10 Wrestlers Who Drew The Wrong Kind Of Heel Heat
We don't want your comeuppance, sir: we want you to go away...
A wrestler is nothing if they can't draw heat. If they're a babyface, that means building sympathy, support, and provoking a booming chorus of cheers whenever their music hits. For heels, the goal is the opposite, and if they're good at their job, they'll become a reviled, antagonistic foil for those on the other side, with the crowd desperate for their comeuppance.
Making an audience boo you is generally easier than convincing them to like you, but not all heel heat is created equally. Sometimes, an audience will jeer a wrestler not because of their effective heel work, but because they're sick of them as a performer, and not just a character.
There's a huge difference between loving to hate a wrestler and wanting them to disappear completely. Some may argue that any reaction is a good reaction, but if a heel actively has viewers reaching for the remote control, they aren't fulfilling their role correctly, and wrestling history is littered with examples of 'go-away heat.'
Whether it's because they were pushed too hard, had unsavoury backstage reputations, or just plain stunk, each of these names left the fans exasperated by their mere presence...
10. Right To Censor
Forming towards the tail end of the Attitude Era, Right To Censor seemed like a foolproof gang of heat magnets.
Former jobber Stevie Richards embarked on a preachy moral crusade to clean up the WWE, doing so by covering up scantily clad women, interrupting hardcore matches, and recruiting formerly rowdy fan favourites like The Godfather and Val Venis.
As the angle escalated, so too did the heat. The RTC were absolutely loathed, and as they feuded with the likes of The Dudley Boyz and Chyna, they became WWE’s most reviled group. Unfortunately, while a chunk of their heat was from fans who genuinely wanted to see them get their comeuppance, a great deal of it came from those who just didn’t want them on-screen anymore, and the longer their run persisted, the worse it got.
Right To Censor were disbanded in May 2001, and although many of the group’s members returned to their old personas in the aftermath, none were able to recapture their lost popularity. They weren't exactly pushed strongly beforehand, but Godfather and Venis both had particularly sizeable fanbases. The audience wanted nothing to do with them after RTC, however, which rubber stamps the stable’s failings as a whole.