10 Great Babyface Wrestlers Who Became SHOCKINGLY Good Heels
1. Hulk Hogan
Very few people have sparked a wrestling boom period.
Hulk Hogan did it twice.
The first instance was his time as the demigod of the WWE. For almost a decade, he dominated the main event scene of Vince McMahon's promotion, his popularity allowing the company to expand from a regional powerhouse to a national sensation.
As for his second industry-shaking moment, that couldn't have been any different. By the time Bash at the Beach 1996 rolled around, The Hulkster had been in WCW for two years. The old 'red and yellow' shtick wasn't working anymore, so he needed to try something new.
Hogan's heel turn and the formation of the New World Order made wrestling cool again. It lifted the entire industry out of the doldrums of the mid-90s and made both WCW and WWE up their games significantly. We could sit here and talk about how the NWO and Hogan's politicking also led to the demise of Ted Turner's promotion, but the point remains that, if he hadn't turned heel in the first place, the company might have died years earlier.
If only he could have done something similar for TNA...