10 Biggest WWE Missed Opportunities Of 2018

10. Dean Ambrose’s Heel Turn

When Ambrose turned heel the night the world found out about Roman Reigns’ battle with Leukemia, I thought that the company did a stellar job with the execution. The turn wasn’t just a wrestler turning on his partner, but a man clearly conflicted on betraying his best friend in Seth Rollins.

The best villains are the ones who don’t realize that they’re villains. Their worldview is clear and understandable despite their actions being vile. However, that all changed when WWE thought that Ambrose should be going after heat instead of keeping his feud with Rollins personal.

Ambrose went from a compelling antagonist to a cartoon villain the moment he started trashing the fans. Look, I get it. WWE clearly wants the fans to boo Ambrose and that’s fine, but the audience doesn’t need to be bluntly told that they should hate this guy.

We understand that what he’s doing is wrong and the fans can easily side with Rollins whose clearly the good guy in all this. It was indeed noticeable that some fans were cheering for Ambrose over Rollins, but I don’t believe creative should’ve veered from keeping the feud personal between the two.

His match with Rollins at TLC was boring. It never felt like a blood feud and the story they were trying to get across wasn’t told well. Ambrose didn’t need to become the generic heel who uses rest holds to get heat. In fact, Ambrose style before his heel turn works perfectly for his new character.

Ambrose’s turn isn’t a lost cause. It’s still fresh and Ambrose is doing the best he can with what he’s being given, but it’s a shame that he went from this layered and fascinating character to a silly generic heel who’s wearing gas masks because the town stinks.

Creative should go back to the psyche of what makes his character tick and drop all the fan-pandering nonsense. It works for Daniel Bryan because that was his ultimate motivation for his heel turn, thus him chastising the fans makes sense, whereas for Ambrose it doesn’t.

• lists
• missed opportunities
• 2018
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