10 Worst Motives For Wrestling Heel Turns

In pro wrestling, one of the more shocking things a wrestler can do is turn heel, usually by betraying a friend, staging an attack on another babyface, or simply deciding to align with other bad guys. However, heel turns need psychology just like anything else that happens in wrestling. In other words, there usually needs to be a motivation for the turn.

That said, not all motivations for heel turns are necessarily good or believable. In the history of wrestling, there have been countless reasons for turning heel that simply failed to work with fans. Let’s take a look at 10 of these unconvincing motivations, from WWE and beyond.

10 Lacey Evans Can’t Sing As Well As Naomi

Originally debuting on the WWE main roster in early 2019 as a villainous Southern belle who espouses “traditional” values, Lacey Evans soon turned babyface later that year. That all changed in July 2020 on an episode of SmackDownduring a karaoke contest, of all things.

After Evans performed Jeff Jarrett’s song “With My Baby Tonight,” Naomi belted out a crowd-pleasing rendition of Dusty Rhodes’ entrance music. Incensed at being upstaged, Evans turned heel and attacked Naomi, resulting in one of the more frivolous reasons for turning heel.

9 Dusty Rhodes Respects Tradition

Over the course of the nWo’s original run in WCW, the invading heel stable suffered from a bloated roster as the promotion used “guy reveals an nWo T-shirt” as a cheap go-to plot twist. One of the more reviled and superfluous nWo heel turns was that of obvious WCW guy Dusty Rhodes, who revealed his allegiance at Souled Out ‘98.

What’s worse was Dusty’s motivation, or lack thereof — when cutting a promo to explain himself, Rhodes named a corporate betrayal of pro wrestling “tradition” as his reason for joining the heel group, but it seemed unclear why joining the nWo was the solution to that.

8 Undertaker Got Annoyed About Jim Ross’ Sense Of Dignity

After the big WCW Invasion storyline ran its course, Vince McMahon started inducting those he deemed disloyal to join his “Kiss My Ass Club,” where people where forced to kiss his bare butt. One such inductee was an unwilling Jim Ross, which prompted The Undertaker to intervene.

However, ‘Taker didn’t rescue Ross, as he suddenly turned heel and forced JR to bury his face in McMahon’s posterior. The Undertaker's bizarre motivation for becoming a bad guy was simply that he didn’t like that Jim Ross apparently thought he was too good to be demeaned on live television.

7 Goldberg Hates Backstage Politics, But Also “Why Not?”

Vince Russo era WCW was no stranger to needless swerves and heel turns, and 2000’s Great American Bash ended with Goldberg turning heel by costing Kevin Nash a title shot at World Champion Jeff Jarrett.

The following night on Monday Nitro, Goldberg came out to cut a promo to explain his actions, which involved an annoyance with backstage politics that few fans in the year 2000 were privy to. However, his earliest explanation in the promo perfectly exemplified WCW’s bizarre “swerve for the sake of swerve” booking: “Don’t ask me why. The question is, why the hell not?”

6 Becky Lynch Blames The Fans

At SummerSlam 2018, after Charlotte Flair emerged from a triple threat as the new SmackDown Women’s Champion, top babyface Becky Lynch snapped and attacked Charlotte, turning heel in the process and delighting fans who objected to Flair inserting herself into the match. That all seemed pretty understandable, but WWE tried to make the fans turn on Lynch by having her cut a promo where she blamed that fans for not supporting her enough.

It was a cheap move, and it didn’t work, as Becky Lynch continued to be a popular character, and evolved into her persona of “The Man.”

5 Brodus Clay Was Mad That Xavier Woods Borrowed His (Unoriginal) Entrance Music

The year 2013 saw Xavier Woods move on to the main roster from NXT, where he reunited with his old Impact Wrestling tag team partner, R-Truth. As part of Woods’ introduction to WWE fans, the newcomer borrowed Brodus Clay’s entrance music and Funkadactyls back-up dancers, much to the chagrin of The Funkasaurus himself.

This resulted in the fun-loving, dancing Brodus Clay to turn heel on Xavier Woods despite the fact that Clay’s theme, “Somebody Call My Momma,” had previously been used by Ernest Miller.

4 Sting Doesn’t Trust Hulk Hogan

Before Goldberg’s unconvincing heel turn came the unconvincing heel turn of Sting, who had been a babyface in WCW since the late 1980s. In 1999, at Fall Brawl, Sting turned on a newly babyface Hulk Hogan, cheating to win the World Title from The Hulkster.

Sting’s motivation for turning on The Hulkster was that Hogan was deeply untrustworthy, which was actually pretty well-founded given the fact that Hogan turned heel just three years prior and revealed himself as part of the nWo. Hilariously, Sting would once again be a heel, distrusting Hogan in Impact Wrestling in 2010, and once again be proven right when Hogan turned heel.

3 Tajiri Fell On Eddie Guerrero’s Car

In 2003, Chavo Guerrero suffered a poorly timed injury, resulting in tag team partner Eddie Guerrero finding a new partner in the form of former ECW star Tajiri. Together, the two won the WWE Tag Team Championship, holding the belt for 44 days.

The pairing proved to be pretty entertaining, but came to an end after they lost the belts to The World’s Greatest Tag Team on a late June episode of SmackDown. During the match, Tajiri got knocked off of the ring apron and onto Eddie’s signature low rider at ringside, an accident that resulted in Guerrero turning on his partner for inadvertently damaging his car.

2 Big Cass Hates All Short People, Not Just Enzo

Despite being one of the hottest tag teams in WWE, in 2017 Big Cass turned on his partner, Enzo Amore, becoming a heel in the process. The reasoning appeared pretty sound — Cass did the heavy lifting in their matches — but soon that motivation was retconned in favor of something far less satisfying.

As Big Cass moved on to a feud with Daniel Bryan, the seven-footer claimed that his reasoning for turning on Enzo was because he was short, and thus targeted Bryan for also not being tall.

1 Dean Ambrose Is A Germaphobe

The 10/22/2018 episode of Raw was a major one in recent years — after Roman Reigns publicly announced his battle with leukemia, his Shield partners underwent a shocking breakup as Dean Ambrose turned heel on Seth Rollins.

On a kayfabe level, it was fuel for what could be the hottest blood feud in modern wrestling, but Ambrose’s character became that of a germaphobe who was disgusted by Reigns’ illness and extended that revulsion to not only Rollins but also the WWE fans. This resulted in silly segments where Ambrose wore gas masks and received inoculations backstage.

NEXT: Dean Ambrose’s Heel Turn In WWE Was One Of His Best Career Moments