Another list, CaptainCrunch's top 11 wrestling turns

[CaptainCrunch]

Wrestling has often been described as a male soap opera performed by men in their underwear. A description that really makes me want to re-evaluate my being a 40 year old fan of Wrestling. But where would wrestling be without story lines? Without human drama? Without friends turning on friends and seeking bloody revenge. It’d be pretty darn boring and would still strictly exist at carnivals and circuses.

But when wrestling beam a work and combined with television, heel turns became king, the most exciting part of the sport. There have been hundreds of heel turns in wrestling, some good and some bad, and when I think about them, I’m reminded of Mick Foley talking about what makes for an effective heel, and it applies to the reason for turning of your tag team partner or your friend or ally, and it boils down to “It has to make sense, it has to be justified”.



So when I decided that I wanted to write up a list of my favorite heel turns, I was careful in looking back at the why, and not just the resulting feud.
Now, before I start, I know you’re saying, “Hey Captain, why 11?”, well Kiddies when I was writing this up there was a heel turn that I just couldn’t leave out, because I was in attendance on the night it happened, and it was just an incredible night.



So, live with it, it’s a top 11, and here we go.

11) Dynamite Kid turns on Davey Boy Smith



This is the feud that I just couldn’t not put in there, and the execution puts it on this list. To understand this feud, one has to understand the back stage dynamics of the British Bulldogs. When Stu Hart ended Stampede Wrestling back in 1984 and sold the territory to Vince McMahon and the WWF, Stu made the sale conditional on his son Bret, the Bulldogs and Bad News Allen getting jobs in the WWF. For 4 years the Bulldogs changed the tag team wrestling game, winning the WWF tag team championships. But Dynamite’s declining health including a devastating back injury, his unhappiness with the WWF style, and a series of bullying events back stage lead to the Bulldogs leaving the Federation and returning to the restarted Stampede wrestling where they became the top draw in the company as a good guy tagteam.
But backstage the formerly close cousins were coming apart at the seams, Dynamite was always the boss in the relationship, and Davey Boy was unhappy at leaving the big money in the WWF. So this is where art reflects reality. I can’t remember all of the details, but I remember the night that a very young 18 year old CaptainCrunch and his best friend at the time were front row and center for the disintegration of the Bulldogs. Sure, there had been signs of trouble, Dynamite snapping at Davey and blaming him for losses, but nothing serious until that Friday Night at the Pavilion. Earlier in the night Dynamite had been in a one on one match with Johnny Smith (IIRC) when the hated Karachi Vice stormed the ring to attach him. Davey came down to save his cousin and in the melee Dynamite was hit with a kendo stick and when he turned around, Davey had picked it up and Dynamite saw him holding the stick and put 2 and 2 together. In the post match interview, Davey swore up and down that he didn’t hit Dynamite, and it seemed like Dynamite accepted it and everything was ok, but we were all wrong. Later in the night when Davey had his own solo match against and I think it was Kerry Brown, Dynamite came down to the ring with a heavy chain wrapped around his fist, and he came off of the rope and destroyed Davey and proceeded to beat him bloody. The reaction of the Stampede Wrestling fans was incredible. I remember a fan next to me, was crying and begging Dynamite to stop, there were several girls crying their eyes out, and of course, I was cheering it on.



This heel turn led Dynamite to going back to what he always was, a heel. He teamed up with Johnny Smith to form the British Bruisers and we got a long bloody series of matches between Dynamite and Davey Boy Smith. The Bulldogs continued to team up in New Japan, but tension boiled over when Davey returned to the WWF, and Dynamite never spoke to his cousin again. The disintegration of Dynamite continued and by 1996, he was a forgotten footnote in wrestling. But for one bright shining moment, Dynamite was back to what he was years earlier, one of the best heels in wrestling.



(Sadly there is no real footage of this fued out there)








10) Bad News Allen turns on Archie the Stomper Gouldie

This is a tragic heel turn, because it directly led to the end of Stampede Wrestling. It also lead to a riot, the suspension of Stampede Wrestling in Calgary and Ed Whalen leaving the company.



By the time this feud happened, Stampede Wrestling was in big trouble, it was bleeding money, and Stu was under pressure by his wife Helen to shut the company down before they went broke. By this time, Bruce Hart was booking the federation, and doing a lot of really interesting booking that would later make its way to the other big federation. The problem was that Stu and the veterans hated it, and Stampede Wrestling got bloodier and bloodier and was dependant on the infamous blood and guts cheap heat.
But the Archie Gouldie, Bad News Allan feud was an amazing piece of immersive story telling, and once again a young CaptainCrunch was front and centre.


To understand this feud, you have to understand that at the time, any good story had to go through the Hart family, and at the time the two most heated heels in the company were Archie Gouldie and Bad News Allen. For months Archie and Gouldie had teamed up with each other and were portrayed as good friends. They trained together, ate together, and fought the Harts (Bret, Davey, Sonny Two Rivers) together. So it was natural that Archie and Bad News challenged the Harts to a 6 man tag team battle, that would feature Allen, Gouldie and a rookie wrestler named Jeff Gouldie, you guessed it, Archie’s son had begged his dad to train him as a wrestler. The 6 man tag match started as usual with the Hart’s on the one side and Stomper, Bad News and Jeff on the other. To be honest, it was a good physical match, but nothing special. Then all hell broke lose. Allen turned on Archie, threw Jeff outside of the ring and pile drove him on concrete floor multiple times, and all hell broke lose. The crowd panicked and some fans attacked Bad News who punched out an old man about 10 feet away from me. The building was cleared. After the building was cleared, Bad News did an interview where he proclaimed that he had broken Jeff’s neck and he hoped the Son of a Bitch would die. Archie came out and made a frighteningly calm interview where he stated that he regretted letting his son into the business, and “He was going to go see his son in the hospital and then get the man who hurt his son”. At that point, Ed Whalen who at the time was a awful announcer in that he was too much of a Mark for himself, and he had not been let in on this turn, quit on live TV.


Back then there was a feeling of realism in wrestling. But Jeff Gouldie a wrestler from the Deep South territory named Tommy Lane was on a plane home, but that didn't stop the switchboard at the Rocky View Hospital from being flooded by Wrestling fans trying to find out if he was ok.





On the house show shortly afterwards in Edmonton, Bad News started another riot and assaulted a fan with a chair. That was it for Stampede Wrestling in Calgary. The Boxing commission suspended Stampede Wrestling license, and the blow off match that would have been a massive money maker in Calgary ended up happening on the Sarcee reserve on the night of a massive blizzard, so the blow off drew very little money. Stu was disgusted by the whole thing and shorlly after words shut down Stampede Wrestling and sold the territory to Vince who later reneged on the deal thanks to Bruce Hart trying to restart Stampede Wrestling behind his back.






9) The break up of the Rockers.

Going back to the theme of art imitating real life, the Rockers break up came about due to real life problems between Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels. They had come into the WWE with great hype after tearing up independent territories and the AWA in the early 80’s and were promptly fired by the WWE after their debut due to behavior issues. When they were allowed to return, they never hit their potential. Backstage Marty had gone behind Shawn’s back to give Vince an ultimatum in asking for more money. Shawn wasn’t interested in leaving the WWE and decided he wanted a solo career. It was decided that it was time to break up the team. At the time, the WWE honestly expected Marty to be the bigger star, Shawn was a pudgy wrestler who was a great worker, but was considered to be below average on the mic. This feud was expected to be a launching point for Marty. The set up of the feud was simple. Thee Rockers started losing and squabbling. Marty made mistakes during Michael’s singles matches leading Shawn to lose matches to Ric Flair and a loss at Survivor Series. Finally the tension blew up when the Rockers lost a tag team title match to the Legion of Doom and their bad feelings boiled over into a confrontation. This lead to a segment on Brutus Beefcakes Barber shop, where the two seemed to reconcile and hug it out, but in an instance Michael’s career changed for ever as he brutally attacked his former friend and threw him through the window of the Barber Shop leaving him bleeding.



Shawn Michael’s then grabbed the glass ring, reinvented himself as the cocky Boy Toy and the rest is history. Marty Jannetty effectively ended his career with WWE due to his behaviour and addiction problems. A feud with Michael’s that was supposed to launch him never happened due to repeated firings and suspensions. But it didn’t matter, the WWE had accidentally created a major star.




8) Chris Jericho turns on Shawn Michaels


Chris Jericho can be a creative Genius, I’m still convinced that left to his own devices without supervision, he’s his own worst enemy creatively. But his feud with Shawn Michaels where he turned heel and changed Character, represents some of his finest work. Putting Michaels and Jericho in the ring in a feud was equivalent to putting two great artists together and letting them paint. This feud had it all, emotion, real life heat behind the scenes, and a really good reason for a heel turn.



To understand this feud we have to realize that it had been a slow build from about 2002, when Jericho had been on a high career trajectory and feuded with Michaels on and off with the intention of ending Micaels career.
In 2008 while the WWE landscape had changed, Shawn and HBK were both main event talents, and faces. HBK had just famously ended Ric Flair’s career with the Iove you I’m sorry super kick, the seeds were planted during the Ric Flair retirement ceremony when Batista stared down HBK and showed resentment over Flair’s retirement, and Jericho injected himself into the feud, by questioning Shawn’s character and accused him of enjoying Flair’s retirement a little two much.






This led up to a Batista versus HBK match where Michael’s faked a knee injury to buy some time and eventually beat Batista in a very clever and calculated move by Michaels, showing that nothing was too low in order to get a ring.





On the next Raw Michael’s appeared on the Highlight Reel and Jericho awarded HBK with a “Best Actor in Sports Entertainment” award. Michael’s made the mistake of denying the injury and claiming that he was legitimately hurt..





On May 5, 2008 the two faces teamed up to take on the excellent team of the Miz and Morrison. Once again, HBK’s kneed acted up, and led to Michael’s hitting the Sweet Chin Music and Jericho hitting the Lion salt to win.
The next week on Raw, Jericho proclaimed that he believed that Michael’s was legitimately hurt and he wanted to apologize to his friend for questioning his integrity. Shawn then admitted h wasn’t hurt, Jericho acted like he didn’t buy it, and Shawn hit the sweet chin music, then stood over Jericho and told him “that he wasn’t hurt”.


This led to a Judgment day where Shawn Michael’s beat Jericho in a quick match, but the two shook hands and showed mutual respect.
Jericho again hosted HBK on an episode of the Highlight Reel. He then noted that the fans will love HBK no matter what he did. HBK replied by reminding Jericho that he would do anything to win. You could see the anger boiling in Jericho as he went on one of the great rants. “Howe does Shawn Michael’s, one of the greatest performers and most highly decorated superstars in the history of the business turn into a lying, cheating, pathetic little work of a human being?”. Then in a moment that is just epic, Jericho threw Michaels face first through the hideously expensive Jerichotron 6000, after promising a bloody Michaels that the worst was left to come.








This so far was such a unique turn, Jericho’s reasons were legitimate, and in the old days would have been Honorable, but Jericho was taking advantage of fans that cheered for the villians and everything was shades of gray.
The next week, Jericho continued to slowly build his heel character, he blamed the audience for what occurred, a series of confrontation happened where Jericho and Michaels would face off with Michael’s further injuring his damaged eye.

For the next few weeks, Jericho and Michaels continue to have nasty confrontations, meanwhile Jericho had moved away from his Y2J rock star gimmick and transferred into a slow talking, suit wearing serial killer feeling type of heel based on Anton Sugar from “No Country for old men”. He also stole heavily from Nick Bockwinkel in using a big word vocabulary, and turned in his long tights for gasp short tights.



Then things got real. In August Shawn Michael’s came out to the ring with his wife, former Nitro Girl Rebecca, to announce that his eye injury and other injuries had led him to decide to retire. As Shawn made his emotional speech with his wife crying by his side, Jericho stormed the ring and noted he would not allow Shawn to retire and he wanted Shawn to admit that Chris Jericho had chased him from the business. Shawn retorted by telling Jericho to tell his wife and kids that Daddy would never be as good as Shawn Michaels.
Whoops, Chris went to punch Shawn, but he ducked, and Rebecca zigged instead of zagging, and Jericho punched her out for real.





Up until this point, backstage, Jericho and Michael’s weren’t really close. Jericho was at the height of his obnoxiousness and drinking leading to some pointed conversations wiht Shawn, Jericho documented in one of his books, that he also felt that Shawn had very little respect for him as a person. Maybe because Jericho was following Shawn’s path a little too closely.
However the show must go on. Jericho continued to needle Shawn, blaming him for his wife getting knocked out and it lead to a brutal unsanctioned match, between Michael’s and Jericho.



The end result was that Michael’s became even more beloved, which Jericho had predicted at the start of this story. Jericho had transformed his character from the Y2J gimmick and showed that he was a master creative force, and had changed himself to the top heel on the business.

Logic and reason ruled the day.


Coming soon 7 through 5