5 Worst Heel Turns in the WWE
Everyone needs a good villain. Someone that can help get the fans behind the good guy, someone that can really fuel an audience and force them to make noise. There have been some truly great heels in WWE history, ranging from The Iron Shiek all the way to Samoa Joe. However, sometimes the WWE Universe has a hard time accepting a character as a heel.
A heel turn is incredibly important, both in the case of the newly turned villain and the babyface they've chosen to target. When done correctly, both wrestlers get the reaction from the crowd that could give them a significant boost in their careers.
However, sometimes it doesn't work out that way, and a heel turn can leave a crowd confused or completely disinterested. Worse so, sometimes creative attempts to swerve an audience, forcing turns that don't exactly make sense in context with a story that had been told.
Recently, fans across the globe rejected the heel turn by Becky Lynch, instead choosing to cheer the Lass Kicker while booing WWE Smackdown Women's Champion Charlotte Flair out of the building.
While the company did what they could to build Becky up as a babyface who clawed her way to a title shot at SummerSlam, with the WWE Universe strongly behind her, they felt it was better to attempt to have Becky turn her back on her fans.
Over the past week, that didn't go well, and even though she tried to put the Brooklyn crowd down on Smackdown Live, she still received praise and cheers from the WWE faithful.
That's the most recent example of a poorly executed heel turn, and in the WWE there is more where that came from.
Today, we're here to look at five of the worst heel turns in WWE history.
#5 Eugene assaults Jim Duggan in 2006
This was one of the strangest moves the WWE ever decided to make when it came to Nick Dinsmore's Eugene character, and that's saying a lot. Labeled as Eric Bischoff's "special" nephew, Eugene was more of a super fan than a wrestler, using the signature moves of his favorite superstars like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, and Triple H.
Two years after his Raw debut, Eugene began teaming with WWE Legend "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan. In an attempt to capture the World Tag Team Championships, Eugene and Duggan were unsuccessful when they took on the Spirit Squad on September 3, 2006. A visibly upset Eugene took his frustration out on Duggan, beating down the legend.
Eugene even used Duggan's iconic 2x4 on him, choking him out with it before walking up the ramp, turning heel for the first time in his career. It was strange to see the WWE turn that character heel, but what was even stranger was that they completely dropped the angle a few weeks later, hoping that the WWE Universe would completely forget.