10 Dirtiest Tricks WWE Heels Pulled To Inspire Hate

It only gets worse from this point on. Up until now there’s been gender violence, sexual degradation and borderline international incidents. Now we have a man’s real life struggle against a potentially fatal illness being used as a storytelling device. A really, really bad one at that. In late October 2018, we witnessed one of the most heartbreaking moments in wrestling history when Roman Reigns was forced to relinquish the Universal Championship because of a leukaemia relapse.

On the same night, we would see the Dean Ambrose heel turn and the start of his latest rivalry with Seth Rollins. On the face of it, this should have been a compelling, emotionally driven feud. Unfortunately, not long after it fell straight off a cliff. To begin with, the Ambrose character wasn’t presented as a dangerous badass but rather a jealous germaphobe who constantly hid behind security guards and gas masks.

The lowest point came on the 19 November 2018 episode of Raw where in response to Rollins’ accusations, Ambrose said every single one of them was getting what they deserved, including Roman.

A Dean Ambrose-Seth Rollins feud would have been money under normal circumstances, but now there was the chance to have this emotional trauma of losing their best friend’s career hanging over them. There was no need to generate any kind of cheap heat, and certainly not in this way. Roman may well have given his blessing to this script, but nonetheless it is hard to describe this as anything other than tasteless.