Hey, Scott. Everyone always talks about how cool and awesome the heel is. Was there ever a heel or heels in your pre-smark days that you actually hated and wanted to see get his or their comeuppance?
Yup.
- Ric Flair was my #1 target of hatred. I was always dying to see Lex Luger or Sting kick his ass and it wasn't until much later that I came to appreciate how great he really was and got over my markish hatred of his cocky attitude.
- Rick Rude, because I was a pretty big fan of the Ultimate Warrior at the time and it pissed me off to no end that someone who hadn't really earned a shot (he beat Warrior up in a POSEDOWN? Puh-leaze) would then cheat egregiously and beat him for the title. Summerslam was pretty sweet though, because he got exactly what he deserved.
- Honky Tonk Man. No need to elaborate here, he was an awesome heel and I bit into the act hook line and sinker during the glory days.
- Barry Windham in 1988. That Horsemen turn was like a stab through the heart when it happened, but the funny thing is that he was so good that by the end of the year, when he was basically carrying the promotion on his back, I became a big fan of his again regardless of who he was keeping company with.
Those are the big ones off the top of my head.
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`Tags: Attitude, Lex Luger, Rants, Ric Flair, Sting, Ultimate Warrior
Mine was Hulk Hogan in 1989 when he tried to steal Elizabeth from the Macho Man…
….ohhh wait somehow Savage ended up the heel in that situation…
Like you with Flair, I despised Ted DiBiase until I was old enough to appreciate how awesome he was at drawing heat. I totally marked out when Virgil finally turned on him. Of course, I was ten years old, but I ate that shit up.
I thought Warrior won the posedown by DQ, showing Rude really had no claim to the title.
Agreed on Ted Dibiase. He was the best WWE heel of his generation in my opinion. Like with Flair, I hated him until I was old enough to appreciate just how great he was.
Flair for being Flair. I just started watching wrestling just before he jumped to the WWF, but I pretty much hated him until 1996.
Ted Dibiase, for mistreating Virgil and even more so for BUYING SWEET SAPPHIRE. I think that made me cry haha.
Ravishing Rick Rude, but not until his WCW run, although he was the first heel I really started getting into as well.
How about heels you always liked, even as a mark?
For me, Randy Savage was my #1 favorite as a face or heel and I always really dug Mr. Perfect.
Outside of Ric Flair because it would piss me off at the time the amount of times his ass seemed to be saved by the Horsemen running down and beating the shit out of everyone, Bobby Heenan would be my second choice. I swear he’d always be there to make trouble for some of my favorite faces and I’d always love it when he got what he deserved.
Like everyone else, I always loved to see Flair finally get his and it made me so angry when he would seem to always get the belt back that I would back ANYONE who had a chance to beat him. Same was true with the Midnight Express.- that old NWA formula was gold.
But, the guy I hated most as a kid was Randy Savage. As I was a huge Steamboat fan, I would have went to WM3 just to see the Dragon finally get his hands on Savage. Then when Macho turned on Hogan (that right I was a Hulkamaniac… there I said it and now I feel better) it just reaffirmed my hate for Savage.
Too a lesser extent I never liked Bret Hart for cheating the Bulldogs out of the titles, even when I got older.
Oh… and also the Koloffs….damn dirty commies.
Shawn Michaels pre-WM 12. I was just sick of him being Intercontinental Champion. He always seemed to lose via the HTM method, but kept the title.
Vince/Stephanie McMahon- I don’t think I need to explain this.
Money, Inc.: They also always seemed to lose via the HTM method.
The NWO, of course.
Doink the Clown- I so wanted Crush to defeat him.
Yokozuna- Yea, I wanted Lugar to annihilate him.
Scott Steiner- Never liked him when he gained all that muscle.
When I first started watching, way back when, I DESPISED Nick Bockwinkle. He was such an arrogant ass, and I wanted somebody, anybody, to beat his ass. And he had Heenan with him. What a pairing.
Imagine my shock, all these years later, to discover that Bockwinkle seems to be one of the most pleasant gentlemen in the business. He was really good at his job.
For me, it was the Midnights and especially Jim Cornette. hbkslush’s comment above applies to Bobby Eaton also.
It’s funny… even in my earliest mark days, I never hated the heels. I think the only heels I came close to hating were Yokozuna and The Quebecers, and that’s just because I thought they were terrible wrestlers who didn’t deserve to be champions. (I didn’t really start watching wrestling until I was 13.) And at the same time, I LOVED Big Van Vader. Thought he was the baddest motherfucker on the planet.
The Qubecers were awesome wrestlers and probably the best team in the WWF at the time.
I’m with you there, I never really *hated* any of the heels per’se. I think even when I believed it I knew it was fake, but would suspend that disbelief for the fun of it. I would only root against, not actually hate. And like you said, I was a huge Sting mark but I still thought Vader was an awesome badass at the same time. When Yoko was champ I only got sick of waiting for one of my favs to win the belt, but I didn’t hate him for having it.
We didn’t get NWA here, so it was all about WWF. Million Dollar Man and Andre (I didn’t start watching until around SS 88) were massively hated, and Rick Rude and Macho Man joined them from RR 89.
Once we started getting WCW, we had Vader and then the NWO, but that was later on, so I didn’t hate them as much because I was older, and much more cognisant of the whole thing being fake (I always knew it was fake, but in younger days, I was less able to distinguish between the message and messenger, if you will).
I hated Tully Blanchard, i thought he was such a arrogant asshole, especially for being as small as Tully was. I liked the other Horsemen especially Flair but Tully was just a son of a bitch that i hoped would get his ass beat
I hated Honky Tonk Man for most of the same reason as everyone else, he cheated to keep the IC belt, and i bought the whole act
I hated Rick Rude as well ,the whole chippendale act of his drove me nuts
runners up includes Greg Valentine (such a mean fucker), Larry Zbysczo (a big mouth with all the stalling, got me mad at him everytime), Ted DiBiase (rich guy rubbing it in that hes rich and your not, works everytime), and Shawn Micheals (pretty boy punk loved it when he got his ass kicked)
Now the heels i cheered were:
Midnight Express(Eaton & Lane) they were such a great team i couldn’t help but cheer even with Cornette doing his thingalso i loved that theme song “The Chase”
Curt Hennig(saw his heel turn when he won the AWA World Title, thought he was still cool, hoped he’d beat Greg Gagne’s skinny ass; later on as Mr.Perfect in WWF thought it was such a cool character that he became my fav in the WWF at that time)
Ric Flair (after they kicked Sting out of the Horsemen in early 1990) i became a real fan of his from that point forward regardless if he was heel or face
Vader (a badass that could move and hurt you just awesome)
Lex Luger(when he turned heel in 1989 he was at his best as a arrogant jackass and i enjoyed that heel run a lot)
Barry Windham(i still liked him after he joined the Horsemen)
Mine was Piper. God how I wanted someone to shut him up once and for all.
Funny, by far my 2 favorite wrestlers as a kid were Rick Rude and Ric Flair. Rick Rude is who got me to first start watching wrestling. I thought the after match thing with Bobby Heenan picking a girl and the first time I really watched a whole wrestling episode was when Rick Rude tried to kiss Cheryl Roberts. From then on I was hooked. I always hated Hulk Hogan and the WWF until that point. But that was what was on, I only saw Ric Flair if on vacation or visiting friends. I thought he was cool but the WWF was always on in my area. I ripped on people for watching that fake stuff, until the Ravishing one made me a fan forever. It grew into liking all the Heenan family, then Mr Perfect and whatever Flair stuff I could see. Naturally I hated the Ultimate Warrior too, although I preferred him to Hogan. I always thought it was dumb in the Summerslam cage match w Warrior for the WWF title that Rude had Warrior beat, climbed the top of the cage, but instead of leaving and winning the title ,he came off the cage with a fist drop or something. And then I never saw the Ravishing one for a while until I realized he was in WCW/NWA pretty late bcak then, Ah the day b4 the net
I hated, HATED Ric Flair. I was so happy when Ronnie Garvin beat flair in the cage and so pissed when he didn’t submit to the scorpion deathlock in Clash I.
I agree with the hate of Rick Rude by many of us when we were young kids. I hated his “kissing display” he did before every match. I found him so smarmy.
Good choice of words!
I think I was the only kid who hated Hulk Hogan. I cheered for Bundy, Piper, Andre, Savage and anyone else that went against him…setting up a life of letdowns…lol
i hated Hulk Hogan too I always cheered Piper on and i was pissed that he beat Andre at Wrestlemania III
Rude was so hated (not by me, but by the fans) that his Summer Slam ‘89 match against The Ultimate Warrior was off the hook with crowd heat. Do you guys remember when Howard Finkel said “this match is for the Intercontinental title” and the crowd fucking POPPED for it? I’ve never heard a crowd pop for that sort of thing before. They wanted to see Warrior kick Rude’s ass from one ring post to another. Warrior’s title winning crowd pop is one of the best in history.
I absolutely despised Hollywood Hogan. Hated him. The nWo music would hit and I loved them. But the Hogan came down and I would just get angry. What are cool guys like Hall and Nash doing being saddled with Hogan? And I was 21 or whatever at the time.
He doesn’t get the credit he deserves for making that group actual heels.
As much as I hate to say it, Hogan was AWESOME
(hit enter early)
…as a heel. He may have been selfish and exercised his “creative control”; but with the heat and money he was generating for himself and the promotion I can’t really blame him.
To me, you couldn’t root against heels like Flair, Piper, or DiBiase because they were utterly cool. Their gimmicks and ring talent were great.
That being said, I hated no one more than the Honky Tonk Man. He was the p**y heel who someone held on to the belt for 15 months. I’m still shocked he ended Steamboat’s reign (because Steamboat wanted off for the birth of his son). Still shocked he survived Savage in late 1987, early 1988 and survived Brutus Beefcake at WM4.
When Warrior ended his reign at SummerSlam ‘88, it sounded as they blew the roof off at MSG and launched Warrior into the stratosphere.
The only other heel I hated was Nikita Koloff. It was nothing short of brilliant for Kolodd to win the first 3 of the best of 7 to Magnum TA and lose the next three. Everyone though Magnum would go over in the final match, only for Nikita to go over. Having the U.S. Title in Soviet hands was the lowpoint of the Cold War to me (I wasn’t around when Hungary and Czechoslovakia were crushed, so a fake wrestling match took its place).