10 Best 'Meet The REAL Villain' Moments In Wrestling History
The Rock, Shawn Michaels and others pick very good days to do very bad things.
WWE's Higher Power angle is so rotten that its never been agreed upon what specifically to even call it. And that's not even just a case of reverse nostalgia or retrospective reflection.
The company was on such a roll in the spring and summer of 1999, but The Higher/Greater Power is unquestionably a creative black eye. The actual reveal is a good laugh, Jim Ross' "aw son of a b*tch" is one of his more iconic Attitude Era wails, and Vince McMahon himself tries to make as much chicken salad from the chicken sh*t he's selling before moving on to the next major plot point, but it's fundamentally very very weak.
This specific trope is a really tough one to pull off in wrestling. There are spectators present for live in-person conflict at every show, and that's a trickier stage than a television set for trying to tell this specific story. It's a challenge not to make idiots of the babyfaces, or fools of fellow heels, and an upshot of doing either of those is making a mockery of the product and by proxy the fans that invest in it.
But it rules when it works...
10. Rikishi Running Down Steve Austin Was Triple H's Master Plan
It was impossible to escape the "this is the real quiz" energy around Triple H's joining up with Rikishi in 2000 as a heel unit with desires on destroying Stone Cold Steve Austin, but it speaks to 'The Game's popularity and skill levels at the time that the majority of the audience accepted it as a pretty cool swerve.
On television (and despite significant motivation), Hunter had been ruled out of the hit-and-run from the off, which jived nicely with his character's ongoing babyface turn at the time. But when the Rikishi reveal hit the skids, the year's best heel was drafted in to be the mastermind rather than the perp.
Now that the story was between Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H, the story actually felt silly rather than serious. Austin himself seemed more invested - the feud with the former Headshrinker had been painfully one-sided because 'The Rattlesnake' clearly didn't have much time for the concept or the supposed threat his opponent presented.