10 WWE Heels Who Were Too Entertaining To Boo
No, Vince: we won't be booing Mr. Owens tonight...
WWE would love it if you pesky fans would just do what you're told. In their ideal world, Roman Reigns would be the most popular man on the planet, and Baron Corbin would be booed out of the building. They'd have you rooting for the guys they tell you to root for, booing those they tell you to despise, and there'd be no room for dissent.
For better or worse, things just don't work like that anymore. Wrestling fans were perfectly happy to go with the flow by booing heels and cheering faces in the sport's formative decades, but now, an evildoing bad guy is just as likely to receive a positive reaction as a negative one. Drawing heat is no longer as straightforward as conforming to a few basic heel tropes, and it's no longer enough for WWE to say "here's the villain, now boo him."
Fans have become smarter, and more willing to voice their own reactions rather than conform to group ideals. As such, wrestling's crowd reactions have never been more fractured, and they won't be changing anytime soon.
Only a handful of WWE's current heels draw legitimate hatred from the crowd, but it's definitely not a new issue. The company's past few decades are full of "bad guys" who the fans just couldn't bring themselves to jeer, even when it went against everything the company wanted...
10. Kevin Owens
Working with John Cena immediately upon debuting gave Kevin Owens a nice little early-career boon on the main roster, but it didn’t exactly set him up to be jeered. Cena was still widely despised by huge portions of the audience at that point, and while Owens played the heel, he was inevitably cheered against good old Super Cena.
The trend has continued throughout Owens’ run, but it stretches well into the past. Even when at his most sadistic in Ring Of Honor, Owens has always drawn immense crowd support. Some will play along and boo him, sure, but for others, their appreciation for what KO brings to the table trumps everything. He’s got a great heel persona, but Owens has only ever really been jeered during the more brutal phases of his years-long feud with Sami Zayn.
It’s easy to understand why this happens. Aside from being a tremendous wrestler, Owens is sharp-witted, funny, and incredibly comfortable on the mic. He's a regular highlight on any show he appears on, and his ability to transcend even the worst material to escape WWE's creative brain trust makes it hard to root against him.