10 Most Despised Men In Wrestling History
8. Kevin Dunn
Kevin Dunn is equally responsible for Vince McMahon's vision of sports entertainment as Vince McMahon is. It's little wonder that Jim Cornette, most famously, hates him. Jim Cornette adores professional wrestling. Kevin Dunn seems to hate it, and the evidence of that lies in his production of it: ultra-polished and divorced entirely from its raw, real sports-flavoured origins.
Consider WWE in its current mode. It makes absolutely no consideration to something fans can believe in. Entrance themes are cued when wrestlers interrupt in-ring segments, as if their DNA triggers some sensor or something. The camera work is contrived in the extreme, literally exposing the action as predetermined. Every verbal segment resembles an evidently rehearsed talk show. Everybody talks in the same register and with the same verbiage because Dunn, infamously, loathes difference - southerners in particular.
Wrestling was predicated, once, on suspension of disbelief. It had to be; the membrane covering the pretence was practically transparent. Now, WWE makes no attempt to present itself as anything other than a scripted patchwork quilt of Dunn's preferred, traditional entertainment - and an army of wrestling's old guard and fans alike hate him for it.
Jim Ross, a man who even when not under WWE's employ would refuse to take the low road his endless humiliations even though he is achingly justified in doing so, is the beloved uncle of professional wrestling - that Dunn spearheaded the many smear campaigns levelled at him is confirmation that Dunn is deeply despised within wrestling circles because he is an enemy of it.
If rumours are to be believed, he is the principal reason why the transition from NXT to WWE is often so awkward and unsuccessful; Dunn sees it as an emerging old school threat to his polished bastardisation.