10 Wrestlers Who Were Hated By The Locker Room

Australian Cinephile

When the heat is nuclear, featuring Shane McMahon's favourite wrestler: Shane McMahon!  - - For more awesome WWE, AEW and other wrestling content, check out: http://whatculture.com/wwe  Listen to our free podcasts →https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/whatculture-wrestling/id1064413714?mt=2   Follow us!  Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/whatculturewwe  Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/whatculturewwe  Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/?next=/whatculturewrestling/

Transcript

00:00So, I'm not entirely sure how to say this, but wrestling is polluted by dickheads.

00:06Now, I'm not saying that you yourself are a dickhead for being a wrestling fan,

00:09or if you are indeed a wrestler that you are a dickhead,

00:11but there are a lot of them within the industry.

00:14And on a certain level, you almost have to be a bit of a dickhead to be a pro wrestler.

00:18I mean, parading yourself around in trunks, pretending to be a badass,

00:21giving yourself nicknames that are variations of

00:23I'm better at the thing I do than any of you guys here,

00:26and aren't I incredibly sexy, everybody wants a piece of me,

00:30it's truly narcissistic behaviour.

00:32But here's the question, how much of a dickhead do you have to be to piss off an entire locker room?

00:37Well, let's find out today, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,

00:40and these are 10 wrestlers who were hated by the locker room.

00:43Number 10. Shane McMahon

00:45Now, imagine you're at the office.

00:47You beaver away at your intensive duties, frantically inputting keystrokes under immense pressure.

00:52You're overworked, your boss is wildly erratic and temperamental,

00:55and you've dreamed of this your whole life, but the word reality strikes rather to sobering a chord.

01:01But as bad as it gets, there's one day worth the commute.

01:03It's your biggest day, one in which your efforts are finally rewarded

01:07with resounding feedback to an elusive, meaningful task.

01:10Imagine now that you don't actually get to go to work this day

01:13because a man who barely bothers to turn up most of the year,

01:16but is on considerably more money than you, takes your seat,

01:19and takes a break after two minutes because the process of going to work is clearly beyond him.

01:23Also, he's allowed to do this because he's the manager's kid.

01:26Now, this would rightly piss you off,

01:28so naturally the WWE locker room was reportedly unanimous in their fury of Shane McMahon

01:33at this year's infamous Royal Rumble pay-per-view.

01:36The man surveyed Riddle and said,

01:38if I was in UFC, this jabron wouldn't even be in my weight class

01:41before deciding a fistfight with Brock Lesnar was more his speed.

01:45He couldn't even jump up to get eliminated,

01:47which is literally sack of shit levels of uselessness.

01:50Number 9. Nia Jax

01:52In her appearance on The Sessions with Renee Paquette,

01:55Nia Jax expressed her sadness that people thought of her as an unsafe worker.

01:59Perhaps if she didn't treat Kyrie Zayn's head as a door that she slammed shut in a huff,

02:03those people might have been a bit nicer.

02:05She drew venomous heat for that,

02:07and per Brian Alvarez, one source even called for a head.

02:10The stark truth is that Jax frequently endangered her opponents

02:14because, even after a few years on the rep loop,

02:16she never did grasp the most basic tenant of the craft.

02:20Protecting one's opponent is the priority.

02:22A far better shoot fighter than a pro wrestler,

02:25Jax, in her tenure, concussed Becky Lynch and broke her nose,

02:28injured Bayley's shoulder,

02:29and also knocked Mandy Rose, Zelina Vega, and Ember Moon utterly loopy.

02:33The latter's husband spoke up on behalf of the locker room,

02:36tweeting,

02:36Hope this unsafe moron doesn't hurt my wife again.

02:39Number 8. Charlotte Flair

02:41Charlotte Flair has, if various damning reports are to be believed,

02:45changed quite a lot over the years.

02:47The fame and the status of the job has lulled her into the very same trap as many a heat magnet

02:52before her.

02:52She is now considered a mark for herself, aloof and high on her own hype.

02:57This incredibly abrasive, condescending cadence might not just be loathsome character work.

03:02She's no longer close to Becky Lynch.

03:04Their infamous championship exchange ceremony last year was conducted so unprofessionally

03:08that Lynch initiated a heated argument backstage, one fuelled by years of creeping animosity.

03:14The creative was horrible, and neither woman sold it particularly,

03:17but Flair made Lynch and Sonya Deville look awful by dropping the belt.

03:20Deville purportedly squared up to Flair,

03:22the heat on whom was so scorching that she had to be escorted from the bloody building.

03:26Lynch was reportedly viewed as a hero for standing up to Flair's bullsh**,

03:30which appears to have alienated her peers for quite some time.

03:33Further hints were sprinkled across social media during the Royal Rumble

03:36that both Bayley and Trish Stratus appeared to collaborate over a piss-taking mocking

03:40Flair's elimination from the titular match.

03:42If this was in jest, it would appear to be an outlier, as Meltzer reported late last year

03:47that Charlotte has created resentment for insisting on doing flashy babyface moves,

03:51even adding more to her arsenal in a heel-roll capacity.

03:54Her shrugging at the concept of bumping can't help either.

03:577. The Miz

03:58Mostly, one can understand why the locker room despises one particular person.

04:03If everybody thinks you're a d**khead, it is very likely that you are, in fact, a d**khead.

04:08In a dark subversion of the

04:09no-it's-the-children-who-are-wrong truism,

04:12the SmackDown locker room of the 2000s was ridiculed by horrendous overgrown kids high on power

04:16and the fake work strength with which they sold themselves as badasses.

04:21WWE's monopoly over WCW didn't just ruin North American wrestling as a TV product,

04:26it turned a pack of mid-card acts and B-level headliners into thinking that they were Jim Londos.

04:31They were amongst the biggest stars in wrestling by proxy,

04:34and they thought a billionaire's easy victory was their doing.

04:38They were your undertakers, your JBLs, your Chris Benoit, your hardcore Hollies,

04:42and they terrorised the developmental prospects because they were rancid and rather deluded.

04:47And the Miz, in all of this, accidentally spilled crumbs on Benoit's bag and had an air of confidence

04:51about him, and his punishment for this was that he was forced to get dressed in a toilet for six

04:55months. That'll learn him to have natural charisma and a shortcut to the fame that half of them

05:00bumped stupid stuff just to sniff.

05:02Number 6. Buff Bagwell

05:03So let's just face facts here. Take a look at Buff Bagwell. Is this a man who was destined to work

05:09as an administrative assistant, go home to his cherished wife and build model ships in his spare

05:13time? No, of course not. This was a man put on this earth to be a grating, overbearing arsehole who

05:18believed his own hype. I mean, just look at him. He had a face that only a mother could love,

05:22and God rest her soul, did Judy love him? Too bloody much, if anything.

05:26Her constant calls to the office, petitioning his booking, appalled the WCW locker room. It was no

05:31different in the WWF, where his absolute sh**-eating grin and his legendary opinion of his own ability

05:36made everybody think that he was just a delusional jackass. The man thought that he was The Rock

05:41because he had a nickname that rhymed.

05:43Number 5. The Outsiders

05:44In the 1980s, the WWF locker room actively loved working shows that Hulk Hogan headlined. He was a

05:50gigantic draw, and the money trickled down to their envelopes. It was an altogether different time in

05:55the 1990s. Kevin Nash and Scott Hall were massive draws, but they could barely be bothered to work

06:00house shows. Eric Bischoff has claimed on 83 Weeks that this decision was purely storyline. How would

06:05it look? Were the Renegade Outsiders promoted ahead of time? Regardless of where the truth lies,

06:10Nash and Hall weren't exactly popular amongst the locker room. Not only did they smirk at their own

06:14rep as aloof, work-shy stars, they actively antagonized the wrestlers whose hard-bumping

06:19performances set the tone on those Halcyon Mondays.

06:22Hall was considered the more abrasive of the two. When he wasn't pissing on Chris Benoit's boots just

06:27because he had the power to do it, he, for no reason at all other than pitiful jealousy,

06:31told Chris Jericho that he shouldn't bother working long matches. Do five minutes and

06:35fuck off, nobody is there to see you, was the tone. And while Nash went on to evolve into a

06:40beloved meme figure for his piss-funny shoot interviews and self-deprecating social media

06:44presence, he was loathed back then.

06:464. Shawn Michaels

06:48Shawn Michaels didn't see eye-to-eye with the WWF locker room of the mid-to-late 1990s,

06:54because he had both of them squarely focused on the click and then also who to get fired next.

06:58A smug egomaniac with unprecedented influence over Vince McMahon, Michaels, much like a serial

07:03killer's embryonic animal-killing phase, first directed his shithousery to expendable prelim guys

07:08and mid-card acts. If somebody other than him had temerity to think of themselves as being above

07:13their station, they were absolutely fucked. At the slightest hint of ego or underperformance,

07:18Michaels pissed, moaned, and maintained his spot. No target was too tough, or too big of a star. He

07:24bollocked Vader mid-match and outright told Bret Hart he'd never do a clean job for him.

07:29The locker room despised his attitude. He wasn't just a toxic, showboating prick,

07:33he threatened their livelihoods, much less morale.

07:35Fueling the resentments towards Michaels all the more is the fact that Michaels was just

07:39astonishing at his craft. Pinballing across the ring and drawing heat with his phenomenally

07:43loathsome presence, few other heel performers were able to generate as much excitement without

07:48betraying their role.

07:493. Triple H

07:51You won't read widespread reports of the sheer extent to which Triple H was despised,

07:55because he was despised for the exact reason that most won't say anything. He had the power

08:00to sabotage the career of most performers. He truly was the game. It's still astonishing to write

08:05that in the past tense, but for the vast majority of the 21st century, Triple H held a level of power

08:11comparable only to Hulk Hogan, without formally operating a dual role as a booker. CM Punk was

08:16the voice of the voiceless for fans who were longing for a meritocracy that was never realised.

08:21He also was the voice of the boys. On The Art of Wrestling, he revealed that he resented Triple H

08:26for taking a sledgehammer to his momentum and angling for a match three years later, just so that he could

08:30have a good one and say,

08:36Paul London was another ex-WWE contractor who loathed the system and had no compunction about

08:41burying it, and Triple H specifically. London found him laughable, casting him as a defensive

08:46lackey who tried and failed to be funny.

08:482. Terry Taylor

08:50Imagine being seven years old and learning the truth behind the Red Rooster character that appeared on a

08:55view of your Coliseum videotapes. Daddy, why does that man crow and have red hair? It's because he's a

09:00complete and utter tit, Timmy. Paying a man more than decent money, putting him on cards, and actually

09:04contracting the old creative services team to spend time making him look like an absolute idiot, Vince

09:09McMahon is successful in spite of his spite. Imagine being Linda and talking to Vince after he's come

09:14home after he's come up with the whole Red Rooster concept. What did you do at work today, darling?

09:18Well, I killed a man's career by turning him into an anthropomorphic bird, and not even one of the cool

09:23ones either. Terry Taylor was a very gifted wrestler, and as legend has it, walked into the

09:27WWF thinking that he was the cock of the walk. To be fair, though, it's actually a good thing that he

09:32did this in the fumes of the Golden Age and not in the Attitude Era. Otherwise, he'd be being called

09:36something like Dickhead and being made to wear skin-coloured tights with veins in the calves and

09:40thighs. Ugh, god damn, that's awful.

09:421. Chris Jericho

09:44Chris Jericho got it half-right upon debuting for the WWF in 1999. He knew that he was an incredibly

09:50entertaining and creative man who had the potential to star at the very top. Every insider wrestling

09:56fan was besotted with the man, and he dialed into every crowd he worked, making everyone know that

10:01he was a future star. But if you reduce all of that, Jericho was a WWF headliner with WCW

10:07undercard workrate. After a few months, he was neither until he realised his potential with a

10:12mini-program opposite Triple H in 2000. Jericho's strategy wasn't quite catch-all, though. His

10:17save-us spiels pissed off the locker room because he explicitly called them all boring

10:22arseholes. They didn't get the deluded heel blowhard element of the bit. Jericho bemoaned

10:27bad ratings during the height of the company's popularity on cable television and worked

10:31themselves into a shoot.

10:32And there we go, my friends. Those were 10 wrestlers who were hated by the locker room.

10:36I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the

10:39comments section below. As always, I've been Jules. You can go follow me over on Twitter

10:42at RetroJ with a zero, or you can swing by Live and Let's Dice, where I do all my streaming

10:46outside of work, and it'd be great to see you over there, my friends.

10:49But before I go, I just want to say one thing. Hope you're treating yourself well with love

10:53and respect, my friends, because you deserve the best things in life, and do not let anything

10:56or anyone else tell you otherwise, alright? Go out there and be the best person you can

11:00be, build bridges instead of burning them, and remember to live your life healthily and

11:04happily, because that's all I want from you, alright? As always, I've been Jules.

11:07You have been awesome. Never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon.

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