wrestling / Columns

The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 WWE Double Turns

November 9, 2015 | Posted by Mike Chin

Face and heel turns are a part of the fabric of professional wrestling story telling. They’re a way of keeping performers and characters fresh, a vehicle for intrigue and setting up new match ups. But rarer are the double turns—those angles or even individual matches when a pair of feuding parties flip face-heel orientations. It’s a tricky maneuver that often depends upon a promotion really knowing its audience and its performers, with an eye toward the long-term benefits for everyone involved.

The WWE has used double-turns sparingly but to good effect over the years. This week, I’m looking at the promotion’s top seven double turns. The criteria for this countdown included the long-range effects of the turn, the execution of the turn itself and, as always, some personal opinion.

#7. Paige and AJ Lee

A short, reductive, and admittedly biased history of AJ Lee’s WWE tenure. Lee debuted as part of the women’s season of the NXT pseudo-reality/competition show and, on account of a combination of in-ring skill and a nerdy character that felt custom-built for WWE’s nerdiest fans. She ended up paired with Daniel Bryan for what looked like a a poor man’s, sped-up Macho Man-Elizabeth scenario. The thing is that after that immediate angle, Lee remained relevant, becoming entangled in kayfabe romantic intrigue with CM Punk, Kane, John Cena, and Dolph Ziggler. She had a stint as the GM of Raw during which the character was arguably over-exposed, then settled into the role of in-ring heel during which she really hit her stride as the then-longest-reigning Diva’s Champion.

After WrestleMania 30, Lee’s character had more or less done it all, and so it felt like a passing of the torch moment when, the next night, Paige debuted and relieved of her title. After Paige’s own stellar run in NXT and the electricity post-‘Mania crowd clearly felt for her in the early going of her main roster runner, it looked like Paige would pick up where Lee had left off for an entertaining and engaging run atop the women’s division.

The trouble is that, in the absence of any meaningful storylines, Paige’s character grew stale fast. Thus, when Lee returned from sabbatical three months later, the crowd all too ready to cheer her and boo Paige.

It’s a dynamic that WWE capitalized on perfectly.

By the standards of how WWE books and treats female performers, Lee was approaching legend status by then—a vet who the fans wanted to cheer regardless of the role she was playing, whereas Paige hadn’t connected on the main roster level. So WWE shrewdly booked a parallel match to the night Paige debuted—this time, Paige was the arrogant champion extolling her own superiority. Lee was making her first appearance in months and getting cheered wildly. An impromptu match ensued and Lee took back the title.

The proper feud to follow between the two (and on-again off-again alliance) never really caught fire on account of limited ringt time and relatively conservative booking. Just the same, the moment of the double turn itself was nicely realized and did set up Lee to ride off into the sunset as a face, and further established Paige as one of the division’s top performers.

#6. Demolition and The Powers of Pain

Before The Road Warriors debuted in the WWF, the promotion accrued teams that approximated that aura—most notably Demolition and The Powers of Pain. Ax and Smash lacked the physical spectacle of Hawk and Animal but were quite arguably better in the ring. The Powers of Pain were a better match for the look of The Road Warriors, but never quite matched their in-ring intensity or sense of electricity.

It was little surprise that with both teams under contract, the WWF elected to have them feud with each other. And as Demolition grew increasingly over, nearly a year into their run, it was also sensible enough for WWF turn the more fast-paced, marginally smaller, and more familiar act face.

The double turn occurred at Survivor Series 1988, when Mr. Fuji, who had managed Demo up to that point, attacked them, siding with the hitherto face Barbarian and Warlord. Like most good double turns, the transition was seamless—positioning the wresters fans wanted to cheer as the faces, turning the lukewarm act heel. Fuji was there to offer a kayfabe justification for them to switch allegiances, as well as a lynchpin to ensure the fans would cheer and boo the way the WWF intended for them to—even fans who were unsure about rooting for Ax and Smash could be more easily compelled to root against the perennial villain, Mr. Fuji. The angle culminated in Fuji teaming with The Powers of Pain to take on Demolition in a handicap match at WrestleMania 4 that really solified Demolition’s face status at the time.

#5. Vince and Shane McMahon

The InVasion marked a complicated period for the WWF. On one hand, the company was riding a nearly unparalleled wave of momentum in 2001, and the idea of adding to its roster a variety of talents from WCW had all the makings of a truly epic storyline for wrestling history.

The angle ostensibly started shortly before WrestleMania 17. Vince and Shane McMahon were already involved in the latest iteration of a family rivalry, this time with Vince cast as a megalomaniac philanderer, and Shane as the noble son aiming to restore honor to his family. As a final twist leading up to their ‘Mania street fight, Shane appeared on Monday Nitro and announced that he had kayfabe purchased WCW right out from under his father’s nose.

So, the promotion put down the tracks for WCW be an underdog group under the wing of the up and coming McMahon. The trouble was the first WCW-branded match between Booker T and Buff Bagwell fell very, very flat. The WWF was unable to secure many of WCW’s biggest name talents and it became clear that very few WWF-watching fans were going to treat the players from the opposing brand as faces.

So, there was a turn.

After getting picked on by the WWF, the WCW retaliated. They teamed up with ECW alumni to form The Alliance, a supersized heel faction, fronted by Shane and Stephanie McMahon. So, the family feud raged on, but now with Shane the heel trying to destroy what his father built and carve a name for himself, while Vince stood up for the tradition that his loyal fans would appreciate. It was an example of the WWF recognizing the predispositions of its fans, using reasonable storyline logic, and righting its course. The Alliance-WWF program itself would, of course, leave a lot to be desired, but this particular turn made sense and, at its inception, opened up a lot of possibilities.

#4. Steve Austin and Kurt Angle

The McMahon family feud was all about theatrics and storyline, and when the two men physically clashed, the confrontations were far from spectacular (though they arguably made up for it via sheer willingness to give and receive stiff punishment). Steve Austin and Kurt Angle feuded across a very similar period of time, but had the added benefit of being two of the greatest workers of all time and producing four-star-plus matches along the way.

Austin and Angle feuded tangentially in the lead up to The InVasion, but really got into it with Austin as the heel in-ring leader of the group, Angle working arguably his best ever incarnation of a face character—super intense with a silly edge that saw him conduct milk bashes to counter Austin’s beer chugging escapades.

The rivalry came to a head at SummerSlam 2001 with a superb one on one counter, only diminished by a DQ finish. In the aftermath, the two became frenemies under The Alliance banner, only for Angle to ultimately turn on the heels as a secret agent for the WWF in the blow off Survivor Series match between the two sides.

The WWF found itself in an awkward position then. As good as Austin’s heel work had been, it was clear that he was still far more beloved than hated by the crowds. Meanwhile, for as good of a face as Angle had turned out to be, his comedic stylings and use of holds still seemed more natural in the heel role. With the company’s major storylines already in flux after the dismantling of The Alliance, the WWF proceeded to make the most practical decision for the time—to hit the reset button and have Austin revert to his badass self, while playing up Angle’s repeated turncoat behaviors to reestablish him as a sniveling heel. In the absence of kayfabe logic, the double turn nonetheless made good practical sense for establishing two top stars in their best-fit roles for the time.

#3. Lita and Trish Stratus

In the lead up to the so-called Reality Era in which WWE more freely made use of real-life developments to influence stories, the promotion found itself in an awfully rough spot when it went public that Lita had (at least allegedly) engaged in an affair with Edge, while in a relationship with Matt Hardy. Edge was already a heel and enjoyed marginally increased heat based on the development. But Lita was a face in hot pursuit of Trish Stratus’s Women’s Championship, which made it problematic for fans to boo and catcall her each time she came to the ring.

Meanwhile, Trish Stratus was broaching legendary status for a woman on the WWE roster—a mainstay who had demonstrated marked improvement and arrived as one of the best female in-ring performers in the promotion’s history. Fans were not predisposed to boo her.

So, WWE made the switch. Lita embraced a new partnership with Kane and used the Big Red Machine to terrorize Stratus, whose defenders like Viscera were not up to the task, as Stratus gradually grew into the victim and the de facto face. The immediate storyline got cut short when Stratus went down to injury, but they would collide again that fall, for Stratus to finish up her run as a full-time WWE performer, defeating heel Lita one last time.

#2. Dolph Ziggler and Alberto Del Rio

Dolph Ziggler is a rare example of a heel so consistently good and hard working that fans were reticent to hate him. Conversely, after some initial glimmers, Alberto Del Rio, at least in WWE, failed as a face—succumbing to generic good guy mannerisms and failing to garner mass support.

Thus, when Ziggler villainously cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase on broken down Del Rio the night after WrestleMania 29, the crowd exploded in an overwhelmingly positive response.

As fate would have it, Ziggler suffered a concussion shortly thereafter and wasn’t able to do much with his championship reign, only offering Del Rio a return match at Money in the Bank. That’s when WWE pulled off what I would argue was the second best double turn in history. Del Rio adhered to kayfabe logic and attacked the known weakness of Ziggler’s head. Meanwhile, Ziggler, always great at selling, took the beating like a champ. Slowly but surely, the two switched face and heel alignments as the match went on. In the end, Del Rio won the match and the World Heavyweight Championship—an outcome so few fans really wanted—and had re-established himself as a top-tier heel. In refusing to give in and fighting past injury Ziggler came across as a hero and for the first time kicked off a meaningful face run on the main roster.

#1. Bret Hart and Steve Austin

Some countdowns have plainly obvious number ones, and this is one such occasion. Bret Hart-Steve Austin at WrestleMania 13 is generally recognized as one of the greatest matches in ‘Mania history, and the double-turn is a both a cause and effect. The two put on a passionate match amidst a perfect storm Austin catching fire in terms of audience support, Hart losing favor based on longevity and a relatively vanilla character amidst the fledgling Attitude Era, and both men clicking on cylinders as in-ring performers.

So, the WWF pulled the trigger. Under I Quit rules, Hart had Austin locked in his super-over Sharpshooter. Austin couldn’t justifiably escape the hold at that point in the match. Nor could his character justifiably quit. So the WWF went with the simplest solution of neither option—instead having Austin valiantly hang on and pass out rather than give up, and Hart dickishly continue to batter his beaten foe, after which he powdered out from a would-be confrontation with guest referee Ken Shamrock. Hart would go on to a remarkably good main event heel run. Austin would explode into arguably the biggest WWF superstar of all time.

Great moment, great execution, great context, and simply superb long-term results. In ranking double-turns, there could be no other number one.

Which double-turns would you add to the list? Let us know what you think in the comments section.

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