The Magnificent Seven: The 7 Most Justified Heel Turns

Not so long ago, I watched an old episode of Monday Nitro. I’d either never seen it before, or at least didn’t remember this particular one or the lower card storylines at the time, but as I watched Meng and The Barbarian team up, I had a sinking suspicion that one of them might turn on the other. My thoughts were largely groundless, with no obvious clues on screen and little background knowledge to base it on, and I chalked up my prediction to remembering a specific element of WCW—that there were a lot of swerves and turns, often with little explanation.

Sure enough, The Barbarain wound up turning on Meng. In some cursory research to follow, I couldn’t find an explanation—words like “random,” “unexplained,” and “never provided a reason” pervaded what documentation I could find.

WCW was notorious for surprises for the sake of being surprising, and reliving this moment got me thinking about the flip side—of those moments in wrestling when a turn, particularly to the heel side, was not only well-explained, but even justified. (Note: this column is concerned with storyline logic, not how to most effectively push a star; for example, Seth Rollins’s main event heel run coming out of The Shield was the best thing for his career, but I remain lukewarm on the storyline logic that he would turn on his brothers the night after they’d gone through hell together to achieve their greatest victory).

Because I’m ranking content based on storylines kayfabe motivations, this countdown is very much subjective. It does skew toward main event angles or performers who would go on to the top of the card on account of historical significance.

#7. Shawn Michaels, 1992

This moment actually occurred in December 1991, but aired in 1992, so we’ll go with the moment it entered WWF lore. By ’92, The Rockers had been a fixture on the WWF tag scene for nearly four years, but had never officially captured the tag titles and had shown signs of dissension in recent months. The two seemed to reconcile on Brutus Beefcake’s Barbershop interview set, only for the segment to end with Michaels superkicking Marty Jannetty and then throwing him face-first through a plate glass window. In this moment, Michaels launched his singles career and, by doing so in such violent fashion, immediately snagged a spot in the upper mid-card.

While I won’t say that Jannetty deserved to be dumped as Michaels’ partner, much less that he deserved such a violent dismissmal, when you consider the broader narrative of HBK’s career, you can’t really fault the character for wanting to break out on his own. Whether the conversation is kayfabe accomplishments or shoot stature of performance, Michaels is on the very, very short list for greatest wrestlers of all time. He wasn’t about to achieve this destiny by lingering in the tag team ranks. Thus, rejecting his past made sense, as did injuring Jannetty both so Michaels wouldn’t get sucked back into sporadic teaming (if he stayed face) and to put off having deal with Jannetty as a challenger (embracing the chicken shit heel persona).

#6. Sting, 1996

I know that most people who comment negatively on these columns don’t bother to read the text between names in the countdown, but for those who do, I’ll start out with this concession: No, Sting didn’t really turn heel in 1996.

I would argue, however, that at Fall Brawl 1996, Sting had a heel moment when he went from pure face to flirting with heelery, and walked out of that show a tweener (though the character would clearly evolve back into one of the biggest faces ever over the year to follow). The moment in question went down at War Games when Sting walked out on his battered and beaten teammates, leaving them to fend for themselves, outnumbered and outgunned, against the nWo contingent.

I couldn’t justify placing this moment any higher than six because there’s a very fair argument it wasn’t a real heel turn. Just the same, I couldn’t resist including it on the countdown because it was one of wrestling’s most completely understandable, realistic, and convincing moments of a face sticking it to other faces and doing something morally dubious. The story going into War Games was that the nWo had planted the seeds Sting was joining him. So, despite Sting being the single most trustworthy face this side of Ricky Steamboat in his era, his teammates doubted him, most particularly including Lex Luger who actually had turned heel multiple times over the years, and thus was a big ol’ hypocrite.

So, Sting stormed the cage, the last man to enter the match, and annihilated the nWo contingent. From there, he stared down Luger and asked if that was good enough for him and walked out, not to wrestle and barely to speak on WCW television for a year to follow. Betrayed and insulted, despite always having done what was right, it was hard not to relate to The Stinger in this moment.

#5. Andre the Giant, 1987

In the mid-1980s, Hulk Hogan returned to the WWF and immediately exploded onto the main event scene and became the face of the company. As such, he was cast as good friends with Andre the Giant, a preeminent top-of-the-card face. Three years into the Hulkamania run, the WWF presented Hogan with a trophy to celebrate his three years as world champion. Shortly after, Andre got a trophy for being undefeated. Hogan joined in on Andre’s promo to congratulate him, but in the process stole Andre’s thunder and became the focus of the segment.

Andre had an axe to grind. On a microscale, Hogan had stolen his thunder. On a macroscale, the promo represented all of the ways Hogan had done Andre wrong for three years, stealing The Giant’s spotlight, purporting them to be friends, and never granting his big buddy a title shot.

Sure, Andre went overboard in aligning himself with evil mastermind Bobby Heenan and in unnecessarily tearing Hogan’s crucifix from his neck. But the spirit of decision to end the friendship and pursue the world title going into WrestleMania 3 was completely sensible and one in a series of cases when Hogan, the character, was a pretty bad friend and made someone snap against him.

#4. Hulk Hogan, 1996

The Attitude/nWo/Monday Night War Era was notorious for blurring the lines between kayfabe and reality. While we tend to look to the Montreal Screwjob as the definitive happening that launched that dynamic, there were plenty of seeds planted in both WWF and WCW before that point, and we’ve now arrived at one of my favorite watershed moments. Yes, Hogan turning heel and launching the nWo with with Hall and Nash was a terrifically surprising swerve, but I’d argue it was all the more satisfying and successful because it really did make sense in kayfabe.

Hulk Hogan signed on with WCW in 1994 to mixed results. While his run recaptured some of the nostalgic fun of his 1980s work in the WWF, the character never fully clicked with WCW’s more traditional, NWA-informed fan base favored workrate or over flash. After two years of rehashing the best and worst of his WWF hits (winning the world title, battling giants, having friends turn on him), it was clear that this Hogan character wouldn’t thrive in WCW in the late 1990s, and fans moved from sort-of excited, to lukewarm, to actively booing him.

History shows that it made brilliant business sense for WCW to turn Hogan heel. But then there’s kayfabe. Hogan was the same person he’d always been, and here were these fans booing him. Here was WCW not placing him, arguably the biggest star in wrestling history, on their team to oppose The Outsiders. Here was Hogan, out of the world title picture and not even booked on a PPV for the last three months. Would he say screw it to the company that had wronged him, the fans that had turned on him, his supposed friends who had forgotten about him? You’re damn right he would.

On top of all of the emotional rationalization, turning heel and heading up a hot new stable were just the ticket to revitalize Hogan’s kayfabe career, making him a marked man and vaulting him back into world title contention. He’d reassert himself as wrestling’s biggest star in a whole new way over the two years to follow.

#3. Randy Savage, 1989

We’ve all had that friend. The one who can’t take a joke. The one who is fervently protective over his girlfriend. The one with a short temper who isn’t about to shy away from a fight. I’m not saying this guy is in the right, or that he’s the most fun to hang out with. But if you’re good friends with that guy, you know better than to test him.

In 1988, Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage teamed up to form The Mega Powers, supposed best friends and allies against forces like The Megabucks and The Twin Towers. While the two were an irresistible force in kayfabe, from the earlygoing, it was clear Savage was wary of Hogan—arguably the bigger, more established star and more importantly for time and again winding up in situations that saw him hug or hold Miss Elizabeth, or get caught looking at her.While Hogan may not have ever crossed the line formally, the character had to know how paranoid and crazy Savage was about Elizabeth, and were he really a good friend, you have to assume he’d take extra precautions to avoid even the perception of impropriety.

But Hogan wasn’t that friend.

So Savage totally predictably went nuts after Elizabeth got hurt at ringside and Hogan carried her to the back. Did Savage go too far in physically attacking his friend for carrying his girlfriend to the back? No doubt. Afterward, however, did Hogan admit to instigating, apologize and explain the circumstances? No, he challenged his supposed friend for his world title at WrestleMania.

While Savage’s character did grow more overtly heel over the two years to follow, I think it’s interesting to note even his last heel feud in the WWF was pretty justified, too—attacking The Ultimate Warrior and costing him the WWF Championship after Warrior arbitrarily denied Savage’s very reasonable challenge to a title match.

#2. Sid Justice, 1992

While I know there’s some dissension on this point, I’ll argue to the end that 1992 saw the greatest Royal Rumble of all time. Yes, the storytelling and plotting were on point, and the in-ring work was great. But the Rumble was also set up for greatness with such a deep roster of A-list wrestling stars, and the tremendous stakes of the winner taking home the WWF Championship.

Enter Sid Justice. After arriving the summer before, the Rumble marked Justice’s first real shot at wrestling in the spotlight, and in particular his first title opportunity. Sure enough, when the final four came down to Justice, Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, and Ric Flair—Justice was the biggest and arguably the strongest guy left in the mix, with the added advantage of being the freshest of the bunch, having entered at number twenty-nine, his prospects looked very, very good.

Things went from good to great after Justice and Flair ousted Savage, and then Justice dumped Hogan from behind—maybe not the most sporting elimination, but far from illegal, and totally to be expected in the context of a battle royal. The match came down to Justice, who was a young powerhouse and had only been in the ring for five minutes, against Flair who was worn down after an hour of action. By all rights, Justice should have won this Rumble and won his first world championship.

On the contrary, Hogan grabbed his supposed friend’s hand, over the top rope, to both distract him and pull him toward elimination, leaving Flair with half the work to haul Sid up and over to pull off the upset victory.

In the aftermath of the Rumble, after cooler heads had prevailed, WWF President Jack Tunney called a press conference to announce the number one contender for WrestleMania. Justice, undefeated in singles competition and the last man eliminated from the Rumble, justifiably thought his name would be called, only to sit back and watch Hogan get the main event spot handed to him.

So, Justicie turned his back on Hogan, walking out on him in the middle of a tag team match and then terrorizing Brutus Beefcake until he goaded Hogan into foregoing his title shot to battle Justice at ‘Mania. Thus, the doubly wronged big man got a measure of revenge, getting Hogan out of the title picture and beating Hogan down nicely with the help of Papa Shango at the end of that show, before The Ultimate Warrior showed up to spoil his retribution.

#1. The Freebirds, 1982

In 1982 World Class Championship Wrestling, The Freebirds were cool faces. They were cool in part because they didn’t do much that was overtly face-ish, but just happened to be tough guys who battled the heels and aligned with the Von Erichs from time to time.

That all took a turn Christmas night 1982 when when the Freebirds’ Michael PS Hayes played special guest referee for Kerry Von Erich’s NWA world title opportunity against Ric Flair. Take one of the golden boys of WCCW, give him a guest enforcer ref who won’t be KOed or intimidated, and put a cage around the ring to bar outside interference and shenanigans, and it looked like Von Erich could pull off the win of a lifetime. Fortune seemed to smile all the more brightly on Von Erich when Hayes got into a scuffle with Flair, decked him, and looked to hand the victory to the hometown hero. Except Von Erich was as whitemeat as babyfaces come. He rejected the win if he hadn’t earned it, and refused to take the cheap pin.

Things got interesting when Hayes walked away frustrated, climbing out of the ring and out of the cage, only for Flair to knock Von Erich into Hayes and send him sprawling. On first look, it appeared Von Erich had attacked Hayes. Terry Gordy, Hayes’s loyal friend, had his buddy’s back unconditionally and promptly smashed the steel cage door against Von Erich’s head to brutally knock him out and give Flair the win.

The disagreement between Hayes and Von Erich about taking the pin on Flair underscored their fundamental differences as a shades-of-gray, hip face against the purest, least nuanced of good guys, and set them up for an ideologically sound rivalry. Hayes and Gordy were justified in going against the Von Erichs when Kerry rejected Hayes’s help, and then apparently tackled him. From there, they were too proud to back down and the epic rivalry was on, the Freebirds willingly wearing black hats if they had to in order to now bow down to the cult of personality the Von Erichs had developed in Dallas.

Which turns would you add to the list? Bret Hart’s turn in 1997 and The Rock’s turn in 1997 were my two nearest misses for this countdown. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.