10 Best WWE Heel Turns Of The 2010s

3. Roderick Strong - NXT TakeOver: New Orleans

cm punk the rock
WWE

All of all the heel turns on this, there are few (if any) that were as shocking as this.

NXT TakeOver: New Orleans posed an interesting problem for The Undisputed Era. Bobby Fish had gone down with an injury in the build-up to the event, which left Kyle O'Reilly without a tag team partner. Adam Cole was busy with the six-man ladder match to crown the inaugural NXT North American Champion.

Cole ended up pulling double duty this night and competed alongside O'Reilly in a triple threat tag team match for both the NXT Tag Team Championships and the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. The match also featured The Authors of Pain and the impromptu team of Pete Dunne and Roderick Strong.

O'Reilly basically fought this match by himself and it looked like this was going to cost The Era when Dunne hit him with The Bitter End. However, in a truly unexpected moment, Dunne's partner, Strong, broke up the pinfall and hit his own finisher on the Brit. This allowed O'Reilly to make the cover and win the match.

We should have seen it coming - Strong was a former ROH star and his run as a babyface was growing stale - but everything about this angle was executed so perfect, even Nostradamus would have been swerved.

Contributor
Contributor

Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.