10 Most Hated Wrestlers Of All Time
7. Shawn Michaels
Bret Hart had this wonderful way of inflecting the words "Boy toy" when dealing with the woodpecker that was Shawn Michaels. At once scathing and detached, it was a withering assessment shared by a great number of wrestling fans.
They hated his 1996 story arc because it didn't feel real. Michaels probably did dream of becoming a wrestler in boyhood, but he wasn't some innocent dreamer on the cusp of realising it.
He was a d*ck.
And if the insider fan knew this to be true by reading about his politicking exploits in the Wrestling Observer, the more casual fan seemed to very much infer it, looking at those horrendous 1996 pay-per-view buys. Diesel, calculably, is the worst-drawing WWF Champion ever, but Michaels is perhaps spared a similarly rotten reputation as a draw through his formidable in-ring brilliance.
Nobody would ever deny that brilliance, even those who aren't enamoured with his melodramatic style - even Bret never allowed his hatred of the man to shape an inaccurate, biased opinion of the performer - but Michaels still drew a fierce hatred from fans too visceral to translate to the box office.