10 Heel Turns That MASSIVELY Backfired

2. Steve Austin Ends The Attitude Era With A Handshake

If someone told you to name the most famous heel turn of all time, chances are that Stone Cold Steve Austin 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 terrible business decision. 

Many fans couldn’t accept that Austin and McMahon could ever be friends after 3 years of them making each other’s lives hell. Admittedly, some people thought that Austin thrived in the role, adding a hilarious new dimension to his character. However, subjectivity to one side, it was a tangible, provable misstep for WWE in financial terms. 

First, Austin was the biggest merch shifter in WWE history and shortly after his turn, those sales bottomed out. Second, and most crucial, Austin had no one to feud with. With The Rock gone from the company until SummerSlam, the only main event babyface left was The 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 and buried.

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1. WCW Gives Us All The Finger

Going into Starrcade 98, Goldberg was WCW Champion, still undefeated and WCW’s best thing going at the time. However, despite this, management felt that he had beaten everyone on the roster, and seeing as Starrcade was their most momentous show of the year, they chose to have babyface Kevin Nash finally break Goldberg’s streak, via interference from Nash’s old running buddy, Scott Hall. 

Even though Hall had interfered, Nash remained face and offered Goldberg a rematch two weeks later on Nitro. Somehow, via a phenomenon that can only be described as ‘WCW booking’, Hulk Hogan replaced Goldberg in that advertised title match. The bell rang, Hogan poked Nash in the chest, Nash fell down and let Hogan pin him. Hollywood was WCW Champion, Nash turned heel and the original nWo reunited, over a year after the New World Order storyline should have ended at Starrcade 97. 

This fan-baiting horror show occurred on the same episode where WCW spoiled Mankind winning the WWF Championship in what turned out to be a hard fought, emotional match. Hundreds of thousands of people changed the channel to see Mick win, and those that stayed were treated to some of the most insulting booking they’d ever seen. 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.

• WCW
• Adam Blampied
• heel turns
• wwe

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