So this would be the YouTube channel version of the Network's "Best Betrayals" show, with 2 drastic improvements:
1) It's much shorter.
2) They actually get the order correct!
Of course, it's still WWE-exclusive stuff, but consider the source. A much better list, at any rate.
The lost art of the shocking heel turn. Nothing can raise interest in a boring character/storyline like a well plotted, well executed heel turn. It's a lost art.
ReplyDelete"I knew he was gonna do that!" - Bobby Heenan. Just outstanding.
Looking at that list, I like how in retrospect it seems that both Andre and Savage realised before anybody that Hogan was a douchebag of epic proportions.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'd happily sub Bret Hart at WM13 for the Stephanie McMahon turn, since although the seeds were sown way earlier than WM13, it led to the whole 'heel in the US only' schtick which was such a unique and enjoyable gimmick. I'm suprised they've not ripped that off yet with one of the current crop.
Hmmm..... Too much Triple H on this list. Regardless, it's a pretty good list aside from some classic heel turns like Larry Zbyszko bloodying Bruno Sammartino, Terry Gordy slamming a cage door on Kerry Von Erich's head, Barry Windham joining the Horsemen, and the Road Warriors almost decapitating Sting.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny looking back at Hogan's career because in nearly every instance, the heels were completely justified in turning on him.
ReplyDeleteOnly 3 of the Top 10 involve HHH. Impressive restraint from WWE!
ReplyDeleteIt’s true. I bet that if you made a list of every guy who ever turned on him, that it'd be easy to argue a case that justified each turn.
ReplyDeleteI honestly can't think of an instance where someone turned on him that wasn't justified. With the possible exception of Jimmy Hart at Halloween Havoc. That was just WCW.
ReplyDeleteIt's missing Batista turning on Rey.
ReplyDeleteIt's missing HBK turning on Montreal.
But most of all it's missing Trish turning at WM XX
Let's see....
ReplyDeletePaul Orndorff: Hogan is an egomaniac who can't be bothered to return his good friend Paul's phone calls because Hogan is "too busy" with other things. Check.
Andre the Giant: Hogan gives every two-bit heel a shot at the WWF championship, but in three years, can't find the time to give his good friend Andre a shot. Check.
Randy Savage: Hogan can't resist the urge to get a lil' too handsy with Elizabeth in front of Savage (there was definitely lust in Hogan's eyes for Elizabeth), not to mention leaving Savage to fend for himself against Bossman and Akeem and national TV while Hogan stayed with Elizabeth in the trainer's room as the result of Elizabeth getting knocked down during the match. (read: not exactly a dire situation). Check.
Yeah, Hogan deserved every bit of it.
Imagine if the guys didn't turn on Hogan. "Oh, you want to bang my wife? Perfect! "
ReplyDeleteBarry. Windhaw.
ReplyDeleteSurprised there's no Austin.
ReplyDeleteSid is another one off of the top of my head. Legitimately eliminates Hogan from the Royal Rumble and
ReplyDeletein turn gets eliminated himself (costing him the title) due to Hogan being a sore loser.
Bret should've popped him one in the mouth after WM9 too.
I will defend Hogan in Andre's case. Andre never asked for a title shot, Hogan was busy defending against more "aggressive" opponents, AND Andre even spent part of that time "outside" the WWE, on "suspension".
ReplyDeleteNow, Hogan's trying to beg off Andre's challenge... yeah, he deserved that one.
Doesnt help that its hard to care about most of the guys in the company now. A Savage heel turn in 89 could tear you up as everyone loved the guy. Who gives a shit if a Sheamus or Orton turns
ReplyDeleteHogan Bash at the Beach 96 is #1 legit right?
ReplyDeleteI agree. The only guy that would blow the roof off if turned heel is Cena. And they shoulda done it when he was feuding with Punk in 2011. That feud was a license to print money and they blew it. It should have been Hart-Austin 2.0 and wasn't.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the Windham turn and Road Warriors turning on Dusty/Sting are pretty glaring omissions.
ReplyDeleteI always thought they missed an opportunity by not turning Ultimate Warrior evil at some point. Evil Warrior would have had even more epic-a-lar promos than his good guy ones.
ReplyDeleteHonorable mentions:
ReplyDeleteSapphire breaks Dusty’s heart at Summerslam ‘90
Hacksaw Jim Duggan joining Team Canada
Tugboat demolishing the Bushwhackers to become ‘Typhoon’ (to be fair that was probably his best gimmick though.)
Apparently they tried, at least once. And Warrior said "NOOOOOOO...!!!!!" to every attempt.
ReplyDeleteFor a second I thought this was missing Bret Hart's turn from '97 was missing, but then I remembered HE WAS THE HERO THE WHOLE TIME YOU GODDAMN DIRTY AMERICAN FANS!
ReplyDeleteWoman turning on the Steiners.
ReplyDeleteJim Cornette waffling the Dynamic Dudes to reunite with the Midnights.
The heel turn hasn't meant much since they were a near weekly staple of Russo booking during the Monday Night Wars. Those heel turns, for the most part, lacked logic or rationale and were more/less done just to get people talking. Yeah, you are absolutely correct that a Sheamus or an Orton turn would mean next to nothing as the sins of (past) bookers have all but destroyed the impact a heel turn should have.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymotion.com/video/x12z29d_bret-hart-vs-sycho-sid-full-match-and-bret-hart-famous-rant_sport
ReplyDeleteWWE believes most of its fans never watched WCW until Hogan joined.
ReplyDeleteWhich is actually a justifiable position.
The funny thing is if you showed that second clip now, people would think the MIDNIGHTS turned face, with that crowd pop for Cornette's racket shot.
ReplyDeleteAnd where, pray tell, is the Jake Roberts' heel turn from 1991?? Granted, the feud with Ultimate Warrior went nowhere, but his stuff with Randy Savage was pure gold!
ReplyDeleteHad everything to do with the Dynamic Dudes being absolutely horrible. Kind of forshadowed the way American wrestling fans were starting to turn against over the top babyfaces.
ReplyDeleteBest part of Sapphire's turn was babyface Piper ripping Big Dust to shreds on commentary throughout the match with Savage. Roddy really had an axe to grind with Rhodes for some reason.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem I had with the Road Warriors heel turn is that it was pretty much negated once Dusty was turfed from the NWA in December of 1988.
ReplyDeleteHis turned sucked, though. People in the arena popped for him!
ReplyDeleteMy lasting memory of that is Elizabeth's bad acting when the snake popped out of the wedding present box and she got caught smiling on camera when she was supposed to be terrified.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g6bpr8dwz4&feature=kp
Trish's turn was the sexiest ever, that's for sure!
ReplyDeleteMore complicated question: what are some of the better heel turns that actually turned out to be face turns?
ReplyDeleteExample: Eddie beating the shit out of Tajiri after his low rider was scratched.
WWE also missed an opportunity with Victoria when she beat the hell out of the non-wrestling divas in Canada and the crowd gave her the loudest pop of the night when she hit Christy Hemme with the Widow's Peak.
Jake's turn was actually before that when he led Warrior into a trap.
ReplyDeleteThe Cena heel turn IS coming if only because it has to for the sake of Cena's career. The young fans who cheered him in 2005 and 2006 or quickly becoming jaded teenagers who are quickly tiring of his act. However, I don't see the Cena heel turn happening until such a time when the WWE can find a suitable face to replace him. It looks like they might have had something in Daniel Bryan, but with the unfortunate neck injury and lack of credible opponents outside of Evolution, that may not happen.
ReplyDeleteInstantly more gorgeous than she was before.
ReplyDeleteHow do you fix that? Have everyone maintain their current alignment on the face/heel spectrum and then
ReplyDeleteHave someone do a turn? I'm just asking. The only turn that would have any impact now would be Cena.... Which isn't happening until
He stops selling tshirts (and at that point it probably stops to matter).
So stop buying Cena t-shirts Blog of Doomers!! I know it's you at the merch stand grasping your Cena swag in your sweaty palms and shouting "Let's go Cena!" :)
ReplyDeleteHa ha. Reminds of one of Piper's lines from his GCW days where he said Dusty Rhodes looked like he had just given birth to a litter of puppies.
ReplyDeleteThey forgot about when Titus O'Neil turned on Darren Young.
ReplyDeleteI find it funny that everyone calls this the Reality Era of the WWE when the overly scripted, stilted feel, of the show makes everything seem even less real than before. So I don't know how you could do a heel turn that had any chance of getting over when all of that spontaneous emotion is lost. Vince, the stock has plunged. It's time to throw the script away. Book the matches. Book the finishes. Give the boys a general direction, and let them have at it. Come what may.
ReplyDeleteYou would have to hit the proverbial reset button on the way wrestling is viewed with respect to character development and proper builds to matches. And with competition like UFC, that's a whole lot easier said than done. While the end of squash matches and emergence of PPV-caliber matches on weekly free television seemed like a good idea during the late '90's and early '00s, it ultimately proved to be detrimental as storylines and feuds no longer had time to develop and garner fans' interest. By extension, heel turns were no longer as significant since bookers had no patience in using the "slow burn" method.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I'm not so sure fans can be retrained to view wrestling in such a way where heel turns are once again truly shocking.
"Unclogging toilets by day, delivering pizzas by night. That's a 'dream,' pun intended."
ReplyDeleteNone of that has anything to do with the stock plunging.
ReplyDeleteMost "reality" television is overly-scripted and stilted, so the name fits, IMO.
ReplyDeleteNo, it doesn't. But it could have everything to do with it rising back up ;)
ReplyDeleteI don't recognize I still read news here but they say diffrent about it http://goo.gl/UTMZb3
ReplyDeleteI think he was supposed to at Summerslam '92 , but turned it down at literally the last minute.
ReplyDeleteWut? Also, if I click on that link is my laptop going to get computer syphilis?
ReplyDeleteIgnore and flag that crap. That's not the first bot that's sniffed around recently.
ReplyDeleteWeren't they in Philly or another smark heavy town? Not that it mattered I suppose. The Dudes were universally hated.
ReplyDeleteIt was in Troy New York. Clash 9. The best Clash of them all.
ReplyDeleteYup, turning it down also cost him what would have been his 2nd WWF Title reign too as he must have been booked to win it.
ReplyDeleteSeeing the Warrior aligning himself with Ric Flair & Mr.Perfect would have been a strange dynamic and i'm not sure it would have worked to be honest.
Plus if Warrior's champ, i can't see Bret Hart winning the strap in 1992. Probably Macho Man regains it at Survivor Series (Lets say Warrior still walks out as before but this time he at least works the show)and maybe just maybe we get the Mania IX main event that we should have gotten all along with Savage passing the torch to the Hitman.
Right. They were in Philly for Havoc '89 where the Dudes got booed, and their opponents The Freebirds almost got a Road Warriors pop.
ReplyDeleteCorrect. I can't remember a face team more hated than the Dudes.
ReplyDeleteThey haven't hit bottom. The stock is in better shape than it was a year ago
ReplyDeleteYeah, guy was posting links to his site a few days ago.
ReplyDeleteThe original Deal With It!
ReplyDeletePiper was chirpy all throughout that show:
ReplyDelete- He called the Rockers "the Mick Jagger & David Bowie of the WWF." And he didn't mean it as a compliment. After the match, Jannetty crawled over Michaels to protect his bad knee from further attack by P&G, and Piper pointed out, "They LOOK like Mick Jagger and David Bowie right about now!"
- Sean Mooney lamenting that Dusty was too late in getting to Ted Dibiase's limo before it drove off. "What was he gonna do if he got there?" Piper snorted. "Lay in front of the car?"
- Giving Vince shit about telling Demolition apart. Doubly surprising that he'd stick up for the Demos because of how tight he was with Bret, which always came through on commentary.
- Calling Hogan's countout win a "cheap victory."
- Somewhat subtly shitting on the Warrior in general, like suggesting that he'd beat him by just tying his tassels to the cage.
That's total bullshit, yet another "fact" that originated entirely in a Keith rant. There was never any plan at all for Warrior to be the one to sell out, ever.
ReplyDeleteRic Flair won the title 3 days after Summerslam,sounds like a Plan B to me, Warrior doesn't turn heel and win the title so lets have our other Top heel win it instead.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if he'll wear black jean shorts instead of blue.
ReplyDeleteBecause he's evil.
seeing the outcome of Countdown votes like the "tag team" one, I don't doubt it.
ReplyDeletewho's there to try it with? Del Rio? Mysterio?
ReplyDeleteisn't that what every great heel turn should be like? having the heels an at least understandable motivation (but usually not agreeing with the way he acts on it).
ReplyDeletewell here are your choices: Choice is a logical heel turn by Warrior after being teased for weeks. Choice B is having the company tease about a heel turn for weeks only to have it amount to nothing except Flair and Hennig "screwing" with Warrior and Savage, something the fans shit on and made the WWF bookers look like morons. So yeah it might be Choice B, but if so it didn't exactly make a lot of sense nor paint the creative team in a positive light. It may be the "payoff" was so beyond stupid that fans invented the idea of Warrior turning heel (although some people have said it was true, I know Bret did in his book). If this "fact" came from a Scott Keith rant, I can't imagine too many wrestlers and backstage people confirming it.
ReplyDelete"but whose side is he on?" was still a bit stupid (and about the only instance where I think editing it out totally improves the match/angle)
ReplyDeleteexactly. The whole thing made no sense as written. It was either plan B or one of the 10 stupidest booked main event angles ever, complete with completely shitting on your fans with no payoff.
ReplyDeleteblack jeans and a mustache.
ReplyDeleteyep they turned back face within 2 months.
ReplyDeleteprobably true of the current fans. If we are talking fans back in the day, many fans watched both. But fans in 2014? Most of them are probably too young to have watched much before the Monday night wars.
ReplyDeleteIt works BECAUSE it's Heenan, the one guy who never had a nice word to say about Hogan. Also, that's what Bischoff and Schiavone (if he knew) get for NOT letting the announce team in on the secret.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you expect Heenan to do, praise Hulk? THAT would have been so many red flags, you might as well have put "HULK IS JOINING THE NWO" on screen.
I guess I don't understand why Perfect and Flair screwing with Savage and Warrior should be construed as a bad thing. They pulld it off in a way that didn't make the babyfaces look like total morons, and it regained some heat for Flair after he was basically emaciated at WM8.
ReplyDeleteIf you're turning Warrior heel, you're killing off the closest thing to a money house show main event that you have, which is Warrior chasing champion Flair. (No, there are no "money" house show matches per se, at this point, I get that). Savage is not an option, period--this was the start of Savage as the marginalized part-time legend, because his title run flopped badly. The point of the IC belt is to have something to fight for on the B-shows, so Bulldog's out. I don't see how you can push Bret as an around-the-horn house show challenger just coming off of losing a title. Undertaker has some potential, but even notwithstanding the matches he had with Flair, he's more of a placeholder than anything--plus he was pretty much an early-'90s version of Andre the Giant at this point. Unless you want to shell out enough cash to bring Piper back, who's left?
I never really picked up on a Warrior turn being "teased" any more than a Savage turn. Both scenarios seemed to be presented as equally likely going into the show.
The Black Scorpion, the first Randy Orton face turn, Flair chasing Savage as a challenger after losing at WM8, Jericho vs. HHH and Stephanie's dog, Cheetum blowing up a boat, Hogan vs. Beefcake headlining Starrcade, Sid being deathly afraid of Diesel, just about everything involving The Alliance, Luger/Flair at Capital Combat, the "McMahon in Every Corner"...hmm, I don't see how SummerSlam '92 even comes close to cracking that list, and that was just off the top of my head and didn't factor in anything booked by Vince Russo.
ReplyDeleteI would place Orton, Flair chasing Savage, McMahon in every corner all above this angle. Atleast even the bad ones mentioned above ATTEMPTED to have a payoff. If this was high school it might make sense. Bullies screw with kids, laugh hysterically when the two fight. But this is wrestling where fans have been educated to expect a payoff. When someone was bought in the match between Tatanka and Luger, they didn't end it with DiBiase announcing that he was just screwing with both of them. Fans expect a payoff and merely saying it was all mindgames has been code for "something got screwed up in our plans (see Black scorpion as Flair")" for as long as I've been a wrestling fan. Claiming mindgames is a copout when the original booking went off kilter. Again, I don't know whether Warrior was supposed to turn heel or not (or Savage for that matter) but not doing it was just dumb.
ReplyDeletehow about neither?
ReplyDeleteimo a turn works best if there is hardly any doubt about the "side" of the worker (this applies even to stuff like Michaels in the barber shop. but right before he kicks him they make up again).
I think the reason people have latched onto Warrior turning rather than Savage is twofold. First some guys backstage have confirmed it Two, it made more sense in that Warrior could then feud with Savage or Savage could feud with Flair and Perfect, out for revenge. But I would have been fine with Savage turning too. Just payoff the angle and don't give me "mindgames" which has long been code in wrestling for "our booking plans got screwed up here's a lame explanation."
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite Heenan lines ever....just the way he said it cracks me up every time. I'm easily amused.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with doing a big heel turn in the 'reality era' is that a big section of the fans (the Cena-booers) will start cheering simply because SOMETHING IS HAPPENING within these bland storylines. Look at Triple H's turn at Summerslam last year. Though Bryan was a huge fan favourite, HHH pedigreeing him still got a big pop just because it was a major event happening before the fans' eyes.
ReplyDeleteIf someone like Sheamus turned on Monday, he'd probably get a big pop since the 'smart' half of the audience would approve since it's a wise character change. Fans today just cheer their favourites regardless of face/heel alignment --- the only exception I can think of is Heyman, who is beloved by smarks and yet still gets booed following his promos, which is why Heyman might be the best heel ever.