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10 Wrestling Heel Turns That Made No Sense Whatsoever

2K views 10 replies 9 participants last post by  GetDown 
#1 ·


More often than not, fictional art is designed to make sense. Logic and continuity dictate the path the story takes, so that when all the loose ends are tied up there is little in the way of confusion.

The key protagonists made their choices and they made them for clearly identifiable reasons. We don't need to agree with them, but we can at least see why they happened.

Luckily (or unfortunately, depending on your opinion), professional wrestling is no normal form of fictional art. It is a world that demands you suspend your disbelief, and accept what is going on for what it is. If we're going to accept that throwing a man towards ropes will result in him running back in your direction after hitting them, we can accept a lot of things.

Even for the most loyal fan however, this can be thrown way out of the window. This is particularly true when it comes to that most-sought-after of tropes, the heel turn.

Good guys often need to go bad to rejuvenate their careers, but sometimes their motives for doing so just don't make any sense at all.

I'm not asking for my wrestlers to be steeped in real life, I'm just asking for a little bit of logic now and then.

Here are 10 heel turns that saw that logic destroyed on arrival.
Credit: http://whatculture.com/wwe/10-wrestling-heel-turns-that-made-no-sense-whatsoever

10. The Iraqi Turncoat

Wrestling has had many 'American Heroes' over the many decades, and none were more patriotic than Sgt. Slaughter. Sarge had initially turned to the good side in 1984 by defending the honour of the Stars and Bars against that dastardly Iron Sheik.

However, the emergence of Hulk Hogan as the biggest wrestling star on the planet saw Slaughter phased out, and he left for the AWA.

Slaughter returned to the WWF in 1990, but not as the American hero everyone knew him as. No, Slaughter decided to turn his back on his nation due to the fact that the US had welcomed Nikolai Volkoff with open arms. The freedom that he once fought for was the reason he turned his back on his country.

Not only that, but Slaughter went so far as to align himself with the enemy, Iraq. The whole point was to capitalise on the Gulf War to get a big gate in for WrestleMania VII, but by the time 'Mania came around the war was over and the whole thing was even more illogical.
9. It's Okay That You Wish I'd Died In The Womb, Honest

In a story that no-one was particularly interested in seeing, Nikki Bella turned on her sister Brie at SummerSlam in 2014, aligning with Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley to give her boss a victory over her sister at the show.

This in itself didn't make a whole lot of sense, as Stephanie had done everything she could over the previous few months to make Nikki's life as hard as possible.

After saying some pretty awful things to her sister, Nikki picked up a victory over Brie that meant Mrs. Daniel Bryan was contractually forced to be her sister's personal assistant for 30 days. Nikki became the #1 contender to AJ Lee's Divas Championship during this time, and the two were to face at Survivor Series.

Inexplicably, with just three days of her tenure as PA left, Brie helped her sister win the strap. Okay, that part makes sense with the story, but the next thing we knew Brie and Nikki were back together as if nothing had ever happened.

Bully your siblings kids, they'll forget it eventually.
8. Bitterness And Baseball Bats

By 1999, World Championship Wrestling was completely out of ideas. They were getting clobbered in the ratings on a weekly basis, and the ship was taking on more and more water with each passing moment.

The New World Order had eaten itself alive, and Hulk Hogan was back in pole position as the number one babyface.

Except he wasn't really, as crowds still saw him as nWo 'Hollywood' Hogan. What did WCW do to try and remedy this? Well, how about taking the one guy that had stood against the nWo, the man who was the most beloved superstar in WCW history, and turn him heel? Great idea!

Sting as a heel never really worked, especially not in WCW. He turned heel (supposedly) by clobbering Hogan with his trademark baseball bat. His motives were bitterness and jealousy, two things that had never really been associated with the Stinger throughout his career.

Needless to say, he was a good guy again a few short months later.
7. TNA Gets Pounced, Drops Ball

TNA wasn't too terrible in 2005. Sure, the virus that was constantly bringing in ageing veterans to clog up the main event scene was around, but the company also had an incredible roster of talent and some of their homegrown faces were really catching fire.

One such name was Monty Brown, who also wrestled in WWECW as Marcus Cor Von. The TNA faithful loved Brown, and desperately wanted to see him usurp Jeff Jarrett at the top of the company. He had come close on a number of occasions, but it seemed to only be a matter of time before TNA pulled the trigger.

In the main event of Destination X in 2005, Jarrett was defending his title against Diamond Dallas Page when, after a mass of interference, Brown made his way to ringside. Instead of attacking his nemesis Jarrett (or even laying out both men, which would have made more sense), Brown delivered a Pounce to DDP and draped Jarrett's arm over him, allowing the champ to retain.

It made no sense at all, and Brown's rationale that he turned because of a lack of opportunities at Jarrett made no sense when you saw that he had aligned with that same man.

The turn put an end to all momentum Brown had, and was a very early sign of TNA's cracking ability to shoot itself in the foot.
6. Ahmed Johnson Joins The Nation

Maybe I'm adding extra layers of emotion to this due to nostalgia and the fact that it coincided with the height of my young fandom, but in 1997 Ahmed Johnson turned his back on The Undertaker and the fans to join the Nation of Domination, led by Faarooq.

The turn itself was shocking enough, but was even more so because Ahmed and Faarooq had been blood rivals ever since the latter had arrived in the WWF. It was Faarooq who had injured Johnson, forcing him to vacate the Intercontinental Championship, and had generally made his life a living hell all the while.

It's easy to forget, but at this time Ahmed Johnson was over as all heck in the WWF. The turn made no sense whichever way you looked at it, and the fact he turned to join up with his greatest rival was even more confusing.

Johnson was injured soon after (obviously), and that was that.
5. I Know What Will Work: Heel Goldberg!

Once upon a time, a heel Goldberg may very well have worked. For sure, if he hadn't been introduced to the world with his wildly-successful undefeated streak he would have fit well as the botty-kicking enforcer of a faction. As it was, he became a man the crowds wanted to cheer and not much else.

If Sting's heel turn in 1999 showed that WCW was all out of steam, doing the same with Goldberg just a year later was the straw that left the back of the camel a bloody mess. After being out injured Goldberg returned in May 2000, interfering in a handicap match that saw Kevin Nash take on Tank Abbott and Rick Steiner.

Going into The Great American Bash, WCW was doing that most-WCW of things and openly telling the audience that a shocking swerve was going to happen. The swerve would come as Goldberg betrayed Kevin Nash and aligned himself with Vince Russo and The New Blood.

Goldberg aligning himself with any group made no sense, let alone a group in authority. Billy boy was injured soon after, and the whole thing quietly forgotten.
4. The Nation Of Violence Gets Paid Off

Get ready to scratch your heads.

In 2009, Samoa Joe returned to TNA and vowed to introduce the Main Event Mafia to what he called his 'nation of violence'. A bizarre sequence of events followed, the low point of which saw Joe kidnap Sheik Abdul Bashir and hang him upside down in the locker room.

Joe and his team battled the Main Event Mafia at Lethal Lockdown, and he continued to work his way through the stable one by one. Slammiversary was the next big show, and in an utterly preposterous move Samoa Joe allowed Kurt Angle to win the King of the Mountain match, quite literally handing Angle the title at the top of the ladder.

It was then revealed that Joe had been bought off by the mafia, and that the scheme had been in motion for a while. All of this didn't explain Joe taking out members of the group, nor his beatdowns of Angle in the Slammiversary match itself. The explanation was that these happened to 'throw people off'.

None of it made sense, none of it at all.
3. The Canadian Turncoat

If Sgt. Slaughter is an American hero in professional wrestling, then I can only dread to think what that makes 'Hacksaw' Jim Duggan. For his entire career Duggan was the most U-S-A! of all professional wrestlers.

He was as American as it gets, a man who very may have bled red, white and blue and most likely cried when singing the national anthem. Jim Duggan was more American than apple pie.

Well, WCW in the year 2000 was a miserable place, and one such example of this misery was the decision to not only turn Duggan heel, but to portray him as a Canadian sympathiser in doing so.

Duggan, pro wrestling's Captain America, turned his back on his beloved in order to align with her northern neighbour.

It made no sense and it didn't bring about anything interesting, serving only to confirm that WCW had been terminally infected with the millennium bug.
2. Austin's Alliance

In fact, you could probably just put huge parts of the Invasion angle in here. Why did ECW align with WCW when it was Ted Turner & Co that the Extreme lot hated the most?

You can run with the McMahons as the owners all you like, but Stephanie and Shane working together made little sense by then as well.

Despite all of this, the dumbest turn of any during this time was performed by the man that would be the figurehead of the Alliance, Stone Cold Steve Austin. He had not long returned to the WWF, and received a thunderous applause on RAW when he stormed out to clear the ring of the invaders.

It was soon revealed that Austin was working with the Alliance however, aligning himself with WCW and ECW. This made and still makes no sense. Austin had been treated like dirt by WCW in his earlier career, and the logic that he wanted to put Vince McMahon out of business doesn't add up when you consider the events of WrestleMania X-Seven just months earlier.

Not only did this turn make no sense, you could also argue that it condemned the Invasion storyline to certain failure.
1. The Sad Story Of The Higher Power

Right, hold on to your hats here.

1998 was the year WWF turned the tide in the Monday Night Wars and finally beat WCW in the ratings, and slowly began to move away from the competition.

The talent roster at WWF's disposal at the time was incredible, and the company also had a number of factions dominating the top of the card. Two of these were the Corporation (led by Vince and the McMahons) and the Ministry of Darkness (led by The Undertaker).

The Undertaker began referring to a higher power, and laid out his desire to wrestle power of the company away from Vince McMahon. Taker makes Vince's life a living hell, famously bringing the boss to tears after burning his daughter's teddy bear. Taker tries to kidnap Stephanie and marry her, only for that damn Stone Cold Steve Austin to save the day and the girl.

Shane McMahon takes over the Corporation and kicks Vince out, and soon aligns with Undertaker and his band of not so merry men. Vince starts to see the error of his past ways and tries to reconcile with various individuals.

All of this leads to an episode of Monday Night RAW where the higher power that Undertaker has been referring to is revealed. The man under the hood?

Vince McMahon.

For fear of giving myself an aneurysm, let's work this out; Undertaker wanted to take control of the company, so he made Vince's life a living hell, abusing him at every opportunity. Vince's son kicks him out of their faction, and aligns with the guy that tried to kidnap and marry his sister.

Despite all this, it turns out that Vince is the higher power and he did all of this just to mess with Austin.

I don't know. I really don't know.
 
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#7 ·
There were so many McMahon turns during the Attitude Era. I lost count of how many feuds and reconciliations that family went through through those years. There were also way too many convoluted "master plans" to try and justify the ridiculousness of such turns like Vince being the higher power as well as Stephanie joining Hunter, just to name a couple.
 
#10 ·
I'd say the entire New Blood vs Millionaires Club angle was botched as far as heels and faces go. They made the young guys who were feeling politicked out of the top of the card the bad guys and the fossils doing the politicking the good guys. It was dumb and ass backwards. Put Sting on the New Blood side as the veteran face that backs the young guys and helps get them over & keep Goldberg a neutral party. I can't believe they tried to sell Hogan vs Kidman with Kidman being the heel. :lmao The entire storyline from top to bottom was ludicrous.
 
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