10 Wrestlers That Made Fans Change The Channel
Clicker Bait.
This is a positive list.
In the wrestling critic game, you see a lot of "too much negativity", "too much Triple H-bashing", and, oddly enough, "too much criticism". So there's almost none of that here.
Outside of this into, there will be no mention of Triple H and his channel-changing heat from the reign of terror and/or The Authority's vice-like grip on the product between 2013 and 2015. None at all.
"Changing the channel" comes with such negative connotations, which is strange considering the war-torn Wednesdays we remain enchanted by and the Monday Night battles that defined the viewing experience for an entire generation of wrestling fans.
Ratings, numbers and other similar measurables can suck the creative spirit out of any industry, but pro wrestling remains a theoretically fantastic destination for rewarding the talent that make the graphs point upwards. Especially outside of celebrated boom periods.
Almost all of the wrestlers in this list took viewers away from an opposing show or simply oversaw a spike in numbers that could be directly attributed to them.
Say what you will about 'The Game', but he never did that.
10. Stone Cold Steve Austin (1998)
'The Rattlesnake' went head to head with Vince McMahon in the main event of the April 13th 1998 edition of Monday Night Raw, but the pair were locked in battle together against WCW for about a year before they finally managed to win a ratings fight on a Monday Night.
It had been the prior April when Austin's babyface turn had truly been cemented thanks to the escalated stakes in his legendary feud with Bret Hart. It turned 'The Hitman' heel, brought about a new version of the Hart Foundation and even triggered a civil war between America and Canada. More important than all of that was the patience shown to stick with it in spite of numbers that weren't racing up. Or ones that were but still couldn't catch Nitro's on the other side.
It's sad to say it but only more exhilarating to watch in archive footage as a result, but Austin's push would have been halted several times in 2020 even if he'd never suffered a neck injury half way through. The ones that make it through the trickier times unscathed as he did are now tragically the exception rather than the rule.