been in Evolution (or whatever stable Triple H had at the time) even if it was interfering in matches almost as if Triple H manipulated him into thinking that being with them was a good thing. Missed opportunity I think to be clever with it. 

[Briefcase]

Double post. Sorry.

[unfitfinlay]

On 5/8/2018 at 1:35 PM, tiger_rick said:

I liked the Duggan turn. I've always thought he was a massive spenk so any reason for him to be booed is fine by me.

The incredible thing about the Duggan turn is that it was fucked entirely because Duggan is a massive spenk.

He hadn't been watching WCW, had no idea who Team Canada were and didn't realise that Lance Storm being dry and serious was his gimmick. Duggan genuinely thought that Storm was just shite and thought that he was being asked change his character because he was "making the kid look bad". Fucking hell, the story involved his real life battle with cancer and he still tried to play it for laughs. The thick cunt.

It was a nice idea in theory though.

I'd also nominate Chavo Guerrero turning on Rey Mysterio for exploiting Eddie's death. That's not a heel turn. Chavo was 100% in the right and it led the really odd, uncomfortable, feud where Eddie's actual family were meant to be unreasonable for asking Rey to respect their wishes. Oh, and Eddie himself turning on Tajiri because Tajiri got knocked into one of Eddie's cars. Eddie was one of the most popular people in the company at the time. He could've set Tajiri on fire and the fans still would've cheered him.

Is David Arquette too obvious?

[Jazzy G]

Didn't Luger turn on Flair and end up helping Hogan & Savage to get the win in that triple tier cage match? Was he a secret Hulkamaniac or was it just piss poor booking?

[Fox Piss]

Whilst certainly not the worst in the whole wrestling landscape, Crush turning heel so soon into his pineapple Kona gimmick stumped me especially seeing the pay offs.