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00:00From baddest women on the planet, turning fans into the maddest,
00:05to one of the most beloved babyfaces ever just not being what the people wanted at that moment in time,
00:11this bunch of talented performers were all turned on by those who once cheered their names.
00:18Ah, life comes at you fast.
00:20I'm Gareth, this is WhatCulture Wrestling, and here are 25 great wrestlers that everybody turned against.
00:26Number 25, X-Pac.
00:28The Attitude Era moved at a frightening pace, people.
00:32Driven, like everything else, by rampant competitive capitalism,
00:35Monday Night Raw's job in 1997 and 1998 was to catch up with, keep pace with,
00:42and ultimately overtake WCW Monday Nitro in a ratings battle that, temporarily, benefited both sides.
00:49By 1999, the gap widened to such a degree that the end result was never really in doubt,
00:55and WWE took a while to adjust to a world that wasn't driven primarily by combat against the other side.
01:02Before Vince McMahon even purchased WCW, Sean Waltman was one of the biggest victims of the aforementioned war.
01:09Having returned to the company with a bilious promo at Eric Bischoff's expense following an acrimonious WCW exit,
01:16X-Pac's Man of the People aura was the driving force behind D-Generation X's babyface turn.
01:23His matches, meanwhile, were carrying mid-cards, as the market leader tried to make the best of a relatively shallow
01:29talent pool.
01:30For all the right reasons, he was beloved.
01:33Within a year of that, though, DX had split and splintered, leaving X-Pac and Road Dog as the loser
01:40babyface outliers in the divorce.
01:42A reunion as heels in late 1999 temporarily solved the problem, but when that fritted away in 2000,
01:49the same two could not buy reactions for their work on a roster that included the likes of Chris Jericho,
01:55Kurt Angle, and The Radicals.
01:57Ambivalence meshed with anger to form a mulch of a reaction known then and in subsequent years as X-Pac
02:04Heat.
02:04There was nothing more brutal for a wrestler than being only mildly over when everybody else was white-hot,
02:11and the former human litmus test unfairly became a barometer of a different kind.
02:17Number 24, Shawn Michaels
02:18It would be inaccurate to say that Shawn Michaels didn't have a friend in the world at the height of
02:24his 1990s excess,
02:26but only because of the existence of Triple H.
02:28Shawn Michaels was a self-confessed, angry young man at the time,
02:32and regardless of why that might have been,
02:34he had absolutely no problem taking that anger out on, well, just about everybody.
02:39As the top star and office favourite, he had more room than most to behave abhorrently,
02:44and anybody that spent time with him then has since spoken of a man unravelling and an ego spiralling uncontrollably.
02:52In a few short years, Michaels' indiscretions included, but were not limited to,
02:57ending up in a real-life fight with Bret Hart after years of needle between the two,
03:01bullying Vader all the way out of a top spot,
03:04politicking a needless European title win in England at the expense of Davey Boy Smith
03:09after the Bulldog had dedicated a win to his sister with cancer,
03:13and perhaps most apocryphally,
03:15threatening to not lose to Stone Cold Steve Austin at WrestleMania 14,
03:20under threat of, lol, getting a shoot-beating from The Undertaker,
03:23sat ominously waiting at Guerrilla for business to get done.
03:27When he departed after that show at just 32, potentially forever,
03:31plenty of his enemies felt as though karma was real, and justice had been served, to be honest.
03:36Number 23, Chris Jericho
03:37Chris Jericho was a beloved figure by at least half the North American wrestling audience in late 2019.
03:44I mean, he had to be.
03:45The former Y2J had been the surprise leader of a wrestling revolution,
03:49legitimising All Elite Wrestling as one of its banner stars and inaugural World Heavyweight Champion.
03:55He was a fabulous, complete heel in his new role,
03:58but the sort fans loved to hate rather than actively dislike.
04:02It was perfect for the time, but Jericho was the last one to acknowledge when that time had passed.
04:08An uneven 2021 in particular was a sign of things to come.
04:12But a particularly excellent in-ring run in 2022 led many to reasonably assume
04:18that the career Renaissance man had only gone and done it again.
04:21It turned out to be, more than likely, the last peak of his time with the company.
04:26If his most recent so-so return is anything to go by?
04:29A constant, grating presence.
04:32His matches and promos were consistently the weakest aspects of Dynamite, Collision and Ring of Honor.
04:38Yes, he spent time on all three across 2024 and 2025.
04:42And quality of work seemed to have no bearing on quantity of appearances before his aforementioned latest comeback.
04:49Latterly, in his tenure, some allegedly unsavory actions outside the ring resulted in many audiences seemingly disassociating from anything he
04:57was doing on screen, furthering the malaise.
05:00As of recording, he's still surprisingly All Elite and isn't being rejected quite as much of late, to be fair.
05:06But it still feels like Le Champion's best and most popular days are firmly behind him.
05:1122. Ronda Rousey
05:13Comparisons to Kurt Angle didn't seem that wild as Ronda Rousey wrapped up her maiden year with WWE in the
05:19main event of WrestleMania.
05:21It was quite a year.
05:22The triple threat against Charlotte Flair and eventual winner Becky Lynch was far from perfect, sure.
05:27But just about everything else she did from her debut at the prior WrestleMania onwards certainly was.
05:33Her debut alongside Kurt Angle against Triple H and Stephanie McMahon was a cast-iron sports entertainment instant classic.
05:40And she rode a wave of momentum into the summer months, becoming women's champion and working thrilling bouts against everybody
05:47from Nia Jax to Nikki Bella.
05:492018 was the year of the first women's Royal Rumble and the first all-women's pay-per-view, Evolution.
05:56She debuted at one and headlined the other.
05:58Impressive stuff.
05:59The baddest woman on the planet was all-in on WWE, and audiences were as grateful for her work as
06:05she seemed to be to have the opportunity to present it.
06:08It was a lovely time.
06:09A brutal Survivor Series scrap with Flair was the best of the lot, but that was the night that something
06:16shifted in the stands.
06:17Ronda heard boos and lots of them for the first time, and could not hide how crushed she was.
06:23That upset eventually turned to anger, and the character went from babyface to tweener to heel in a matter of
06:29weeks, supported by a host of caustic social media posts that were either in keeping with her character's shift, or
06:36simply the real person getting frustrations out on a fanbase that had collectively turned its back.
06:41Her Royal Rumble return in 2022 carried the burden of this breakdown, and a lack of great matches to offer
06:47a counter-argument resulted in disinterest winning out.
06:50Her final exit from the company in October 2023 was an auspiciously quiet affair, standing in direct contrast to going
06:57out at the top of the game four years earlier.
07:00Was Ronda's the greatest debut year of all time?
07:03Well, if it wasn't, I want to know who you think had the best in the comments below.
07:07Number 21, Charlotte Flair.
07:09Now, Charlotte Flair might not have imagined that her 2025 return at the Royal Rumble with a victory in the
07:15Rumble match itself, no less, would require rescuing by aligning her with Alexa Bliss less than six months later.
07:22But fans had made it crystal clear what they thought of her before she linked up with her fellow Golden
07:27Era NXT alumni.
07:29It would have been reasonable to assume that absence had made hearts grow fonder for Flair, but outside of the
07:35Battle Royal win, the opposite was true.
07:37Flair was positioned against WWE Women's Champion Tiffany Stratton heading into WrestleMania, and when their promo battles very quickly developed
07:46into both women delivering fairly sharp barbs at one another, the fans made it clear who they favoured.
07:52The Queen could not mask her disappointment at how quickly things had reverted to type.
07:56But what chance did she really have here?
07:58The character had been relentlessly spotlighted during the last insane years of Vince McMahon's creative tenure, so much so that
08:05unfavourable comparisons were constantly made to the dire Roman Reigns mega push of the 2010s.
08:11Audiences have long memories, my friend, and the prospect of yet another extended singles run for the Charlotte Flair character
08:18at Stratton's expense pinpointed something very specific from the recent past they simply had no thirst for at all.
08:26Ultimately, their WrestleMania battle was decent, Flair lost, and the crowd, now free from panic, gradually re-embraced her as
08:34one of the division's true legacy players.
08:36She's been getting some lovely responses in more recent times, and you really do love to see her having the
08:41time of her life in that ring again.
08:42Good stuff.
08:43Number 20, Dr. Britt Baker DMD
08:46Being popular with a mainstream television audience wasn't something that came easy for Dr. Britt Baker DMD, but in many
08:54respects, she had the best route to the promised land.
08:58A failing babyface run in All Elite Wrestling's earliest days forced a heel turn right on the crest of the
09:04pandemic, and as lockdown restrictions were enhanced, so too were her animated facials and killer promos.
09:11She was almost immediately such an excellent heel that the fan-forced babyface switch became inevitable, but it was during
09:17that run where things turned badly, badly sour.
09:22Baker lost a lot of time through injury, but had enough credit in the bank that a feud with Mercedes
09:27-Money in 2024 promised to deliver the biggest women's match AEW had ever promoted.
09:33Oh, it was a biggie.
09:34Unfortunately, it was a long, long way from being the best.
09:38The pair had the worst match at Wembley Stadium, and I remember I was there.
09:42And Baker's only appearance of note in the aftermath was a television match that ended with her verbally annihilating Serena
09:48Deeb right down the lens,
09:51killing the feud and both characters' presence on the show almost instantly.
09:55As of recording, she's not been featured since, making it over a year and a half since one of the
10:00company's biggest ever stars appeared on the show that she helped make huge.
10:05It's been a damning period of time away, thanks to the various political fires that she was involved in before
10:10her exit.
10:11And though absence typically makes the heart grow fonder, Baker may yet be a rule-proving exception if-when she
10:18resurfaces.
10:19Number 19, Tessa Blanchard.
10:21It would be hyperbolic to say Tessa Blanchard had the whole wrestling world in her hands before revelatory social media
10:28posts unearthed stories from an ugly past.
10:32But a world title reign was all hers, and luck set to be historic before old actions had new consequences.
10:39Blanchard was crowned Impact Wrestling World Heavyweight Champion in January 2020 with a victory over Sammy Callaghan at the culmination
10:47of an impressively booked inter-gender feud between the two.
10:50But right before her biggest professional triumph, a curtain was pulled all the way back on the person about to
10:56ascend.
10:57Blanchard had tweeted about what women can do in a predominantly male business when they support one another.
11:02A sentiment always worth trumpeting, and one that was easily woven into the story set to culminate on pay-per
11:08-view.
11:09Alas, she'd made more than a few enemies that told tale of her doing anything but that along the way.
11:15Alison Kay, Impact Sienna from 2016 to 2018, was the first to allege Blanchard's bullying and racism of fellow talent
11:23and members of the public dating back to 2017,
11:26and found support from former Impact wrestler and future WWE star Chelsea Green, Shanna, then with AW,
11:33Renee Michelle, and eventually La Rosa Negra, an alleged victim who noted an incident from several years prior.
11:39Blanchard still won the title and held it as the pandemic took hold in 2020, but was stripped of it
11:45in line with her contract being terminated in June.
11:48After years in the wrestling wilderness, she returned to the rebadged TNA in 2024,
11:54but did so with so much baggage that many simply couldn't, or wouldn't, engage with her kayfabe persona without being
12:01consumed by the potential reality lurking underneath.
12:0518. The Young Bucks
12:06Much of this video relies on anecdotal evidence, and or widely accepted narratives about talents that have either been enormously
12:15popular,
12:15hugely hated, or most likely a combination of the two.
12:19Somewhat regrettably, WhatCulture.com itself has evidence of the Young Bucks' distinct lack of popularity,
12:25regardless of what they've contributed to the industry over the past two decades.
12:28Over 2024 and 2025, WhatCulture Wrestling has ran fan polls for Best Tag Team of the Year,
12:35and not only have Matt and Nick Jackson not won either, they've failed to even really come close.
12:40Historically, the Bucks will offer at least one match a year that could make a case for being THE match
12:46of the year.
12:46But through either a baked-in dislike of the pair, the never-ending tribal war between fans of WWE and
12:53AEW,
12:54or possibly even the last regs of the CM Punk Elite saga, there's something alienating about the Jacksons that exceptional
13:01action just cannot overcome.
13:03This isn't the first time their quality has been so obviously overlooked, or over-criticised.
13:08The pair named their book Killing the Business, based on the preposterous accusation that was levied at them for daring
13:15to apply irony in their matches,
13:17you know, before it became commonplace, and have at very least leaned into the criticisms ever since.
13:23Number 17, Jerry Lawler
13:24When Territorial Wrestling ruled North America, it was commonplace for wrestlers to portray different versions of themselves depending on where
13:32they worked.
13:32It didn't make sense not to.
13:34You didn't have to worry about your local hardcore fanbase catching you flipping the script on another channel, because, bluntly,
13:40well, they couldn't.
13:41There was only so much wrestling to watch on a national scale without the era's very best tech, and for
13:46Jerry Lawler's spot as Memphis' top star, well, this was perfect.
13:50Not only could he sometimes take his business elsewhere and experience a refreshing new crowd to work in front of,
13:56But when he finally elected to take a WWE deal in late 1992, he was able to play a monstrous
14:02heel on a standard Raw, Superstars, or Challenge, while completely justifying his behaviour back home.
14:08This was never more fun than during his feud with Bret Hart.
14:12The unexpectedly exceptional rivalry traversed between WWE and USWA, but with the roles completely reversed.
14:19On any given Raw, Lawler would be telling Stu Hart to put his false teeth in backwards and eat himself
14:24to death, enraging the hitman.
14:26Meanwhile, in Memphis, Bret led a WWF army including Randy Savage, Giant Gonzalez, and Vince McMahon himself to get revenge.
14:34But with actions that marked his lot out as the bad guys rather than the beloved king, the whole thing
14:39worked a treat for keeping both companies going during difficult times,
14:44serving as a reminder of how hatred in wrestling remained the quickest route to financial prosperity.
14:5016. Jeff Jarrett
14:51Right as Triple H was politicking his way to a groan-inducing reign of terror in WWE,
14:57TNA was starting as it meant to go on by donating its formative years to pushing founder Jeff Jarrett.
15:04The logic around pushing the boss, or the boss's kid, or the boss's best friend,
15:09is that they're least likely to up sticks and leave when things aren't good.
15:13But problems with the conventional wisdom show themselves fairly rapidly the moment any aspect of the business takes a downturn.
15:20It's only then that the supposedly reliable performer is at the root of the biggest problem,
15:25and fans learn the hard way that maybe not every intention of the performer in question was a good one.
15:30Jarrett's complex legacy with the company that he formed resulted in him developing the reputation of being one of wrestling's
15:36savviest snakes.
15:38Active dread was the general feeling around his signing with AEW in 2022,
15:43particularly as many already considered the company vulnerable in the long-blooming shadow of Brawl Out.
15:48His run ended up surprising even the fiercest cynics.
15:51But an early 2025 attempt at a Sting-esque retirement run was a reminder of the lingering descent.
15:58After a couple of very poorly received promo battles with MJF,
16:01the prospect of him potentially being a world champion was dropped cold,
16:05as was his in-ring run with the company outright.
16:08As of recording, his last match was a dreary defeat to Claudio Castagnoli in January,
16:13and the calls haven't been particularly loud for his return.
16:16Maybe it's time to leave the BriWoo behind for good, eh?
16:19Before we go any further, do not forget to whack that subscribe button with a guitar if you haven't already.
16:24Make Double J proud, baby.
16:26Number 15. Lex Luger
16:27Eric Bischoff tells a funny tale about signing Lex Luger back for WCW in 1995
16:33to ultimately become the shocking returnee on the debut edition of Nitro.
16:38The long story short being, well, he didn't really want him that much.
16:42Luger brought with him a reputation of being extremely difficult to get along with unless your name was Sting,
16:47an alleged bad attitude due to, amongst other things, a failed run atop WWE,
16:53and significant doubts that he could live up to expectations.
16:56With all this in mind, Bischoff lowballed him.
16:59But to easy surprise, Luger signed the deal.
17:02When you're hot, you're hot.
17:03And World Championship Wrestling was about to get white hot,
17:07with Luger and others leading the charge as its top stars.
17:10Many of the prior sins were absolved as everybody made a fortune,
17:14but things reached unthinkable lows during the bust that followed the boom.
17:19When tragedy struck and his real-life partner Elizabeth Miss Elizabeth Hewlett passed away
17:24due to acute toxicity while mixing drugs and alcohol,
17:28the court of public opinion had made its mind up on the former narcissist, seemingly for good.
17:33Naturally, this expedited Luger's route to rock bottom.
17:36But in the decades since, those darkest moments,
17:40he's rebounded from his own devastating health and well-being setbacks
17:43to become something of an inspirational figure.
17:46Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2025,
17:48Luger spoke fondly of many he worked with that were still here,
17:52and the feeling appeared mutual.
17:53Time can't heal many of the deep wounds he was left with from his career in wrestling,
17:58but it does at least appear to have parked some of the pettier groans that once defined his reputation.
18:0314. Sonny
18:04From most downloaded to most vilified,
18:07the story of Tammy Sitch's life is one of multifarious tragedy,
18:12but few would argue against the public disdain she now receives
18:15from inside Lowell Correctional Institution in Marion County, Florida.
18:19Sitch was young and deceptively so when she was at the peak of her powers in 1996,
18:24just 23 as she was trading tag teams and their titles,
18:28and remaining the most over thing about the company's midcard in the process.
18:31To call Sonny's rise meteoric would be an understatement, really.
18:35A former pre-law and then pre-med university student,
18:38wrestling had started as a way to make extra cash alongside real-life partner Chris Candido
18:43during his rise through the independents in 1993,
18:46but she was encouraged to never look back when the latter appeared to offer much more than the former.
18:51Her zenith then gave way to the slipperiest of slopes.
18:55Perplexingly removed from anything creatively interesting by the start of 1997,
19:00and unable to break through as an interviewer slash ring announcer alone,
19:04a run alongside the Legion of Doom in their ill-fated LOD 2000 refit was the last of her managerial
19:10roles,
19:11as reports increased in frequency and volatility about her substance abuse
19:15and attitude problems behind the scenes ahead of a predictable WWE release.
19:20By the 2000s and via passing spells in ECW and WCW before both were shuttered in 2001,
19:27she was a footnote cruelly attached most to the industry's excesses,
19:31rather than a toasted success story from a barren time.
19:34Candido's untimely death in 2005 heaped yet more misery on top of the daily struggles she'd experienced to that point,
19:42but a litany of unsavory social media posts, arrests, and legal troubles in the 2010s and 2020s,
19:50before her eventual imprisonment for DUI and manslaughter charges following a car accident
19:55that resulted in the death of a 75-year-old man,
19:58drained a lot of the public's sympathy for WWE's original diva.
20:03Number 13, Ric Flair
20:04For a lot of years, Ric Flair being at the center of a lot of classic road stories,
20:10spoke mostly to the company he kept, the road in question, and the era in which he became the man.
20:17But to call it a different time would veer into making excuses for his behavior, especially when intoxicated.
20:24When he wrestled his final WWE match in 2008, the company gave him the best possible send-off,
20:30even with the knowledge that it might not really be his true industry bow.
20:34Every major name from the time spoke with reverence and or worship for what he'd done,
20:40and with that laughed off his wilder side as just being part of the Nature Boy package, for better and
20:46worse.
20:46Wrestling's a curious beast though.
20:48Whether by accident or design, the more a performer reduces their status on screen,
20:54the easier it typically becomes to peer beneath the surface and see uglier sides.
20:59As Flair earned diminished returns with diminished returns on tour with Hulk Hogan in TNA,
21:06or most infamously in his last match pay-per-view in 2022,
21:10oh boy,
21:11longer and more detailed accounts of some of his off-screen activities came to light,
21:16and were suddenly not all that funny.
21:18Never was this more apparent than following the airing of a Dark Side of the Ring documentary on the plane
21:23ride from hell.
21:24The show laboured on the shame of it all, forever banishing the Jolly Boys outing narrative in order for the
21:30victims to finally have their say.
21:33Most notable was flight attendant Heidi Doyle,
21:35who bravely spoke of having to fend off horrendous unwanted advances from Flair and Scott Hall.
21:41It was distressing, but rather than telling a new story,
21:44simply reaffirmed and subsequently reframed the old ones.
21:48And honestly, his reputation has rightfully never fully recovered.
21:51Number 12, Bob Backlund.
21:53Bob Backlund was, at various points, a long-standing WWWF World Heavyweight Champion,
21:59significant draw, out-of-time babyface, intentionally out-of-time lunatic heel,
22:05and eventually just a wrestling eccentric occasionally used by the market leader and others to try and get Axe over.
22:12What he wasn't was a figure of hate.
22:14Not really, anyway.
22:15At worst, a lot of fans were indifferent to Bob during his 1992-1994 babyface run,
22:21but even then would greet him with polite applause thanks to the power of the WWE Championship's prestige.
22:27At a heel, there was a charm to the elder statesman of the new generation roster losing the plot.
22:33It was entertaining more than annoying.
22:35There was just no reason to really turn on somebody like a Bob Backlund,
22:39unless you were Dave Meltzer, that is.
22:41The Wrestling Observer creator was routinely brutal in his assessments of poor Bob,
22:46resulting in him winning Most Overrated Wrestler in 1983,
22:49and, hilariously, Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic in 1982 for being booked to hold the belt.
22:57Readers agreed with Dave, too,
22:59despite Backlund drawing healthily for Vince McMahon Sr.,
23:02before Junior took the reins and took the product far beyond WWWF's Northeast Loop and Madison Square Garden safety net.
23:10Number 11, Dax Harwood.
23:12The idea of the internet wrestling community as an actual thing is archaic in 2026.
23:18Most wrestling fans slash consumers slash customers are online in some capacity,
23:23and spaces for communication are so fragmented that monocultures dominate over discourse.
23:29The IWC doesn't even function as a vocal minority groupthink.
23:3360-year-old Terry Funk fans will fume that teenage Jey Uso fans don't agree with them
23:39about their wrestling takes on platforms engineered to create division and anger.
23:43The whole thing is broken, and the people attempting to fix it are stupider than those they deem idiotic themselves.
23:49And yet, just about every corner of what remains of it got more than a bit sick of Mr. Dax
23:55Harwood.
23:55To paraphrase, of all people on all platforms, a Hulk Hogan tweet,
24:00Harwood didn't know it'll work when you work a work and work himself into a shoot, Mark.
24:04I think that's right, yeah.
24:06He set about posting pictures of WWE contracts or NXT belts, etc.,
24:10whenever discussion arose about FTR's status in AEW,
24:14or faking naivety and confusion via cryptic messages or comments on his short-lived and otherwise very insightful podcast.
24:21Much of it occurred during CM Punk's various spats with the company, too,
24:26resulting in Harwood booting a hornet's nest that had already suffered its fair share of superkicks.
24:31Heading dance with the one that brung you rather than FAFO,
24:35Harwood went back to mostly wrestling rather than talking,
24:38and earned much of the love back that he'd lost.
24:40Let's hope he can keep it this time, eh?
24:4210. Jim Cornette
24:43Long considered one of the sharpest minds in industry history,
24:48Jim Cornette, or at very least those advising him,
24:52applying said sharpness to the wrestling content game,
24:55forever transformed perceptions of him.
24:57And not unjustifiably so.
24:59Forever somebody known for digging his heels in,
25:02the Prince of Polyester did so at the expense of agendas
25:05even he probably didn't always believe in,
25:07when it became apparent how much money could be made having such divisive and or derisory takes.
25:14One of the first major external profiteers of 2020's tribal war between WWE and AEW fans,
25:21Cornette's deep-rooted dislike of Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks in particular,
25:25endeared him to everybody that also hated him,
25:28but alienated him to the fans that considered Elite to be the most important part of the nascent organization.
25:34A proponent of funny ain't money when referring to wrestling booking,
25:38Cornette made small fortunes getting chuckles out of his,
25:42in his own words slash branding, cult-like following.
25:45Amongst those that either never saw him work,
25:48or never saw him talk and think passionately and analytically
25:51in the years following his departure from the mainstream,
25:53he is now simply the guy that pioneered a cottage industry in taking pot shots at All Elite Wrestling.
25:59Time plays tricks in wrestling too.
26:01There may come a day where he's been the latter longer than the former.
26:04He's been a podcaster longer than he was an on-screen WWE character, for example,
26:08but perhaps he just views a mixed legacy better than no legacy at all.
26:12Number 9, Rey Mysterio.
26:14It was the all-timer protest vote from, up to that point,
26:18the all-timer protest crowd on the all-timer protest show.
26:23Only in these specific circumstances could any large crowd turn on the great Rey Mysterio
26:29and turn as vociferously as they did when he appeared as the 30th entrant in 2014's Royal Rumble.
26:35It was the first of two years where audiences simply were not prepared to compromise on anybody other than
26:41Daniel Bryan not just being in the match,
26:43but winning the whole damn thing and going on to WrestleMania.
26:472015's notoriously awful match saw Roman Reigns suffer the consequences
26:51as the company man being picked over the beloved star.
26:55But the big dog was actually in the catbird seat a year earlier
26:57as the only fresh face that could stop the likes of a returning Batista,
27:02Alberto Del Rio,
27:03or Paul Rey from taking the planned main event spot at the show of shows against Randy Orton.
27:08Fans had repeatedly told the company it had to be Bryan,
27:12and it still took CM Punk's walkout the day after this specific show to force a reshuffle in plans,
27:17rather than any worry that the crowd might not exactly behave themselves.
27:21That's one way of putting it.
27:22Number 8, Randy Orton.
27:23With a career two and a half decades down and no obvious sign of an ending in sight,
27:29Randy Orton's legacy within WWE is assured,
27:32and never has this been more apparent than since his return of the 2023 Survivor Series.
27:37His pop that night in Chicago was dwarfed by the one CM Punk received,
27:42but ever since then,
27:43he's routinely been the recipient of reactions that are only rivaled by the likes of Cody Rhodes,
27:48Roman Reigns, and the voice of the voiceless himself.
27:50Fans bloody love themselves some Orton,
27:53whether he's supposed to be baby or heel,
27:55are evidently glad to be seeing him live and having a good old sing-song,
27:59and actively enjoy the same methodically paced matches he's had his entire career.
28:05It's been the best of times.
28:07As opposed to, well, multiple others in his controversial career.
28:10Orton was given every possible advantage early in his career,
28:14but multiple issues around his immaturity and attitude in general
28:18resulted in him being, at various points,
28:21a locker room pariah,
28:22a failed project of Triple H,
28:24a doomed fallen star,
28:26one wellness violation slash suspension away from a firing,
28:29and perhaps most infamously,
28:31the wrestler prone to the most obvious tantrums
28:33when colleagues made mistakes that he deemed stupid,
28:36stupid.
28:37The loop of push followed by bad behavior looks set to derail him sooner rather than later.
28:43But tenure,
28:43and an overdue realization of his very apparent character flaws,
28:47resulted in a much-needed shift for his character,
28:50and one that came through on screen.
28:51After a short run back on top as WWE champion in 2020,
28:55he'd spend most of the half-decade since that as a beloved legend,
29:00longest he'd ever consistently stayed on the virtuous side of the divide.
29:04Before he, you know,
29:05decided to turn on his old nightmare pal on the road to this year's WrestleMania,
29:09of course.
29:10Ah, things never last, do they?
29:11Number 7.
29:12Cope
29:13Adam Copeland, rather hilariously,
29:15considered himself a grisly,
29:17gnarled, evil bastard in the vein of a Minoru Suzuki,
29:21ahead of a 2024 match against the Japanese icon.
29:24But not quite being able to land on who he really is,
29:27in all elite wrestling,
29:28has been the most alienating aspect of his run.
29:31Edge's WWE return in 2020 was presented as wrestling's latest impossibility made possible.
29:37It brought a damn tear to my eye.
29:39And initially, both promotion and performer understood the assignment implicitly.
29:43The heady mix of nostalgia and a sense of unfinished business was ideal for a company
29:48badly lacking in stars.
29:50And the rated-R superstar typically generated some of the loudest reactions as a result.
29:55Alas, the more serious WWE invested into a deep and dark series with Randy Orton
30:01that also took place in the deep darkness of the pandemic.
30:04And a losing title feud with Roman Reigns,
30:07the faster the novelty wore off.
30:08Spotting the patterns but making the wrong call to address them,
30:12Edge turned heel and formed the Judgment Day,
30:15further diminishing his reactions,
30:17while continuing to misunderstand most what people actually wanted out of him.
30:21The reconfigured group turned on him in mid-2022,
30:24and at last, things clicked.
30:26He found levity as a babyface with some of the overtly earnest stuff stripped away.
30:31And it was this version of the big Canadian that rocked up in AEW in 2023.
30:35It flitted between silly and serious from there,
30:39but Cope made all his edge mistakes at his aforementioned gnarled worst.
30:44A main event run with Jon Moxley was AEW's 2025 Nadir,
30:48and an absence from television in the second half of the year was both welcome for his character,
30:53and, being brutally honest, something of a necessity.
30:56Number 6, Bully Ray
30:57Maybe great is a bit of a stretch here, but then maybe it isn't.
31:02The Dudley boys have spent years making a claim to being the best tag team in wrestling history,
31:07and can at the very least use their title lineage,
31:10limp-a-metric as that might be, as justification for the most.
31:13They convinced multiple promoters to strap them up,
31:16trust them with helming their tag divisions,
31:18and get over future duos.
31:20No mean feat.
31:21As a singles wrestler, Bully Ray eventually had a run in TNA that was,
31:25to his immense credit, a consistent over-delivery, creatively and commercially.
31:31Before the company's re-emergence as an attack brand in its partnership with WWE,
31:35Ray's time atop Impact as its top heel was the last time the company had any relevance
31:40before a 2010's wilderness period took hold.
31:43Nonetheless, Ray's celebration of said legacy might be the very reason
31:47he's ended up alienating so many people along the way.
31:50Between his inadvertently patronizing analysis of current pro wrestling,
31:54and self-aggrandizing about the good old days,
31:57he's managed to annoy more than his fair share of fans and ex-pros.
32:01In some cases, it's born out of bad experiences with him at the time.
32:05Rico, Rene Dupree, Sylvain Gronje, and most notably Dave Bautista,
32:09didn't exactly relish their times with old Bubba slash Bully,
32:13and made no secret of the fact post-retirement.
32:16Yep, Bubba pissed off the animal.
32:17Number 5, Roman Reigns
32:19Roman Reigns got a spot in a debuting Shield stable,
32:23when, per most authoritative reports at this point,
32:26it was earmarked for cult and indie favorite Chris Cassius Ohno Hero.
32:31From the very beginning, he was at the root of a culture war between different types of wrestling fan,
32:36and the problem got much, much worse when WWE attempted to break him away from the group that got him
32:42over.
32:42When the trio split in 2014, audiences seemed genuinely invested in the singles progressions of both Dean Ambrose and Seth
32:49Rollins,
32:50and with good reason.
32:51The two now had a baked-in blood feud, took to sporting different looks, entering with different themes,
32:57and for the first time in two years were able to tweak what made them tick.
33:00Roman, based on the in-house belief that what already worked was what was best,
33:05kept the Shield theme and aesthetic, including walking through a crowd that week on week were getting less interested in
33:12buying what the big dog was a-selling.
33:14A summer going over many of the established upper tier in the company did nothing to reverse the trend,
33:19and the events of the 2015 Royal Rumble became infamous as they were happening.
33:24The rot set in for Roman, the pattern got worse the harder he was pushed,
33:28and everything got stuck in a loop for the better part of five years.
33:32That was a long five years.
33:33He never truly recovered until, with not a solitary soul in the building,
33:38he was able to finally rebuild his career with a pandemic heel turn.
33:42Worst of all, it wasn't even the first time WWE were battling this problem.
33:46Which brings me to...
33:47Number 4, John Cena
33:48WWE actively dined out on John Cena dividing the audience for the majority of his career.
33:54Such was the veracity of emotion from every side when he was on top.
33:58It was oversimplified in the moment, as the women and children loving him and the male demographic despising him,
34:04but it was never as simple as that.
34:06Alienated millennials were finding a WWE that hadn't catered directly to them for the first time since before WrestleMania 1,
34:13and Cena was the loyal soldier leading that charge.
34:16The proof of the strategy's success wasn't just in how much of a draw Big Match John became
34:21when almost no other wrestlers made a difference at the gate,
34:24but in how much those fans still passionately cared for the champ as retirement neared.
34:28The haters had gotten older too, softening their stance on him
34:32to the point where the entire crowd had decided he was as good an egg as the one in the
34:36nest on the back of his head.
34:37Sorry John, this egg could not resist.
34:39For all the years for the character to turn heel, 2025 might have actually been the worst.
34:44As shocking as the moment undoubtedly was heading into that year's WrestleMania,
34:49WWE's uncommitted booking of the entire run before his abrupt pre-Summerslam babyface relaunch,
34:56and Cena's ropey acting, hammered nails in the coffin from the off.
35:01It moved many to recheck their thoughts on his legacy,
35:04ironically creating the same bitter divide he'd spent years trying to shake.
35:09Number 3, CM Punk
35:10To be CM Punk is to be under constant attack.
35:13Not really, of course.
35:14But that meek sentiment paraphrases what Tony Khan thought was going on back in December 2023,
35:20when he found critics getting a lot more negative towards his product a year and a half on
35:24from the infamous events of Brawl Out.
35:27Punk's raging fury over what he felt was systemic mismanagement of various situations
35:32by the likes of The Young Bucks and Hangman Page,
35:34and how he articulated that ripped at something core to All Elite Wrestling's early success,
35:40and just about permanently ripped up his relationship with the most ardent of AEW fanbase,
35:45or at very least those that preferred AEW's brand of mainstream professional wrestling.
35:49Upon his return to WWE in November,
35:51the ones that still enjoyed his sardonic performances during his final few months with the group
35:56saw that as the point of no return.
35:59All very reasonable, Punk is a passionate and enormously convincing orator.
36:03It does and always has made him one of the most captivating wrestlers ever.
36:08He talks a lot, speaks with conviction, then changes his mind or his motives or even his actual words,
36:15and that process bruises and or breaks relationships along the way.
36:19He gains many, he loses many, the cycle repeats, my friend.
36:22That's just the life of the Punker.
36:24Number 2, Hangman Page
36:25Wrestlers are not your friends.
36:27Many might share some of your views if you spoke to them, but they're not your friends.
36:32They're each other's friends, but not yours.
36:34There are various points at which a fan learns this,
36:36and typically it's associated with a little bit of heartbreak, betrayal, or pain.
36:40The job is audience manipulation from the moment the performers, another key word,
36:45step through the curtain, but often with a view of creating a parasocial bond,
36:49or at very least, not discouraging one.
36:51To its immense credit, All Elite Wrestling did this with its entire brand.
36:55The babyface promotion in direct opposition to long-standing heel outfit WWE.
37:01As its main character, and somebody who'd shown lots of admirable character traits on both sides of the camera,
37:07Hangman Page was perfectly placed to extol virtues from a relatively stable platform.
37:12This served performer and promotion equally, until 2026,
37:17when Page's former Bullet Club colleague and named in Speaking Out, Marty Scurll,
37:22posted a picture of the two of them outside Cracker Barrel.
37:25The image shattered how many felt about Page the person,
37:28damaging whatever it was they thought about him as a wrestling character.
37:31He spoke on it weeks later, referring to Scurll's actions as abhorrent, disgraceful,
37:36after explaining why he'd chosen to keep in touch with him after 2020's revelations.
37:41It remains to be seen if he will continue to receive a degree of forgiveness from his audience,
37:46in the same way he's espoused it from here on out.
37:48Number 1. Triple H
37:50If you stick around long enough in pro wrestling,
37:52you go through every possible relationship with the pro wrestling audience.
37:56And having put 30 years into carefully navigating his way to the top spot in the entire game,
38:02Triple H knows all about it.
38:03Indifference best defined how fans felt about the game in the period before China arrived
38:09and his real-life relationship with Shawn Michaels moved on screen,
38:12but the love and adoration he gained towards the end of the 1990s and into the year 2000 specifically,
38:18was something he'd never get back as soon as injuries and rumours of relentless politicking piled up.
38:24Never again the wrestler he was at his peak from 2002 through to his retirement,
38:28the highs were typically rule-proving exceptions,
38:31and his reign of terror in the first half of the 2000s in particular left scars with those that endured
38:37it.
38:37Perception shifted somewhat when he booked a golden era of NXT in the mid-2010s
38:42as a direct contrast to the main roster product it was supposed to facilitate,
38:46but the fruit basket years fritted away when AW launched as the true alternative to WWE rather than the in
38:53-house one.
38:54When he'd never been closer to the outhouse,
38:56he was suddenly in the penthouse after Vince McMahon resigned in disgrace,
39:00and has done everything to let everybody know, once again to the chagrin of those that loathe him,
39:05just how vital he's been to WWE's remarkable rejuvenation.
39:10It's his game, we're just watching it apparently.
39:12Have you enjoyed this big old 25-point wrestling list my friend?
39:16Well continue on that WhatCulture Wrestling YouTube journey
39:18by tapping on this 25 unique WWE matches nobody talks about video next.
39:24You're gonna have a great time, see you soon.
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