10 Dirtiest Tricks WWE Heels Pulled To Inspire Hate
There are some lines no wrestler should ever cross. Unfortunately, these heels never got the memo.
Heels are meant to be despicable, universally hated bad guys. In many ways, the responsibility for drawing reactions from the crowd resides more with the heel than it does with the face. It is only after you have someone doing really bad things that a good guy can come in, save the day, and be cheered by the crowd. This has become particularly complicated in modern day WWE.
The traditional heel-face dynamic doesn’t really exist anymore and crowds chant for who they believe to be the cooler character, regardless of whether the person is meant to be good or bad. Most of the time, you see the heels getting cheered like heroes.
However, that wasn’t always the case. And even today, sometimes when a heel manages to do something truly awful, the crowd unloads with all the hatred they can muster.
Over the years though, many wrestlers have taken this whole thing a little too far. While it’s fine insulting the host city or country, or abusing your opponent in various ways, there is a line that should not be crossed. Unfortunately, no one gave the memo to these guys when they went out to the ring and pulled some of the most distasteful stunts in WWE history. These are the 10 dirtiest tricks WWE heels used to generate heat.
10. The Un-Americans Threaten To Burn The American Flag
The Ruthless Aggression era had more than its fair share of stereotypical foreign heel acts. Despite being rinsed and repeated for decades, Vince and co. still felt it was the best way to convince the crowd to give a damn. Throughout the period we saw gimmicks such as La Résistance, Muhammad Hassan and yes, the Un-Americans.
WWE, as ever, were trying to ignite some kind of cultural war between America and Canada and hence had Christian and his buddies from up north constantly demean the American way and its people. It all came to a head on the 26 August 2002 episode of Raw, when the bad guys decided to take it up a notch. After disposing of Booker T and Goldust, Test took hold of an American flag and tried to set it ablaze.
Of course, he couldn’t actually do it because Kane, of all people, ran down to make the save. Good on the Big Red Machine for holding on to his dual citizenship of America and Hell. The good guys and demons won, and the segment was capped off by a ludicrous Kane-a-roonie - but not before the crowd were incensed by what was a real below the belt move.